At an IoT summit in London this week, over 400 experts came together to discuss how the industry should embrace smart connected solutions.

1. Education

Alison Vincent, CTO at Cisco, said: "We don’t know what is going to be like in five years, so it is important to teach children skills on collaboration."

Richie Saville, CTO at Flexeye added that in the future we "won’t be writing traditional code" alerting that by forcing children to learn today’s coding it might have the reverse effect of driving them away from technology.

Pio Szyjanowicz, Head of Communications and Partnerships at Cosworth, said: "Education systems are not designed to get children prepared to work on the jobs we set as important 15 yrs ago. By exposing our children to coding, we expose them to how to do this technologies."

Szyjanowicz added that people "need to realise education is about to learn, not to deliver a finalised product."

2. Collaboration

Vincent highlighted the importance of partners and cooperation between industry players in order to experience the benefits of an IoT connected industry.

Most panellists agreed that companies must look beyond their own solutions in other for technology to evolve.

Policy Advisor Simon Anholt said:"The keynote to the age we are getting to is cooperation and less competition, then we can create a good legacy for the next generation,"

3. Opportunities

As previously reported, the real IoT opportunities lie in the enterprise, not in wearables.

The Internet of Wearables (IoW) has only started to show the potential of a smart world, but it is the manufacturing sector that will mostly benefit from smart solutions.

Vincent said: "IoT gives real time viewing into operations; it makes computation at the right point in time."

She added that there is a need for more computer wise employees and that manufactures need to make jobs more appealing tech wise.

4. Applied Technologies

Geoff McGrath, CIO at McLaren Applied Technologies said: "Applying technologies are the next big thing.

"Predictive analytics and big data will push the limits on performance."

The company is helping companies in several industries including healthcare, pharmaceuticals, energy, transportation and consumer brands.

Applying technologies leverage business’ understanding of their own operations. McLaren Applied Technologies does this through data collection and analysis, simulation and decision support, design and engineering, and the development and manufacture of electronic control systems.

5. Star Wars VII

John Hall, partner at KPMG said that the manufacturing design process starts with the visualisation of the concept models.

He told the audience that the industry should use ideas from the film and gaming industries to develop smarter systems for the different markets.

Hall added: "Star Wars VII will push the boundaries of film making, and we can do the same with the industry. New systems need to be build in a new way, not the same way as the last one."