there’s hardly a business that will remain unaffected by blockchain technology.
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with steven sacks
in blockchain basics for business, steve sacks interviews jack shaw on the elements of the technology, its early beginnings, the industries impacted, and the practical business applications.
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key takeaways:
- bitcoin is only an application of blockchain which is the platform
- decentralized nodes eliminate the possibility of hacking
- blockchain has many business uses in the financial, insurance, media, medical, consumer and supply chain
- industries impacted by blockchain include energy, entertainment, manufacturing and transportation
- blockchain stores records such as identities, ownership of assets, business transactions and contractual commitments
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jack shaw is an innovation and change management consultant, who has been voted one of the world’s top 25 speakers and one of the top 5 technology futurists. jack integrates his executive experience in industry, technology, and consulting to speak on innovation, change management, and transformational leadership. and, he has decades of experience designing, developing, and implementing emerging technologies and how these will impact business and society.
jack has advised key decision-makers at such fortune 500 organizations as mercedes benz, bosch, ge, coca-cola, johnson & johnson, ibm, oracle, and sap. jack has delivered over 1,000 keynote presentations and executive forums in 26 countries and every state across the u.s. he is a yale university graduate, and holds a kellogg mba degree specializing in finance and marketing.
jack’s expertise is in the strategic impact of leading-edge technologies, including blockchain technology, 5g, the internet of things and artificial intelligence. he can be reached at https://jackshaw.io
transcript and slide deck (for pro members)
slide deck: download here
transcript
steven sacks – i’m steven sacks owner of solutions to results a consulting firm that helps practices and organizations in the areas of communication, culture, education, and training. i’m here with jack shaw, an innovation and change management consultant who’s been voted one of the world’s top 25 speakers. and one of the top five technology futurists. jack has delivered over 1000 keynote presentations across the us and in 26 countries. his expertise is in the area of strategic impact of leading-edge technologies, including 5g, the internet of things and artificial intelligence. today, we are happy to have jack speak on the blockchain basics for businesses. for those who are interested in getting the slides we will cover today, at the end of the webcast, i will provide information on how to obtain them. welcome, jack. we’re thrilled to have you share your knowledge of blockchain some of the basics and how it impacts businesses. now, as you know, there are a number of business owners who have been embrace blockchain. and then there are others who have heard about it, but don’t know how it will impact their operation. so, i’m glad you’re here to share your knowledge.
jack shaw – well, thanks very much. it’s a pleasure, steve. and, you know, i think it’s an area that it’s very exciting. for businesses, it’s got tremendous implications. and just as we saw 20 years ago with the internet, it’s going to change the way many businesses in many industries work. and so it’s important that business people understand the implications of blockchain.
steven sacks – so, bring us up to speed on what is blockchain? what is it, where did it come from? and, you know, what’s its importance for businesses today?
jack shaw – well, so let’s start by giving a little bit of the background. there’s the challenge we’ve had for many, many years, has been in information sharing. and when the internet emerged in the 90s, and as it has evolved, not over the last quarter century, we’ve suddenly got vastly more capable tools for information sharing, than we ever had previously. and that’s great as far as it goes. but there was a challenge that started to be recognized really going back as far as even preceding the emergence of the internet 25 and 30 years ago, where people said, well, shouldn’t we be able to make the exchange of money, as easy as the exchange of information. and in theory, of course, that should be possible. but it got to be a challenge, because the nice thing about exchanging information is that we can pass copies back and forth. so steve, if i want to go ahead and send you a copy of a paper i’ve written recently, for example, i can make a copy of that send it to you over the internet, you can read it, and it’s just as useful to you as it would be if i sent you the original of that paper. and, it doesn’t cost me anything to provide a copy of it to you. so it’s a great way for sharing information. but if i owe you money, the situation is a little different. because if i owe you money, it’s very important that when i pay you the money, that i’m not sending you just a copy of my of my money, i’m sending you the actual money, okay? you agree, you don’t want a copy of the money, you want the whole, the real thing, it’s important that at the end of the transaction, you’ve got the money, and i don’t have it anymore, because otherwise, we could just start sending copies around all over the place. and then pretty quickly, the money is not going to be worth anything to anybody. so it’s what that is referred to as the double spending problem. how do you avoid if you have money represented digitally, people just making copies of it just like they do with you know, documents, or powerpoint slides or pdfs or whatever they might. and this problem perplexed people for really several decades. and it wasn’t until about 12 years ago that a solution finally emerged in the fall of 2008. right actually, at the beginning of the great recession that started that fall, there was a paper published on the internet by a person or a group of people that are still as yet identified, but going under the pseudonym of satoshi nakamoto. and what this paper describes is a mechanism that combines a combination of encryption technology and advanced synchronization technologies. and we can talk a little bit more in a few minutes about what those are and how those work, but to enable for the future first time, the creation of a digital currency that could be viable as both a store of value and a means of exchange. and they did that by solving this double spending problem.
