The Real Business of Blockchain


Book Description

Blockchain is transforming business. What's your strategy? Leaders of forward-thinking organizations are exploring how blockchain can transform the way they create and seek value. Whether it's used to streamline multiparty processes, create and trade new assets, or leverage artificial intelligence and the internet of things, blockchain enables entirely new business opportunities. This is just the start. As blockchain becomes more widely adopted, it has the potential to radically change the way companies and societies operate, as transformative a paradigm shift as the launch of the internet. The Real Business of Blockchain is one of the first books on this transformative technology written for business leaders. Authors David Furlonger and Christophe Uzureau--both of Gartner, the world-renowned research and advisory company--will help you: Assess how blockchain will impact your business Explore the value proposition that blockchain offers Make smart near- and midterm investments Position your organization in a new competitive landscape Timely, visionary, and accessible, The Real Business of Blockchain cuts through the hype and helps you unlock the vast capabilities of this powerful and potentially world-changing technology.




Leadership on a Blockchain


Book Description

Leadership on a Blockchain: What Asia Can Teach Us About Networked Leadership is an authoritative text that goes to the foremost digitally connected markets of the world in Asia, and accounts for how leaders and teams are exercising leadership Darwinism to adapt for agility and connectivity. The book begins by offering a contextual grounding for new leadership ideas to emerge. It contends that a "new geography of leadership" is unfolding as the world shifts away from unified globalist ideology and a dominant Western view of leadership. It moves on to describe how Asia is uniquely placed to become the leadership sandbox for the future. It accounts for how leaders and teams are exercising leadership Darwinism to adapt for agility and connectivity. To facilitate learning for the readers, this book includes creatives features such as the following: An abbreviated history of significant leadership milestones in the last century A leadership manifesto for the digital age A practitioners’ starter kit to reimagining leadership in their organizations. Leaving behind the typical discourse of leadership anchored in power, control, and hierarchy, it offers a provocative call to all businesspeople to apply the principles of one of the most innovative technologies – blockchain – to reimagine leadership for transparency, trust, and distributed decision-making. The book concludes by distilling critical lessons for global leaders to take forward and lead a revolution in their own organizations. Sharing first-person accounts from leaders and their teams in China, Singapore, India, and Indonesia, and combining this with insights from the author’s own research, Leadership on a Blockchain will be of use to leaders around the world looking to transform their own leadership. It will also be of interest to academics and students of leadership, change management, organizational behavior, and cultural studies.




Leadership, Assholes, Blockchain and YOU


Book Description

We are living in, what I consider to be, the most exciting time of all times. Despite the constant flow of negative news, the world seems to be doing better than ever: fewer wars, lowest poverty rate, highest literacy rate, lowest child mortality rate, and most people live under the banner of freedom. Globalisation and technology have seen the world grow to a standard never achieved before. However, we could do much better...Wealth is distributed unevenly and this is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, threat the world faces. As world history has shown, a huge discrepancy between rich and poor is neither acceptable nor sustainable. With new technologies set to possibly further this ever-widening wealth gap, the world needs great leaders, now more than ever, to guide us through a population of 10 billion, where the 'elite' 1% own 50% of all wealth. Every major positive progression in world history, political or business-wise, has been driven by a great leader. We need great political leaders who can provide productive policies capable of decreasing the wealth gap. We need great business leaders who harness new technologies, not merely to provide profit for a few but to have a positive impact on greater society. We need to get rid of all the ego-centric, incompetent company managers as well as corrupt politicians; they simply block progress between real leaders and doers. With new technologies such as Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence (AI), we are provided with opportunities as well as threats on a scale unimaginable. Blockchain alone will transform business and how we live, maybe more drastically than the Internet did, and we must ensure this technology becomes part of the solution, rather than it accelerating the problem. We must re-think and re-design wealth distribution policies, the social responsibilities of businesses, as well as education to be fit for a technology-driven world. And maybe, most importantly, we must ask ourselves why humankind is punching below its potential, with ignorant and destructive people taking the lead in too many places.This book will not provide profound statistics or scientific solutions. The book mostly describes my own humble life experiences and resulting views, which I will bluntly share. It's written to inspire people to start having the right conversations and act on them, to think like leaders. Post Covid-19 and the next ten years can be the best the world has ever seen, if each of us steps up and lives our full potential.




