Understanding Pilot Purgatory in Industrial IoT and Strategies to Overcome It

Purgatory is a suspended state where a person or object hovers between two definite states of being. Last year, Cisco revealed that most IoT pilots end up in this liminal space—not necessarily failing, but lacking a clear path to full deployment that justifies the initial investment.

Today, many IoT initiatives are driving profitability in industrial sectors. Consequently, “pilot purgatory” has become a critical bottleneck for manufacturing, supply chains, and other industrial players amid digital transformation.

Ahead of Industrial IoT World in Atlanta, we spoke with leaders from GE Digital, Lockheed Martin, Panasonic, Chamberlain Group, and Bloomberg New Energy Finance to uncover the root causes of pilot purgatory and the tactics they’ve used to break free.

[Industrial IoT World is the event that takes IIoT from inspiration to implementation, supercharging business and operations. Get your ticket now.]

What Causes Pilot Purgatory?

All five speakers agreed that pilots stall when they’re not built with a company‑wide rollout in mind. Good intentions alone don’t suffice if every phase of the pilot isn’t treated as a step toward enterprise‑wide adoption. Panasonic’s Director of Mobility and Technology, Tavis Szeto, explained that pilots that were not part of the original business plan will inevitably fall short of full realization.

Bloomberg NEF’s Head of Emerging Technology Analysis, Claire Curry, highlighted other pitfalls. Companies often partner with startups that excel at small projects but lack the capacity for large‑scale rollouts, or they avoid entrusting startups with the full scope due to trust concerns. In energy and utilities, regulatory constraints can force pilots to remain in narrow application areas regardless of their broader potential.

Without a realistic end‑to‑end strategy, organizations also misprioritize and set misplaced goals. Szeto and Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Senior Fellow Don Kinard have seen firms chase technology for its own sake rather than addressing real problems for customers.

GE Digital’s Chief Human Resources Officer, Jennifer Waldo, warned that blind pursuit of technology can overlook softer, business‑wide factors such as culture and employee mindset. The issue often surfaces when IT leads the initiative without cross‑functional input, or when other business units are reluctant to play a consulting role. Chamberlain Group CEO JoAnna Sohovich noted that many firms focus so narrowly on immediate concerns that futuristic ideas become a distraction—or, worse, a threat—to their legacy operations.

How to Beat Pilot Purgatory

Interviewees shared actionable advice from their own experiences. Curry emphasized treating the pilot as a major project from day one, paying close attention to the business justification. It’s better to recognize that the initial expense may not yield a quick payback during the pilot, but will over the full rollout.

Waldo’s guidance was to adopt a holistic view of what you’re solving for, and to consider the organization, culture, and talent required to sustain the change.

The Chamberlain Group has taken an innovative approach by creating an “emerging business” unit separate from the core company. This unit incubates future ideas, evaluates their viability, and determines how they can be integrated into legacy operations—sometimes even challenging existing projects if it benefits the business long term.

Other firms have achieved impressive industrial IoT outcomes without ever hitting purgatory. An interactive report from Industrial IoT World highlights six success stories: Shell earned $1 million (and counting) from an $87 000 upfront IoT investment on its Nigerian oil fields; Coca‑Cola is embedding IoT across its Indonesian bottling plants; and Carlson Products realized ROI in under 30 days by measuring manufacturing capacity and equipment performance with IoT.

The overarching lesson from those who have escaped pilot purgatory is that the warning signs appear early—and often they’re visible from the outset. The cure is continuous, enterprise‑wide collaboration and consideration from start to finish. This advice may sound obvious, yet it remains essential given how many companies fail to apply it consistently.