steven sacks – so, how did the bitcoin enter the realm of blockchain? what’s its relationship?
jack shaw – well, this is an excellent point. and let me let me share that with you. as you can see from this, when they came up with this implementation, the digital currency they refer to as bitcoin. and the underlying technologies that enabled bitcoin have come very quickly came to be referred to as blockchain. and it’s important to make a distinction, blockchain and bitcoin are not one and the same. bitcoin is simply one implementation that leverages blockchain technology, which takes advantage of a couple of different technologies. so if i may, steve, i’d like to share with you a couple of slides that demonstrate how this how this works. the first technology is what’s called hashing technology. and it happens that there are certain mathematical functions that can take place that are called hashing functions, and they’re called one way functions. in other words, you can, it works in one direction and cannot be reversed. it’s a little bit if you think about it, like breaking eggs and stirring them up into scrambled eggs. once you’ve broken the eggs and stirred them up, there’s no way you can get them back into being whole egg again. the same thing works with these hashing functions, and what will happen, for example, you might have a function that takes a digital document, in this case, something as simple as a document that has the word fox in it, and creates a hash, in this case, eight character hash that represents uniquely represents that and there’s no way you can start with that hash, and work backwards to figure out what the original document was. similarly, you might have a slightly different document, in this case, a little bit longer one, but one that still creates an eight-character hash. and here’s the third document, the only difference between the second document and the third document is we’ve substituted the word walks across the ice, for runs across the ice. and yet the hash is totally different. it’s not like well, it’s only a little bit different, because the original document or file is a little bit different, it’s completely different. so you can’t work backwards from the hash to figure out what the contents of that original document work. but what you can do is you can associate that hash value with a unique document. so what you have is if you have a bitcoin transaction that says bitcoin of a certain value was transferred from, say, steve, to jack. that can be stored in information. and as you can see from this diagram, it is stored in blocks of information. now one of the things that they do is you calculate the hash value of all of the data in the block, we’ve identified steve, we’ve identified jack, we’ve identified what the value of the bitcoin was, that was transferred from steve to jack, and we have a hash value for that. and that hash value is stored as part of the block, but it’s that hash value is copied into the next block. so now let’s suppose that the next transaction is jack, sending bitcoin to mary. so there’s a record of that this is the next block that takes place. there is a copy of the hash from the previous block in the next block in block 52, and so on, and so on block 53, we’ll have a copy of the hash of block 52. so what this means is that as you accumulate hundreds 1000s, hundreds of 1000s of blocks of data that represent activities or transactions or changes in the state of the relevant information on that blockchain, you, no one can go in and just change a single block, because if they did, the hash on the successive block would no longer match it, they’d have to change the hash on the next block. but now the hash on the block after that would match it. and so consequently, they would have to go in and change the hashes on every single block. and that means that this becomes, especially with proper security in place, a far more complex thing to do. if you want to change even the value of a single transaction, you can’t just change that transaction, like you can with traditional computer systems. you have to change all of the transactions on all the blockchain records are blocks in that ecosystem, in order to be able to make it appear that that is a legitimate change to the blockchain. and it is the chaining of the hash of the previous block to the next block that engendered the term blockchain to be used for this.
