Unblocked

Unblocked

by Alison McCauley
Released June 2019
Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ISBN: 9781492057970

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Book description

Understand the Blockchain Opportunity: No Technical Background Required. Remember thedawn of the internet? The advent of mobile and social media? Yet another digital revolution is nowunderway. Like its predecessors, blockchains are about to transform the way we live, work, and play,while disrupting entrenched industries and shattering conventional business models.

Move past the hype and equip yourself to forecast how blockchains will change our world and impactyou and your business. Author Alison McCauley helps non-technical executives to understandhow this technology will trigger change, shift the balance of power, and bring competitiveadvantage to those who know how to leverage them.

Unblocked explains:

  • Why ignoring this technology exposes you to competitive disruption
  • What this new technology revolution embraces—no technical background required
  • How to prepare your organization to respond to the coming shift

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Table of contents

  1. Preface
    1. THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
  2. Introduction
    1. DAWN, RISING
  3. I. A MOVEMENT BUILDS
  4. 1. KINDLING, MEET MATCH
  5. 2. CATCHING FIRE
    1. Bite While the Apple Is Raw
      1. Chance, Unchained
      2. Opportunity Hidden by Complexity
      3. The Six Forces of an Unblocked Era
      4. It’s Time
  6. 3. WHAT IS A BLOCKCHAIN?
    1. Beth Is Correct
      1. At the Center: Decentralization
      2. Value Exchange Made Smarter Through “Smart Contracts”
      3. Why is it Called a Blockchain?
      4. Blockchain or Blockchains?
      5. What Does Bitcoin Have to Do with Blockchains?
      6. The Many Roles of Cryptoassets
      7. Retaining Privacy When the Ledger is Open to Everyone
      8. So What?
    2. Blockchains Across Industries
  7. 4. THE GENESIS OF THE UNBLOCKED CUSTOMER
    1. The Consumer Technology Created
    2. How Did We Get Here?
      1. The Internet: Built to Fail
      2. Enter Blockchains
      3. The Era of the Unblocked Customer
      4. A Whole New Layer of Expectations
      5. Blockchain-Era Expectations Will Put More Pressure on Businesses
      6. Why Now?
      7. A Huge and Disillusioned Generation
      8. The First Technology with Democratization Baked In?
  8. 5. TORTOISE OR HARE?
    1. How Far Along Are We?
      1. The Age of Open Innovation
      2. Unlocking the New Tools of Open Innovation
      3. Breaking Away from Silicon Valley
      4. The Decentralization of Entrepreneurship
      5. There Will Be Blood
      6. Building on The Backs of Failure
  9. II. THE SIX FORCES OF AN UNBLOCKED FUTURE
  10. 6. MORE VALUE
    1. Summary
    2. The Setting
      1. Wired for Middlemen
      2. The Rising Cost—and Power—of the Middleman
      3. When Cost Is Uncovered
    3. What Blockchains Make Possible
      1. Pure Peer-to-Peer
    4. In Code We Trust
      1. A Broad Range of Industries Are Vulnerable
    5. Implications: A New Balance of Power
      1. Death by Blockchains?
      2. The Middleman Is dead. Long Live the Middleman!
      3. We’ve Welcomed New Middlemen into our Lives
      4. The Hinge is Value
      5. Customers Don’t Understand What They Can’t See
    6. At Some Point, the Unblocked Customer Will Question Your Worth
      1. Value Is Not One-Size-Fits-All
      2. The Sharing Economy, Everywhere
      3. We May End Up Somewhere in the Middle
      4. The Next-Gen Middleman
    7. The Importance of Clear Value
      1. The Value of an Ecosystem
      2. Put a Spotlight on Hidden Value
    8. Cautions and Considerations
      1. Cautions
      2. Considerations
    9. Examples
