Worldwide economic crisis: does it still make sense to work on Blockchain?

I believe that the current perception of health and economic risks of COVID-19 pandemic changes based on the country you are leaving.

I’ve been living abroad for many years but I’m from Italy, and I’m seeing what COVID-19 is doing in my country and the consequences that will bring to the economy.

In the last few weeks I asked myself, does it still make sense to work on a challenging technology like Blockchain that will be even more difficult to sell when companies will cut budgets?

The answer is yes, and comes from the design of Blockchain networks itself:

- in a blockchain network, companies act in cooperation vs competition

- in a blockchain network, enterprise’s use cases fix issues in line with the industry needs

- businesses inside a blockchain network are more resilient due to the decentralized technical, and business architecture.

We are experiencing a global crisis, if companies act within their old centralized organizational structure, businesses won’t survive in the long run.

Where we at with Blockchain:

There isn’t yet a successful formula to sell blockchain and to make it easier to understand and digest by companies C-levels.

• So far we did our best to explain the technology first, but the technology it’s tough to understand and to translate into companies’daily operations.
• Unless the project starts within an existing consortium, where business dynamics are already defined, and the interest to work together is strong, companies are not really keen to work with their competitors.
• The value of blockchain’s projects is spread out incrementally during a long period of time, and this implies an investment that C-levels find difficult to judge and to measure in quarters.

How to overcome the challenges to sell blockchain during and post COVID-19?

We need to approach the technology from a different perspective and explain its value-added, especially, in a tough economic time like this. The technology should be explained at a high level to rapidly move to the business application otherwise it’s easy to open never-ending unproductive discussions. The point is to be focused on the specific problem, or use case, within the context of the company, and industry.

Blockchain is the infrastructure that improves business processes and removes inefficiencies through a single source of truth, decentralized, shared, and immutable. Before explaining how, it’s needed and assessment where processes are mapped out and inefficiency identified, in order to provide a solution that concretely fits the needs.

Like any other tool, one size doesn’t fit all. Not all Blockchains are the same, and of course, Blockchain is not the answer to every business problem. Moreover, Blockchain introduces a complex layered framework that implies the participation of many vendors and partners. Support and participation of everyone in the network are needed to move to production and to scale. Success is defined by how well the network’s participants work together. If the partnerships are weak and don’t boost a network effect, the project, incremental and long, won’t succeed.

C-levels need to be inspired by the vision to be part of micro-economies that blockchain is building. Within a blockchain network, a company should gain what is not possible alone, like sharing resources and finding new alliances, and businesses.

A company more than before needs to think strategically about their market positioning, and how to improve processes and inefficiencies, in order to cut costs. In a blockchain project, it might not happen in the first 6 months but will build the foundation and improve the chances to still do business in the next years.

Technology is going dramatically fast for a company to be able to keep up. The world is changing and requires businesses to be more resilient than before, customers are more demanding. Organizations’ structure needs to change in order to adapt fast to new technology disruption and economic crises like the one we are leaving.

Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is a success.

Henry Ford

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