steven sacks – well, under this thesis, can someone with powerful computing capabilities, hack into the system and make changes to these blocks, if you will?
jack shaw – you’re absolutely right. and given enough time and computing power, you could certainly hack into a computer that had this blockchain information stored on it, and recompute make a change that’s in some way advantageous to you, and recompute all of those blocks and have it look like it was a legitimate blockchain. and that’s why where the other half of blockchain technology comes in the advanced synchronization technology because blockchain data is not stored on any single computer, it’s stored on many computers, identical copies of this blockchain are stored on anywhere from dozens to hundreds to 1000s of computers, all over the internet, all over the world, each with their own high levels of security that you would have to hack into. and the data is synchronized very rapidly, older, slower block chains, for example, like the bitcoin blockchain synchronize every 10 minutes. but more recent blockchain implementations synchronize within seconds, even a fraction of a second. now, what this means steve is that if you wanted to hack in and make that change, you would not have to do it on a single computer. because if you did it on a single computer, the synchronization technology would recognize that the information on that computer no longer matched the information, all the rest of the notes of the blockchain. and we tell everybody ignore the information on this computer, it’s invalid, it’s been changed in such a way, because it doesn’t match everything else. you would have to go in and hack a majority of all the computers on the blockchain simultaneously and do it before the next synchronization takes place. in order for it to appear that you’re different version of the blockchain was in fact, the legitimate version of the blockchain.
steven sacks – interesting. so, um, how does blockchain apply to different businesses? you know, in other applications, let’s say, in the government sector, or the healthcare sector?
jack shaw – well, there’s a number of different applications. and in order for us to understand, you know, how those applications work, i think it’s important to start by talking a little bit about what is it that blockchains do, and blockchains really do what they allow you to do is to create records of information that are permanent, immutable, in other words, they can’t be changed. they’re signed and timestamped. each of these blocks as unique timestamp associated with it, we know who authorized that particular transaction or information update as the case might be. it can’t be changed. and there’s nothing to make it go away. it’s backed up in thousands of places all over the world. blockchains evolve. now, some people say, well, this, what if you wanted to cancel the purchase order? well, you don’t go in and erase the purchase order, you would issue a purchase order cancellation, cancellation to file on the right order, that would have the accounting and financial and economic impact of canceling the first purchase order. but the records wouldn’t say this purchase order never existed, the records would say a purchase order was issued, and then subsequently it was cancelled. and, so, having these kinds of permanent immutable records is exactly what businesses want to have from a proper accounting perspective.
steven sacks – so, you gave the example of a purchase order, but what types of other records can blockchain be used for?
jack shaw – well, there’s certainly a host of things for example, identity. identity of people, organizations, objects, that can be uniquely identified. we could tie it back to people’s biometrics, for example, or perhaps to a unique set of characters recorded at a chip that’s attached to an object or an engraved into an object of a particular value. you can also have records of ownership of assets. so, for example, land titles. in fact, cook county, illinois is in the process of converting its 5 million land titles to blockchain. which means in a few years when this very large task is finally completed, that title searches instead of taking months will be able to be completed in seconds, which means that real estate transactions will be able to be closed, far, far more quickly than is typically the case today. but it’s not just for land, it’s for ownership of assets of all different types. business transactions, like purchase orders as i as i referenced. but and we’ll talk about some other examples of that in a few minutes, but also contractual commitments. now, there is a special type of artifact that can be stored on a blockchain that’s called a smart contract. and a smart contract is a computer program that can run on a blockchain, but that has all the legal attributes of a binding legal contract. it can do such things as take custody over assets that are stored on a blockchain, for example, this could be a payment placed in escrow in anticipation of successful completion of a business transaction. so that on completion of the delivery of an ordered item, and the acceptance of that order, in good condition, payment would automatically be generated. in fact, it can track what has happened to date, such as that event, and the transactions leading up to it the purchase order the delivery, and then it can respond to that by determining based on the agreement reflected in this smart contract, contractual commitment, it is appropriate to make a payment in this amount for the goods or services that have been delivered.