      1. Decent: Affordable Health Insurance for All
      2. Open Garden: Disintermediating the Internet Service Provider
      3. Lantmäteriet: Streamlining Land Registry
  11. 7. DEEPER TRANSPARENCY
    1. Summary
    2. The Setting
      1. Seeking Assurance in a Complex World
      2. Consumers Expect More
      3. Sustainability and Responsibility: The New Corporate Norm
      4. Everyone Is a Stakeholder
      5. The Focus on Sustainability Is Here to Stay
      6. A Business Case for Urgency
      7. Transparency Affects How Our Brain Perceives a Brand
    3. Trust in Crisis
      1. Fake News Fuels Skepticism
      2. The Elusive Nature of True Transparency
    4. What Blockchains Make Possible
      1. All-Seeing Meets the Ever-Knowing
      2. Coding for Trust
      3. Tracking the Intangibles: Can Blockchains Kill Fake News?
      4. One Feature Set Drives Value for All
      5. A Step Toward a Better World
    5. Implications: When Authenticity Becomes More Than a Buzzword
    6. Blockchains for the Bold and the Brave
    7. The Appeal of a Killer Combination
      1. Business-First View: Yet Another Digital Transformation Must-Have?
      2. Society-First View: Will Pioneers Push Progress?
      3. Refining Customers’ Taste for Transparency
      4. A New Spin on Spin?
    8. This Is a Natural Next Step in Our Journey
    9. Cautions and Considerations
      1. Cautions
      2. Considerations
    10. Examples
      1. Provenance: Meaningful Change through Supply Chain Transparency
      2. Blockcerts: Trustworthy Digital Records
      3. GiveTrack: Holding Charities Accountable for Use of Donations
  12. 8. FAIR COMPENSATION
    1. Summary
    2. The Setting
      1. Imbalance is Baked into our Digital Norms
      2. We’ve Been Willingly Looking Away
      3. But Now, We are Poised for a Shift
      4. Primed for a Better Alternative
    3. What Blockchains Make Possible
      1. Blockchains as a Foundation for a More Sustainable Digital Future
      2. Blockchains Promise Direct and Feature-rich Compensation
      3. Value Will Solidify (One Way or Another) with Market Maturation
    4. Implications: What Happens When Your Customer Knows Their Worth
      1. The Birth of the Alternative
      2. The Short Journey from Exposure to Expectation
      3. Where It Could All Begin
      4. Contribution Doesn’t Always Mean Human
      5. Compensation Doesn’t Always Mean Money
      6. Toward a More Balanced Future
    5. Cautions and Considerations
      1. Cautions
      2. Considerations
    6. Examples
      1. Steemit: Compensation for Contribution
      2. Brave: Get Paid to Browse
  13. 9. ALIGNED INCENTIVES
    1. Summary
    2. The Setting
      1. The Steady Extinction of the Loyal Customer
      2. Being Heard Is Harder Than Ever
      3. New Tools Haven’t Always Driven ROI
      4. Loyalty Programs Are Broken
    3. What Blockchains Make Possible
      1. Powerful Incentives at Scale
      2. Hit Me Again, Please: What the Heck Are Tokens?
      3. Your Token or Mine?
      4. Tokens Build on a Foundation of Behavioral Psychology
      5. Fine-Tuned Calibration—and Impact
      6. The Potency of Tokens + Gamification
      7. More Powerful, Aligned Communities
      8. Blurring the Lines between Business Owners and Participants
    4. Implications: Program the Incentives, Program the Behavior
      1. Driving Escalating Commitment
      2. Stoking Community through Tokens
      3. Using Tokens to Shape Individual Behavior
      4. Incenting Not Just Action, but Impact
      5. The Next-Gen Influencer Strategy
      6. Using Blockchains to Ensure Quality
      7. But Where Do You Start?
      8. Agile Strategies, Smarter Marketing
      9. Reinvigorate the Loyalty Program
      10. The Power of Partnership
    5. The Beauty of System-Wide Alignment
      1. The Dangers of a Coin-Operated World
