Around the Block(chain)

Kevin Coleman is a highly skilled senior level project and program manager/advisor with experience leading projects with labor budgets ranging from a few hundred thousand dollars to multi-million dollar budgets across multiple industries.

  Strategy  

For the last few years, I have written and spoken about emerging technologies and the potential implications, both positive and negative. The combined effect of these technologies are creating a period of time unlike anything we have seen before. Even the internet era.

When management consulting firm PWC surveyed chief executive officers for its Global CEO Survey, it found that 61% of them said they were concerned about the speed of technological change in their industries. Multiple new/emerging technologies are entering the market space at a frequency not seen before. This has left many in management concerned if their organization is prepared (or at least preparing) for the implications. With so much to choose from, it’s difficult to select which technology to write about—much less to invest in as a part of a business.

I investigated multiple technologies, and one that is gaining momentum and stands to have a fair amount of disruptive characteristics stuck out: blockchain. Most professionals I have talked with are unfamiliar with that term, much less the technology. According to tech giant IBM, “Blockchain is a peer-to-peer distributed/decentralized ledger technology for a new generation of transactional applications.”

It is often called the innovative brainchild of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, where it is the foundation referred to as an …

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