I was listening to a great 11:FS podcast over the holiday – it was about where large companies (FTSE 350) are working on blockchain and what they are thinking.
The chairman of MBN Solutions, Paul Forrest met with Simon Taylor of 11:FS to discuss a deep survey that was run as part of #ScotChain17 – a major conference.
The #1 discussion point that I took away was that big companies are having trouble with key personnel – they aren’t able to (easily) get people into place that can “bridge” between the board room and the deep technology. As you may know – that’s what I help organizations do so I wasn’t terribly surprised. The good news is that you can build this capability up internally with the right approaches.
The attendee survey brought up a few other key points:
- Smart Contracts is a big focus for large organizations – particularly for internal use. In my opinion this excitement is great but it really needs to be tempered so put your best on these projects and plan for a mid/long-term play.
- Payments & Identity are the Top 2 Use Cases – 61% and 51% respectively. This doesn’t surprise me at all. My clients are all in on the Identity side and seeing where costs drop and revenues rise due to self-sovereign/digital identity shifts that are already happening.
- 96% of the CIO/CTO respondents believe blockchain will “materially improve consumer trust, privacy and security in transactions”. My add there is that “in transactions” is underselling the opportunity. I would replace it with “in our relationships”.