    6. Cautions and Considerations
      1. Cautions
      2. Considerations
    7. Examples
      1. Swytch: Incenting Global-Scale Adoption of Renewable Energy
      2. Mobivity: Aligning an Ecosystem of Brands and Consumers
  14. 10. BIGGER DATA
    1. Summary
    2. The Setting
      1. Businesses Fueled by Big Data
      2. Falling Short of the Big Data Promise
      3. Fighting the Idea of Ownership
      4. IoT Fuels the Fire
      5. Is It Time for a New Deal on Data?
      6. What’s Coming Next Could Change Everything
    3. What Blockchains Make Possible
      1. Who Really Owns the Data?
      2. Your Very Own Black Box
      3. Consumer at the Controls
      4. Securing and Protecting the Data
      5. The Potential of New, Powerful Data Layers
      6. The Blockchains Themselves Are Public Data Layers
      7. At the Starting Line
      8. The Two-Edged Sword of the Blockchain Data Story
    4. Implications: Rethinking the Rules of Competition
      1. Bigger, Better Data
      2. The Vision of the Data Marketplace
      3. The Redefinition of Competitive Advantage
      4. Data Science Quality Could Be More Important Than Ever
      5. The Power of Relationships
      6. The Importance of Mission
      7. Growing Awareness of the Value of Privacy
      8. A Shift That Presents Nuanced Challenges
      9. Know Thy Data, Know Thyself
      10. Enabling a New Wave of Innovation?
    5. Cautions and Considerations
      1. Cautions
      2. Considerations
    6. Examples
      1. uPort: Take Back Control of Identity
      2. Ocean: Unlocking More Data
  15. 11. NEW MODELS
    1. Summary
      1. Flipping Conventional Wisdom
      2. Extreme Peer-to-Peer
      3. The Big Flip and “Super Platforms”
      4. As Things Get Smaller, Value Gets Bigger
      5. Programmable Assets
      6. Machines Working Together to Serve Us
      7. Social-Aligned Models
  16. III. UNLEASHING AN UNBLOCKED FUTURE
  17. 12. WHERE TO BEGIN
    1. Now, Where to Begin?
    2. Organization Models Birthed from Disruption
      1. In the Blockchain Era, This Is Not Good Enough
      2. Isolate or Integrate?
      3. Time to Rethink Innovation
      4. Heterogeneous Collaboration Required
      5. Effective and Diverse
    3. Blockchain-Era Table Stakes
      1. Open Mindset
      2. First, Search Within
      3. Connect the Nodes
      4. Put the Customer at the Core
    4. Change Agents in Action
      1. Lydia Krefta: Shared Knowledge Drives Innovation
      2. Diana Biggs: From Cypherpunk to Enterprise Innovation Leader
  18. 13. CORPORATE INVESTING IN BLOCKCHAINS
    1. The Challenge and Opportunity in Early Moves
    2. Three Investment Strategies for the Corporation
      1. Investing in Disruptive Capability
      2. Debuting Cryptoassets in Portfolio Strategies
      3. Using Tokenization to Remove Friction from Capital
    3. A New Frontier for the Corporation
  19. 14. THE BIG SMALL PRINT
    1. Be Skeptical
    2. Don’t Write off the Toys
    3. Don’t Overestimate Who Cares about Privacy
    4. It’s Nothing without Network Effects
    5. The Best Technology May Not Win
    6. Nothing Matters without Scalability
    7. Identity Hasn’t Been Solved
    8. Token Instability Hasn’t Been Cracked
    9. Consensus Mechanisms Are an Ongoing Battle
    10. We’re Still Figuring out Governance
    11. But Above All, Maintain Vigilance
  20. 15. BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER
    1. Key Questions to Help You Compose Your Next Step
      1. Assessment
      2. Aspiration
      3. Action
  21. Afterword
    1. THE OPPORTUNITY AND THE HOPE ARE HUMAN
      1. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  22. A. Notes
  23. Index

Product information

  • Title: Unblocked
  • Author(s): Alison McCauley
  • Release date: June 2019
  • Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
  • ISBN: 9781492057970