IBM Think Academy: Blockchain, How it works

What is Blockchain? Blockchain is a shared, immutable ledger for recording the history of transactions. It fosters a new generation of transactional applications that establish trust, accountability and transparency—from contracts to deeds to payments.

Frees up capital flows, speeds up processes, lowers transaction costs and most importantly provides security and trust. We believe that Blockchain will do for business what the Internet did for communications.

Source: IBM Blockchain

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Don Tapscott: How the blockchain is changing money and business | TED Talk | TED.com


18 minutes and 49 seconds well spent!

What is the blockchain? If you don’t know, you should; if you do, chances are you still need some clarification on how it actually works. Don Tapscott is here to help, demystifying this world-changing, trust-building technology which, he says, represents nothing less than the second generation of the internet and holds the potential to transform money, business, government and society.

Thanks Jeff for the find!

Source: Don Tapscott: How the blockchain is changing money and business | TED Talk

There really is more. just click below…

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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.)

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How artificial intelligence can deliver real value to companies | McKinsey & Company

… early evidence suggests that there is a business case to be made, and that AI can deliver real value to companies willing to use it across operations and within their core functions. In our survey, early AI adopters that combine strong digital capability with proactive strategies have higher profit margins and expect the performance gap with other firms to widen in the next three years.

Significant gains are there for the taking. For many companies, this means accelerating the digital-transformation journey. AI is not going to allow companies to leapfrog getting the digital basics right. They will have to get the right digital assets and skills in place to be able to effectively deploy AI.

Source: How artificial intelligence can deliver real value to companies | McKinsey & Company

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A 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

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The First Wave of Corporate AI Is Doomed to Fail

Artificial intelligence is a hot topic right now. Driven by a fear of losing out, companies in many industries have announced AI-focused initiatives. Unfortunately, most of these efforts will fail. They will fail not because AI is all hype, but because companies are approaching AI-driven innovation incorrectly. And this isn’t the first time companies have made this kind of mistake.

We suggest taking a portfolio approach to AI projects: a mix of projects that might generate quick wins and long-term projects focused on transforming end-to-end workflow.

There is little doubt that an AI frenzy is starting to bubble up. We believe AI will indeed transform industries. But the companies that will succeed with AI are the ones that focus on creating organizational learning and changing organizational DNA. And the ones that embrace a portfolio approach rather than concentrating their efforts on that one big win will be best positioned to harness the transformative power of artificial learning.

Source: The First Wave of Corporate AI Is Doomed to Fail

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2017 Global Digital IQ® Survey: 10th anniversary edition

… in some ways company leaders are no better equipped to handle the changes coming their way than they were in 2007. In fact, Digital IQ—the measurement of an organization’s abilities to harness and profit from technology—has actually declined since we began asking executives to self-assess their own organizations. Enterprises aren’t so much falling behind as struggling to keep up with accelerating standards. And looking ahead, it is clear most are not ready for what comes next—and after that—as technologies continue to combine and advance, and new ways of doing business go from inception to disruption seemingly overnight.

Source: 2017 Digital IQ: PwC

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The 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

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25% 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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Navigating Change

00:01 change it doesn’t call ahead it doesn’t
00:05 send a memo on how it plans to change
00:07 your business it comes out of nowhere
00:08 and leaves you in chaos but before its
00:12 arrival it sends millions of tiny
00:14 messages numbers trends data find the
00:19 clues see the patterns and change the
00:22 fortunes of your business

Source: Navigating Change

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