Power through things: following traces of collective intelligence in internet of things

Purpose – it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the input Internet of Things (IoT) has to offer in the development of public, business and other societal structures. Therefore, this paper seeks to determine the current state of knowledge in the field of IoT in terms of wisdom creation and emergence of collective intelligence. First, we discuss the concept of collective intelligence and then define the phenomena of IoT and identify the areas of its application. Later, the author reviews how intelligent outputs of IoT are defined in the scientific literature. These findings of theoretical investigation may shed some light on the research field that is promising but still very vague. Design/methodology/approach – this article provides a general overview of IoT concept and its growing relation to collective intelligence. Methods of document analysis and content analysis were applied. Theoretical analysis enabled recognition of IoT phenomena in relation to wisdom creation and emergence of collective intelligence. Findings – general overview of the field revealed that new understanding of collective intelligence surfaces. Often intelligent behaviour and decisions emerge from ever-increasing cooperation between ‘things’ and humans. The variety of new concepts and authors trying to describe relationship of ‘things’ with each other and humans when creating intelligent outcomes revealed that this field is still in its very infancy and needs considerable amount of industry and scientific efforts to be understood and executed. Research limitations – although the paper has successfully demonstrated that IoT provides vast amounts of data for people to process and create knowledge, this could be considered only as an initial phase in studying the field. IoT and its intelligent outcomes need more investigation in terms of real life case studies and industry reviews in order to create valid definitions, models and future guidelines. Practical implications – this study provides an exciting opportunity to advance our knowledge on Internet of Things and could be used as theoretical background for further analysis of emergence of collective intelligence in interactive networks of people and things. Value – to date there has been little research summarising scientific efforts in the field of IoT. This paper provides a general overview of the knowledge on IoT and could be used as guidelines for further research