Discover the concept of the Internet of Behavior (IoB) and learn about early examples of IoB that are already part of our everyday lives.
When the term "Internet of Things" was first introduced in 1999, it was overlooked, ambiguous, and considered a bit avant-garde. However, the IoT has evolved, both as a concept and reality, becoming nearly a household phrase. It has been technologically utilized in all corners of the world, becoming a paramount technology in under two decades. A simple walk through a media store will (quite literally) display how much the Internet of Things has become engrained into our society. Now, another out-there phrase will soon follow IoT's footsteps: The Internet of Behavior (IoB). This article identifies the concept of the IoB and highlights the early examples of IoB that are already part of our everyday lives.
IoB: Tracking behavior online
The term Internet of Behavior was first introduced by Gartner, a leading research and advisory company, in October 2019, as a part of their Top Prediction for IT Organizations and Users in 2020 and Beyond symposium. In this collection of forecasts regarding IT progress over the next 5-10 years, Gartner stated: "By 2023, individual activities will be tracked digitally by an "Internet of Behavior" to influence benefit and service eligibility of 40% of people worldwide." In simpler terms, Gartner predicts that an individual's behavior may be tracked, documented, and actioned to categorize that same individual's eligibility to receive things like insurance.
But the IoB is even bigger than just using data to rank a person's ability to qualify for insurance: it's a means of building digitalized information of an individual's human behavior to better serve them, and others like them, with information, services, products, and more. In a metaphorical comparison, IoT relies on physical devices and sensors to collect data, interpret that data, and action that data to allow those (or other) physical devices to function a specific way. IoB collects, interprets, and actions data created by an individual through digital sensing and footprints to allow that same individual to have a personalized and optimized experience with the digital or physical world.
How does the IoB work and influence behavior?
The IoB relies on collecting and aggregating an individual's behavioral data in large amounts to infer the action or categorization of that user. Most commonly, this data is collected via mobile devices, as they are much more capable of collecting an individual's day-to-day behavior than, say, the browser on your laptop. Per Statista, as of early 2021, there were 4.66 billion active internet users worldwide, 92.6 percent of whom accessed the internet via mobile devices, which indicates that nearly 4.5 billion people are already contributing to the Internet of Behavior. For example, an individual's cell phone can track a person's location to within feet of their location anywhere on the planet. Suppose that individual had recently been online shopping for leather shoes. As such, the Internet of Behavior model suggests the individual could be served with personalized advertisements for leather shoes within walking distance.
IoB examples today
Gartner's predictions of behavior influencing insurance premiums are already coming into the fold. For example, international electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla is launching a beta, AI-powered insurance plan for its drivers that gives individual drivers a Safety Score that directly influences their insurance costs. This safety score is based on five driving behaviors monitored by an individual's Tesla driving system: unsafe following, forward-collision warnings, aggressive turning, hard braking, and forced autopilot disengagement.
Based on the frequency of occurrence of these different factors, Tesla will increase and decrease that individual's insurance premiums. This can obviously both benefit or hurt the vehicle owner's cost of ownership. Still, the customized, data-driven approach to offering a service based on that individual's input is a direct application of the Internet of Business. Traditional insurance companies are also offering similar services - such as Allstate's Drivewise. But, Gartner's prediction of the magnitude of coverage of such services is yet to be realized.
Conclusion
The Internet of Behavior expands far beyond offering customized insurance premiums to users based on their behavior. In the very near future, the IoB has the potential to guide nearly every customizable industry on the planet. The world has already grown accustomed to similar concepts of the customizable experience -- such as a person's Credit Score impacting lending rates. Still, the fidelity that a customized experience can reach has yet to be maximized. Mass data collection, data classification, and Big Data management are still challenges that throttle the adoption of IoB in the short term. However, as those sub-industries continue to grow and optimize, the IoB will likely become a commonplace technology.