steven sacks – what type of business or industry sector do you think that this would have the biggest impact on?
jack shaw – oh, gosh, well, there’s there’s a number of of them. one of the key aspects of it is that blockchain enables secure, real time information sharing. so, one of the leading industry certainly is the healthcare industry. and in the healthcare industry, for example, you can exchange everything from electronic medical records, to medical histories, and diagnoses and treatments. but it can also be used for a host of other things such as the filing of insurance claims, automating these processes so that everybody knows that the information is accurate and legitimate. even healthcare in organizations, doctors, offices, clinics, hospitals, could even use it for the procurement of medical supplies and pharmaceuticals and so forth.
steven sacks – so, it sounds like well, particularly with electronic medical records, the sensitivity in terms of security, and getting as up to date information as possible, particularly in the area of treatment for a patient, that seems to have a tremendous impact.
jack shaw – well, you’re absolutely right. and you know, one of the challenges people thought 20 years ago, 25 years ago, when the internet came into being, that’s going to solve the problem with being able to, on a timely, accurate basis, share securely private medical information. and if you’ve noticed, if anybody watching this has noticed the last time you went into a doctor’s office, you still had to fill out the same forms to say everything you did the previous time you went in authorizing the information, updating any of it that’s changed and stuff. because the internet by itself, while it’s a huge step forward isn’t enough to solve the information. how do you manage sharing information easily and keeping it private? one of the things that blockchain can do is use encryption technology to say here who is authorized to see this information. and the encryption keys are themselves stored on the blockchain. so, if you have the encryption key that allows you to see certain information or even to update that information, you can do so and if you don’t, you can’t update that information, or can’t even see it so it can still be private and secure. so, steve, for example, if you go to a doctor’s office, your own blockchain medical records and this is one of the things that’s exciting is your medical records can be controlled by you, not by the doctor’s office or clinic or insurance company or governmental agency or third-party technology company. you control it. you then authorize your healthcare provider, your doctor to see your records, so that they can diagnose and treat you. and you also authorize them to update the records with the information about that diagnosis and treatment. and then the insurance company could be, for example, authorized to see the records about the diagnosis and the treatment, so that they could reimburse the healthcare provider for their costs. but the insurance company would not be authorized to update or change the records of diagnosis and treatment. so, you’ve got complete control over who can do what, who can see what, through blockchain technology, and it’s going to be a huge step forward for healthcare. there are some other examples we can talk about, too.
steven sacks – well, let me ask you this. let’s say it’s a practice where one doctor is not around, and then there’s another doctor on call or has office hours. now there has to be some sort of arrangement created between the practitioners that if they were to see jack shaw, you know, you use you go to dr. jones, he’s not around. dr. smith. so, he dr. smith has to have authorization too and to be able to make updates and changes. is that correct?
