Introduction and backgroundCognizant computing (CC), a revolutionary computing paradigm, which is still in its nascent stages of development, has heralded tremendous utilities and benefits for several areas of business endeavours. From production and manufacturing through lean practices to advertising and sales by way of consumer behaviour analytics, recent research lends credence to earlier assertions of the transformations that CC is able to bring to modern business practices. Indeed, much of the foundational technological capabilities that are needed to scale the impact and utilities of CC are already in place, such as the ability for devices to act "smart", i.e. receive instructions and take action by setting alarms and reminders, make payments for goods and services, contact particular individuals, open applications and carry out operations, posting and sending information, etc. (Ronkowitz, 2013); all these technologies are based on data that can be collected locally and then provisioned, accessed and processed ubiquitously.Awodele et al. (2014) define CC as a consumer-centred computing paradigm that applies the personalization of services on an individualistic level to meet the specific needs of consumers by enhancing their experience. This definition is in tandem with that given by Volico (2017), and they both present the idea that digital systems, through simple rule-based computational algorithms (The Economic Times, 2014), are able to take decisions that mirror the best choices or preferences of consumers under certain transactional circumstances/ situations, typically by analysing their digital footprint (data) to deduce patterns in their decisions from antecedent similar situations.One of the early research studies that featured the idea of CC was a market research study by Gartner (Ekholm, 2013), although, in a general sense, the concept of "cognizant" as a technological term was not particularly new/unheard at the time. This term generally embodies the concept of a system or application being "aware" of a particular operational or behavioural reality and ultimately applies that awareness in taking/enforcing decisions and constraints that are in the best interest of particular subjects.In the context of CC, this "awareness" is consumer-focused. The utility that CC presents is fundamentally a function of the depth and quality of the digital data that are available for processing about consumers; the available data may be collected, processed and stored locally on the users' device(s) or delocalized in the cloud. Then, these data are fed into larger platforms and operating systems/processes to create an ecosystem of functions, operations and realities that are relevant to particular consumer experiences across a wide range of contexts, devices and utilities (Bremmen, 2013). This is made possible by two foundational emerging technologies (Awodele et al., 2014): the Internet of Things (IoT), which pervasively accumulates client/user data from across BPMJ 27,6 1926 Author contributions: VOB contribu...