The Economist first published its IoT Business Index in 2013, and its latest edition suggests that things are going well – much improved over the first follow-up study in 2017, which found that the needle had barely moved. Now, the report says that between 2017 and 2020, there has been a step-change, having polled 825 executives at the end of last year. The high level findings are that 58% of companies are now deploying IoT technologies for internal use, with 45% of respondents saying they used IoT technologies for external products and services. Finally, 57% of companies say they have seen a stronger return on their IoT investment than anticipated. Diving a little deeper, the study finds that since 2017, the average company…