Terence Corcoran: Blockchain’s groundbreaking, world-shaking, life-changing technology revolution has been cancelled | Financial Post

The biggest obstacle to widespread blockchain adoption, says Higginson, is what business theorists call “co-opetition,” a fancy word referring to when competitive companies and industries agree to share information. Getting there is a problem. “Resolving the co-opetition paradox and clearing a path to majority adoption seems like the most important obstacle,” said Higginson. Due to the co-opetition problem, the implementation of blockchain pilots is “plagued by either a single player pushing their monopoly solution” or there is “no single organization taking the lead to invest sufficiently to move from pilot to enterprise-scale implementation.”

Source: Terence Corcoran: Blockchain’s groundbreaking, world-shaking, life-changing technology revolution has been cancelled | Financial Post, Terence Corcoran, January 9, 2019

In the blockchain world, there are public blockchains – like bitcoin and private, or, permissioned blockchains like those offered by Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger – which includes IBM.

Co-opetition is not a blocking issue since all business network parties grant permission to their respective data.

Co-opetition is a blocking issue when organizations think of blockchain as a competitive advantage of theirs – like having an e-commerce site, or, a mobile app.

Permissioned blockchains’ innovation is in the business networks it enables. Much like Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), but more open and accessible.

If enterprises are worried about their competitive advantage then they should watch out for public blockchains – like Ethereum, which enable completely new business models.