John Ellis
Connected products generate more value as data than as objects, and most organisations have not worked out who owns that data, who monetises it, or what their business looks like when a competitor figures it out first. Boards know the shift is happening. Few have a defensible position on what to do about it.
John Ellis is a former Ford Global Technologist and author of The Zero Dollar Car who helps leadership teams understand how data from connected devices reshapes business models, competitive position, and customer relationships.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with John Ellis
- He ran Ford’s developer program and the team behind SmartDeviceLink. He has direct operating experience of building a connected-product platform inside a global manufacturer, not a consultant’s view of one.
- His central thesis, set out in The Zero Dollar Car, gives boards a sharp frame for a question most are still avoiding: when sensor data is worth more than the product that generates it, what business are we actually in?
- He works across automotive, insurance, smart home, mobile and public infrastructure. Leaders get a view of how the same data economics are restructuring multiple sectors at once, not a single-industry case study.
- Through Ellis & Associates he advises companies on the commercial reality of connected-product strategy. The keynote content is grounded in current client work, not retrospective career stories.
Biography highlights
- Former Global Technologist and Head of the Ford Developer Program, Ford Motor Company
- Author, The Zero Dollar Car: How the Revolution in Big Data will Change Your Life (#1 Amazon Best Seller, Auto Industry)
- Founder and Managing Director, Ellis & Associates, management consultancy at the automotive, consumer, connectivity and software intersection
- Led the team that delivered SmartDeviceLink, the open-source platform now used by Toyota, Mazda, Subaru and others
- Prior senior leadership roles at Motorola across engineering, product management, software, services and strategy
- Featured on NBC’s TODAY Show on the future of connected vehicles and data
Biography
The cars on the road today produce more usable data per mile than the entire commercial internet did a decade ago. Most of that data still ends up captured by the manufacturer, the platform owner, or the insurer, rarely by the customer who generated it. That asymmetry is the operating question behind John Ellis’s work.
As Global Technologist and Head of the Ford Developer Program, Ellis ran the team that delivered SmartDeviceLink, the open-source platform underneath Ford’s AppLink and now adopted by Toyota, Mazda and Subaru. He saw, from inside, how a global manufacturer turns a vehicle into a software platform and what that does to the economics of the product.
His book The Zero Dollar Car takes that operating insight and pushes it to its logical end. If sensor data is valuable enough, the vehicle itself becomes a loss leader, financed by what it tells the world while it moves. The argument is now playing out across insurance, smart home, mobility infrastructure and public-space management, each sector that Ellis & Associates currently advises.
What Ellis brings to a senior audience is the rare combination of having built one of the early connected-product platforms at scale and then translating that experience into a clear commercial argument that boards in any sector can apply to their own products. The Motorola years sit underneath: two decades inside a company that learned, expensively, what happens when a hardware business misreads a software shift.
Key speaking topics
- Connected vehicles and the future of mobility
- Data monetisation and the economics of sensor data
- Business model disruption in hardware industries
- Software platforms inside traditional manufacturing
- Smart cities and public-space management
- Technology disruption across automotive, insurance and smart home
Ideal for
- Boards and executive teams in automotive, mobility, insurance and infrastructure
- CTOs, CDOs and Chief Digital Officers in product and manufacturing businesses
- Heads of strategy and corporate development assessing platform and connected-product plays
- City, transport and public-sector leaders managing connected infrastructure decisions
Audience outcomes
- A clear view of how value migrates from the connected product to the data it generates, and what that does to incumbent business models
- A working frame, drawn from The Zero Dollar Car, for assessing where their own products sit on that curve
- Concrete examples from automotive, insurance and public infrastructure of who is winning and losing the data argument
- A sharper question set for board and executive conversations on connected-product strategy