Posts Tagged ‘harvey’
Blockchain — What You Need to Know | Harvard Business Review
Invest 23 minutes and listen to this!
Karim Lakhani, Harvard Business School professor and co-founder of the HBS Digital Initiative, discusses blockchain, an online record-keeping technology that many believe will revolutionize commerce. Lakhani breaks down how the technology behind bitcoin works and talks about the industries and companies that could see new growth opportunities or lose business. He also has recommendations for managers: start experimenting with blockchain as soon as possible. Lakhani is the co-author of the article “The Truth
Takeaways
- Blockchain = Trust
- Disintermediation = “Bringing the ends of a transaction together” = An exponential level of disruption not seen since the introduction of the World Wide Web in the mid 1990s (IMO)
- We are in the “dial-up days of Blockchain”
Source: Blockchain — What You Need to Know
(Click Read More to listen to the audio.)
Read MoreThe Truth About Blockchain | Harvard Business Review
Ultimately, it took more than 30 years for TCP/IP to move through all the phases—single use, localized use, substitution, and transformation—and reshape the economy. Today more than half the world’s most valuable public companies have internet-driven, platform-based business models. The very foundations of our economy have changed. Physical scale and unique intellectual property no longer confer unbeatable advantages; increasingly, the economic leaders are enterprises that act as “keystones,” proactively or
Consider how law firms will have to change to make smart contracts viable. They’ll need to develop new expertise in software and blockchain programming. They’ll probably also have to rethink their hourly payment model and entertain the idea of charging transaction or hosting fees for contracts, to name just two possible approaches. Whatever tack they take, executives must be sure they understand and have tested the business model implications before making any switch.
Clearly, starting small is a good way to develop the know-how to think bigger. But the level of investment should depend on the context of the company and the industry. Financial services companies are already well down the road to blockchain adoption. Manufacturing is not.
No matter what the context, there’s a strong possibility that blockchain will affect your business. The very big question is when.
Source: The Truth About Blockchain
Read MoreBlockchain Could Help Artists Profit More from Their Creative Works
Enter blockchain-based platforms and programmable templates called smart contracts. Blockchain is a new technology platform, running on millions of devices and open to anyone, where not just information but anything of value — money, titles, and deeds, but also music, art, scientific discoveries, and other intellectual property — can be moved and stored securely and privately, where trust is established not by powerful intermediaries like movie studios, streaming services, banks, or other companies, but rat
In this new ecosystem, we see a place for Netflix and YouTube; a place for studio curation; and a place for fan-generated content. The film industry will still need people to sift through the hundreds of millions of hours of video created every day all over the planet. The key point is that the artists themselves will finally be feasting at the center of their own ecosystem, not starving at the edges of many others.
Source: Blockchain Could Help Artists Profit More from Their Creative Works
Read MoreBlockchain to Disrupt Balance of Power in TV, Music and Film Industry
The Blockchain is a perfect storm that makes sure the owners of content and the artists get what they are entitled to and don’t get squeezed out of the game. Smart contracts can enforce and automate the rights and distribution of wealth as payments to key parties. The Blockchain is the equalizing balance that puts the power back in the hands of the artists. Those with the talent can now decide how their content is used, who gets access to it and, more importantly, that nothing is tampered with, copied or hi
Source: Blockchain to Disrupt Balance of Power in TV, Music and Film Industry
Read MoreDeloitte Demos Blockchain Use Case for Art Industry – CoinDesk
The blockchain distributed ledger can trace the journey of artworks. When this technology is used in the art market, all events in the life cycle of an artwork are recorded and traceable. The application addresses one of the main concerns in the art market today, namely the fragile documentation related to the provenance and movements of a piece of art.
Source: Deloitte Demos Blockchain Use Case for Art Industry – CoinDesk
Read MoreHow Blockchain Tech is Inspiring the Art World
“It just kind of can be used for anything, to get rid of lawyers, to bypass copyright law – which is obviously really important for artists. It [the blockchain] will completely empower artists.”
Although it is still early days and crypto 2.0 is still in its relatively nascent stage, it seems that distributed consensus ledgers such as the blockchain will continue to gain momentum among artists, who are typically interested in ways of eradicating the middle-men to gain greater control over their work and their profits.
Source: How Blockchain Tech is Inspiring the Art World
Read MoreA blockchain explanation your parents could understand | Jamie Skella | Pulse | LinkedIn
It’s happening in an increasingly frequent manner: “Jamie, explain this blockchain stuff to me. I’ve read a bunch of articles and I’m no wiser.” The problem with most blockchain explainers is that they provide more detail than what matters to most people, using language that is foreign to most people, which winds up leaving people more confused than when they started. Instead, without worrying about being a technically perfect description, here’s an explanation of blockchain your parents could understand…
Source: A blockchain explanation your parents could understand | Jamie Skella | Pulse | LinkedIn
Read More17 Blockchain Applications That Are Transforming Society – Blockgeeks
This decentralized blockchain system is going to change your life from the way you transact business or manage assets, to the way you use your machines, vote, rent a car, and even prove who you are. Along the way, it will transform banks and other financial institutions, hospitals, companies, and governments among others.
Source: 17 Blockchain Applications That Are Transforming Society – Blockgeeks
Read MoreWhat Are Smart Contracts? A Beginner’s Guide to Smart Contracts
Example: Suppose you rent an apartment from me. You can do this through the blockchain by paying in cryptocurrency. You get a receipt which is held in our virtual contract; I give you the digital entry key which comes to you by a specified date. If the key doesn’t come on time, the blockchain releases a refund. If I send the key before the rental date, the function holds it releasing both the fee and key to you and me respectively when the date arrives. The system works on the If-Then premise and is witness
Actually, when it comes to smart contracts, we’re stepping into a sci-fi screen. The IT resource center, Search Compliance suggests that smart contracts may impact changes in certain industries, such as law. In that case, lawyers will transfer from writing traditional contracts to producing standardized smart contract templates, similar to the standardized traditional contracts that you’ll find on LegalZoom. Other industries such as merchant acquirers, credit companies, and accountants may also employ smart contracts for tasks, such as real time auditing and risk assessments. Actually, the website Blockchain Technologies sees smart contracts merging into a hybrid of paper and digital content where contracts are verified via blockchain and substantiated by physical copy.
Source: What Are Smart Contracts? A Beginner’s Guide to Smart Contracts
Read MoreICOs and VCs | AVC
So, while ICOs represent a new and exciting way to build (and finance) a tech company, and are a legitimate disruptive threat to the venture capital business, they are not something I am nervous about and they are not something USV is nervous about. We are excited about them when they are the right thing for our portfolio companies and we are encouraging those companies to use this new approach. We are also investing in tokens, through token funds, and directly on or own.
Thanks Chris for the find!
Source: ICOs and VCs – AVC
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