jack shaw – well, not that’s well put, and you thought about a very interesting issue between the relationship between people and organizations. so one is you could very simply say, oh, dr. jones isn’t in. but dr. smith is. okay, now, i will authorize dr. smith to see this information. but another way this can be handled is to say, i’m going to authorize this organization to see this information. how do you authorize an organization? an organization ultimately consists of people who are authorized. so, for example, a clinic that might very simply consist of dr. jones, dr. smith, and maybe some support administrative staff, in a very simple case, could have a situation that says any information that’s authorized to dr. jones is also authorized to dr. smith, and vice versa. but the administrative people are not authorized, or perhaps are not authorized to update the diagnosis and treatment. but they may be authorized to see the information so that they can answer questions, or facilitate interactions with the insurance company, for example. but those rules would be set up by the organization. and again, the underlying blockchain technology just would be utilized to enforce the rules, as set up by, say, this particular clinic and agreed to by the patient. and maybe the patient says, well, i don’t want to allow every doctor in the — i only want the doctors to see me well, then in that case, you’ll have to go through the process of authorizing each different doctor that you might happen to see over time to see information so that it can be done. and you know, you can get into all the complexities of emergency and all that but right, right, we don’t need to go down that rabbit hole completely. but you have a very powerful set of tools that become available for you to do that. and in fact, another interesting area too is looking at the whole issue around for healthcare organizations around procuring the supplies of medical products and services, and pharmaceuticals and so forth that they need to treat people. steve, let’s talk more broadly about how blockchain is already being used in supply chains today, to facilitate supply chains and fields like manufacturing and distribution. one of the challenges we’ve had for decades with supply chains is what we have called leakage. in other words, even as we’ve evolved from, say, the 1970s, up to the last decade or so, from mostly paper-based business transactions to electronic business transactions, there’s still passed back and forth one tier at a time, up and down between the various participants in a supply chain: manufacturers, transportation carriers, distributors, you know, retailers, or in the case of health care, hospitals, or clinics or pharmacies, for example, and customers or patients and so forth. and if at any point in time, even if information is handled electronically, it’s delayed, or somehow inaccurate information gets in there or it just is forgotten. it means everybody else up and down that supply chain is working on delayed and or inaccurate and or missing information about what is the status of the products and services and payments and so forth, moving through that supply chain. so, you make the best decision that you can based on the information that’s available. what is very different with blockchain-based supply chains that we’ve just started to see. we just started to see coming into play in the last couple of years is that now, all of these participants can share information via a common data pool secured by the blockchain. everybody can see everything they’re authorized to see, update everything they’re authorized to update as soon as it happens, even if it’s three or four tiers up the supply chain from you, you can see it immediately. and we’re already seeing this in a number of industries, the technology industry is one of them. but it’s moving very quickly into the automotive industry, the aerospace industry, and many, many others, taking time and delays and inaccuracy, providing much higher levels of visibility into what’s happening in the supply chain. and in fact, actually, starting early this year, ibm and a number of other companies have started working together to say, look, we’re soon going to be having vaccines for covid. and of course, this would apply to other vaccines for other kinds of diseases
jack shaw – manufactured that will need to be quickly and accurately distributed. and they’re working on developing blockchain technologies. now, these underlying blockchain enabled technology solutions are also in the course of being developed and tested themselves. they’re not fully distributed. but over the course of the next year or so, as vaccine or vaccines come into the market and become widely distributed, we will see this kind of technology also emerging to give a much higher level of visibility into the existence, availability, transportation, and delivery times the logistics associated with the distribution of these vaccines.
steven sacks – so, let me ask you this. you know, we talked a little bit about the medical and government sectors. what other types of industries can be impacted by blockchain?
jack shaw – well, let me share with you a couple more slides that just touch on that quickly. and again, anyone who wants copies of these will be happy to contact us and we’ll be happy to send you along. but this is just a partial list of industries impacted by blockchain. and if you’re in an industry or your work with or interact with people in an industry that you don’t see on this list, it’s probably simply because i haven’t updated this slide enough to reflect it. you know, there were people saying 25 years ago, well, i could see how the internet could affect this industry or that industry. but how’s it going to impact my industry? well, now, of course, any knowledgeable business person would say, what industries not going to be affected by the internet. the same things happening only much more rapidly with blockchain technology. and it’s not just that it has impacts on a wide range of both public and private sector industries. but it also is the use cases are going into the thousands. the different applications, if you look at this particular slide, you can see whether it’s financial or media or insurance or computer sciences, identity, internet of things, you can go on and on. there are dozens of different ways blockchain technology is starting to be used, is already being used in many cases, and will be used in just like, as i said, thousands and thousands of cases, it’s going to be very exciting to watch over the next five to 10 years, because it’s going to have as important a transformational impact on business over the next decade, as we’ve seen the internet have on business and stuff that society over the last really quarter century.
steven sacks – that’s really fascinating. well, i have to thank you jack, for this conversation on blockchain, the basics for business people.