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The Blockchain Will Do to Banks and Law Firms What the Internet Did to Media
The “killer app” for the early internet was email; it’s what drove adoption and strengthened the network. Bitcoin is the killer app for the blockchain. Bitcoin drives adoption of its underlying blockchain, and its strong technical community and robust code review process make it the most secure and reliable of the various blockchains. Like email, it’s likely that some form of Bitcoin will persist. But the blockchain will also support a variety of other applications, including smart contracts, asset registri
Source: The Blockchain Will Do to Banks and Law Firms What the Internet Did to Media
Read MoreHow Blockchain Applications Will Move Beyond Finance
In their seminal work on the theory of the firm, Michael Jensen and William Meckling defined the firm as a “nexus of contracts” — the idea that firms are nothing more than a collection of contracts between various parties, such as employees, customers, and shareholders. Cryptocurrencies may one day enable a completely new type of organization by allowing us to securely transfer value and allocate resources through smart contracts. Whereas this new type of organization may achieve the speed and efficiency of
Source: How Blockchain Applications Will Move Beyond Finance
Read MoreDigital Currency: What the Heck Is It?
When you consider the fact that any series of transactions can be tracked with one hundred per cent accuracy (what’s called an immutable audit trail), and that built-in encryption means it’s inherently secure, blockchain suddenly becomes the ideal technology for a variety of financial functions and exchange mechanisms. And forward-thinking companies, including some of our country’s big banks, are already investing in that potential.
Source: Digital Currency: What the Heck Is It?
Read MoreIBM Watson to offer artificial-intelligence software to Mass. physician group – Boston Business Journal
Read MoreIBM Watson Health will develop software using Watson’s cognitive computing capabilities that can provide a more holistic view of a patient’s health, including summarizing key aspects of a patient’s medical history in an easier-to-use format, incorporating social aspects of a person’s health into the electronic medical record and coalescing de-identified information on similar patients and their outcomes to draw broader insights on a certain treatment strategy.
Six building blocks for creating a high-performing digital enterprise | McKinsey & Company
75 percent of S&P 500 incumbents will be gone by 2027
Of course, adapting over time has always been essential to corporate success. Yet while the average corporate life span has been falling for more than half a century—Standard & Poor’s data show it was 61 years in 1958, 25 years in 1980, and just 18 years in 2011—digitization is placing unprecedented pressure on organizations to evolve. At the present rate, 75 percent of S&P 500 incumbents will be gone by 2027. That means managing your transition to a digitally driven business model isn’t just critical to beating competitors; it’s crucial to survival.
Source: Six building blocks for creating a high-performing digital enterprise | McKinsey & Company
Read MoreFrom disrupted to disruptor: Reinventing your business by transforming the core | McKinsey & Company
As companies push to scale their digital reinvention throughout the organization, the crucial role of seasoned change managers comes into focus. These leaders not only play “air traffic controller” to the many moving parts, but also have the business credibility and skill to solve real business problems. They must maintain an accelerated pace of change and drive accountability across the business. The change leaders will look across the entire enterprise, examining organizational structure, data governance, talent recruitment, performance management, and IT systems for areas of opportunity, making decisions that balance efficiency and speed with outcome.The “agility coach” is an example of this type of role. This person has strong communications and influencing skills, can create and roll out plans to support agile processes across the business, and can put in place KPIs and metrics to track progress.
Source: From disrupted to disruptor: Reinventing your business by transforming the core | McKinsey & Company
Read MoreAn executive’s guide to software development | McKinsey & Company
Architecture based on application programming interfaces (APIs). Historically, companies have suffered from building and maintaining “spaghetti code,” which is as messy and difficult to manage as overcooked angel-hair pasta. An effective API-based architecture solves this problem and instead provides an extensible framework of building blocks that can be used to compose powerful applications. Like Legos, such blocks are easy to separate, update, and then replace.
Source: An executive’s guide to software development | McKinsey & Company
Read MoreThe case for digital reinvention | McKinsey & Company
This finding confirms what many executives may already suspect: by reducing economic friction, digitization enables competition that pressures revenue and profit growth. Current levels of digitization have already taken out, on average, up to six points of annual revenue and 4.5 points of growth in earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT). And there’s more pressure ahead, our research suggests, as digital penetration deepens.
Source: The case for digital reinvention | McKinsey & Company
Read MoreHow the API economy is igniting a cultural shift in businesses | CIO
It’s clear the big no longer eat the small; the fast eat the slow. Speed is one of the single most important characteristics that determine a company’s success today. It’s critical for bringing new products to market, establishing new global presences, changing existing processes and onboarding new partners—all faster than competition.
Source: How the API economy is igniting a cultural shift in businesses | CIO
Read More25% of CEOs’ Time Is Spent on Tasks Machines Could Do | Harvard Business Review
Like President Johnson in the 1960s, we see that automation could make a major contribution to productivity and prosperity… For companies around the world, automation will offer the potential to capture substantial value — and not just from labor substitution. These technologies enable higher throughput, enhanced quality, better outcomes, greater safety, and the opportunity to scale up or adopt new business models.
Source: 25% of CEOs’ Time Is Spent on Tasks Machines Could Do
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