The Executive Guide to Blockchain


Book Description

Keeping up with fast evolving technology is a challenge that every business leader faces. As organisations start to wake up to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, it’s becoming more important than ever to be able to utilise and exploit new digital platforms. With the simple aim of demystifying blockchain for business leaders, The Executive Guide to Blockchain offers a jargon-free explanation and framework to better understand blockchain technologies and their impact on organizations. Enabling any business leader with or without specific computing knowledge to reap the benefits of blockchain whilst understanding the limitations, this book will empower you to: Identify opportunities for blockchain in your own business sectors Understand smart contracts and their relationship with the law Create a blockchain strategy and business case Implement blockchain technologies and maximise their potential. Written by experts in non-technical language, this practical resource can be applied to any industry, and arm you with the knowledge needed to capture the possibilities of digital business.




Blockchain for Business


Book Description

The Pragmatic Guide to Driving Value and Disrupting Markets with Blockchain "Blockchain’s potential to transform businesses has generated a tremendous amount of excitement across industries. However, it can be difficult for decision makers to develop a practical approach to blockchain for their specific business requirements. By identifying and clearly describing the value of blockchain for enterprises, as well as the processes required to harness blockchain to achieve business objectives, Blockchain for Business presents a startlingly concise yet comprehensive roadmap for business leaders. This book is an excellent resource for anyone looking to leverage blockchain to transform their business." —Dr. Won-Pyo Hong, President & CEO of Samsung SDS “Much has been written about blockchain in the past few years: what it is and what it is not (at various levels of detail), as well as the technology’s long-term strategic value for companies, industries, and economies. However, what we’ve been missing is a practical, operational, ‘how to’ set of steps for creating, implementing, and operating a blockchain-based solution. This book aims to fill that gap. It’s an invaluable tool for anyone ready to take the plunge and start taking advantage of this remarkable technology.” —Irving Wladawsky-Berger, research affiliate, MIT; columnist, WSJ CIO Journal; VP Emeritus, IBM "I will never be able to adequately express how useful this book will be to my class. In addition the great chapters on cybersecurity, I loved the Integration Models, especially 'Coexistence with Systems of Record.' Legacy integration with Blockchain is a critical barrier, and you nailed it!" —Thomas Doty, JD, LLM - Adjunct Professor, University of New Hampshire Law Blockchain enables enterprises to reinvent processes and business models and to pursue radically disruptive applications. Blockchain for Business is a concise, accessible, and pragmatic guide to both the technology and the opportunities it creates. Authored by three experts from IBM’s Enterprise Blockchain practice, it introduces industry-specific and cross-industry use cases, and reviews best-practice approaches to planning and delivering blockchain projects. With a relentless focus on real-world business outcomes, the authors reveal what blockchain can do, what it can’t do yet, and where it’s headed. Understand five elements that make blockchain so disruptive: transparency, immutability, security, consensus, and smart contracts Explore key use cases: cross-border payments, food and drug safety, provenance, trade finance, clinical trials, land registries, and more See how trusted blockchain networks are facilitating entirely new business models Compare blockchain types: permissioned, permissionless, private, public, federated, and hybrid Anticipate key technical, business, regulatory, and governance challenges Build blockchain financial models, investment rubrics, and risk frameworks Organize and manage teams to transform blockchain plans into reality Whether you’re a senior decision maker, technical professional, customer, or investor, Blockchain for Business will help you cut through the hype and objectively assess blockchain’s potential in your business. Register your product for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available.




Handbook of Research on Strategic Leadership in the Fourth Industrial Revolution


Book Description

This pioneering Handbook surveys the research landscape of strategic leadership in what is referred to as the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’: a fusion of technologies and systems which blurs the boundaries between the digital, physical and biological spheres.




