RFID and Beyond: Growing Your Business Through Real World Awareness

Take a look around you. If Claus Heinrich is right, every business process
that you come in contact with will one day be automated.

In his mind the driving technology is RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification), and in this book he imagines the impact that RFID and “real world awareness” may have on the business world. Heinrich explains real world awareness as a concern for gathering information and sending it through networks that will analyze it in many different ways. In tandem, the technology and its expanded repertoire of applications could work well for businesses that have to process and analyze extensive data in very little time.

In Part I, Heinrich explores the potential of RFID technology in several different sectors, such as retail (as it relates to consumer-driven suppliers) and marketing (for brand management). He also peppers the book with interviews with several senior executives, CTOs, and CEOs—such as Michael Dell and Stefan Lauer, executive board member of Lufthansa—to further explain the factors and challenges involved with the real world concept and RFID.

Part II is a bit more technical, with chapters devoted to legal issues, systems, and network challenges, as well as the changes in service offerings that occur once businesses implement RFID and apply real world awareness. In the end, Heinrich makes it hard to imagine the future without RFID. As he clarifies, though, technology doesn’t work by itself: With real world awareness, he writes, “…the availability of more information will transform business.”

Heinrich is an active executive member of several boards, including SAP AG, and is coauthor of Adapt or Die—Transforming Your Supply Chain into an Adaptive Business Network. He also lectures at the University of Mannheim, Germany, as a professor of management science.

source: Harvard Business School