If you follow Philips Lighting at all, yesterday and today you have been bombarded by the launch of the new Hue wireless RGB Edison-lamps.

The real story here is the first big launch of connected lights, another step towards an Internet of Things.  The lighting industry(at least, at the professional level) is going to fundamentally change over the next few years…but not just because of LEDs.  Networking technologies and advanced modeling and control systems will really change how architects view lighting systems.  The open API that Philips is offering will open the doors to novel innovations from all sorts of random places.  The best lighting manufacturers will be watching these fringe innovations very carefully:  That’s the “good stuff”.  The leading lighting designers will apply these fringe innovations to mainstream projects, pushing the industry to reach the next level of as-yet-unseen higher-level innovations.

As they say, “you ain’t seen nothing yet.”