The Business Blockchain


Book Description

The definitive pioneering blueprint covering the what, why and how of the blockchain. Blockchains are new technology layers that rewire the Internet and threaten to side-step older legacy constructs and centrally served businesses. At its core, a blockchain injects trust into the network, cutting off some intermediaries from serving that function and creatively disrupting how they operate. Metaphorically, blockchains are the ultimate non-stop computers. Once launched, they never go down, and offer an incredible amount of resiliency, making them dependable and attractive for running a new generation of decentralized services and software applications. The Business Blockchain charts new territory in advancing our understanding of the blockchain by unpacking its elements like no other before. William Mougayar anticipates a future that consists of thousands, if not millions of blockchains that will enable not only frictionless value exchange, but also a new flow of value, redefining roles, relationships, power and governance. In this book, Mougayar makes two other strategic assertions. First, the blockchain has polymorphic characteristics; its application will result in a multiplicity of effects. Second, we shouldn’t ask ourselves what problems the blockchain solves, because that gives us a narrow view on its potential. Rather, we should imagine new opportunities, and tackle even more ambitious problems that cross organizational, regulatory and mental boundaries. Drawing on 34 years of technology industry experience as an executive, analyst, consultant, entrepreneur, startup mentor, author, blogger, educator, thought leader and investor, William Mougayar describes a future that is influenced by fundamental shifts brought by blockchain technology as the catalyst for change. William Mougayar has been described as the most sophisticated blockchain business thinker. He is a blockchain industry insider whose work has already shaped and influenced the understanding of blockchain for people around the world, via his generous blogging and rigorous research insights. He is a direct participant in the crypto-technology market, working alongside startups, entrepreneurs, pioneers, leaders, innovators, creators, enterprise executives and practitioners; in addition to being an investor, advisor, and board member in some of the leading organizations in this space, such as the Ethereum Foundation, OpenBazaar and Coin Center. Just as the Internet created new possibilities that we didn’t foresee in its early years, the blockchain will give rise to new business models and ideas that may still be invisible. Following an engaging Foreword by Vitalik Buterin, this book is organized along these 7 chapters: 1. What is the Blockchain? 2. How Blockchain Trust Infiltrates 3. Obstacles, Challenges & Mental Blocks 4. Blockchain in Financial Services 5. Lighthouse Industries & New Intermediaries 6. Implementing Blockchain Technology 7. Decentralization as the Way Forward The Business Blockchain is an invitation for technologists to better understand the business potential of the blockchain, and for business minded people to grasp the many facets of blockchain technology. This book teaches you how to think about the blockchain.




Blockchain Success Stories


Book Description

Accessible and fun to read, this practical book contains a collection of stories of organizations using blockchain technology in practice. Through deep research and firsthand interviews, authors Sir John Hargrave and Evan Karnoupakis show you how leading-edge organizations have worked to integrate blockchain into their businesses. You'll start by exploring the origins of blockchain, with plain-English descriptions of industry terminology like bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, and smart contracts. Then you'll dive into 10 story-driven case studies that will teach you easy-to-understand blockchain best practices. Explore real-life examples of companies developing and integrating blockchain applications for mobile voting, credentialing, supply chains, and a $100 million virtual cat collectible marketplace Discover how blockchain is transforming industries like banking, communications, government, logistics, and nonprofits Learn about engaging blockchain success stories, such as Binance, Ethereum, and Circle Examine common blockchain best practices, with illustrations for easy reference, and learn how to apply them in your business, government project, or charitable foundation




The Blockchain Innovator's Handbook


Book Description

This accessible guide to Blockchain covers everything from opportunity identification to implementation and shows how to unlock new business opportunities in a fast-changing environment.




Platform Revolution


Book Description

The first era of the digital age spanned mainframes, minicomputers, the personal computer, the Internet, the World Wide Web, social media, mobility, the cloud, and big data. We're now entering a second era where digital technologies permeate everything. Such inventions as machine learning, robotics, drones, software robots or "bots," process automation, and additive manufacturing are accelerating new types of platforms on which to build digital engines of the global economy. This second era has weighty implications for enterprise strategy and architecture. New business models will disrupt most industries and provide platforms for innovation for decades to come. This book looks at blockchain technologies as foundational to the governance and widespread adoption of these innovations--digital identities, data analytics, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, distributed energy infrastructure, and quantum computing. Every organization can finally become a truly digital entity if its leaders are prepared. This book is designed to prepare them for the waves of creative destruction ahead.