Fear fuels changes. More accurately, fear often fuels a sudden passion for change among normally conservative corporate executives. But this sort of anxiety alone has no power to alter a company’s business model or inspire fresh product designs. The coming era of the “smart, connected world” apparently has many C-level executives running scared. Whether they are developing cosmetics, processing chemicals, or building coffee machines, more than 90% of CEOs and vice presidents interviewed by Accenture last year responded, “If we didn’t do anything [about the smart connected world], we would be out of business,” according to Craig McNeil, global managing director, internet of things, at Accenture. Consider, for example, connected coffee machines, McNeil told us. “Once your coffee maker gets connected, everything changes.” You need a new industrial design, an embedded software that runs on top of it, apps for iOS or Android, and an IoT platform that connects the machine to the cloud. But wait — there’s more. As soon as your coffee maker is connected, you’re dealing with cybersecurity threats. Once your machine starts collecting data, including user habits, coffee bean preferences, and cups per day per drinker, you need smart analytics. Pretty soon, the cloud is raining on the financial and economic aspects of your business model.