3 Lessons the Big Brands Hopping on to the Blockchain Can Teach Entrepreneurs
By mirroring strategies undertaken by big brands, startups can find ways to offer unique services taking advantage of the blockchain‘s beneficial attributes.
With the blockchain bandwagon gaining momentum, it’s easy to argue that the increasing number of large companies testing the waters is simply a money grab rather than a decision to dabble in innovation.
For these brands, blockchain technology, which has commonly been linked to the startup ecosystem, may seem like a somewhat unnecessary add-on that is largely unrelated to core business processes and practices.
Moreover, some of the high-profile public blockchain initiatives, like those by Kodak and Long Island Iced Tea (since renamed Long Blockchain Corp.), have flopped hard enough to make observers doubt the applicability of the technology to large companies (as this Fortune article documented).
Even so, behind the more visible stories of failure are multiple cases of companies deploying blockchain systems successfully.
The common thread connecting those successful implementations is a careful consideration of needs and a targeted approach to integration. While the major corporations jumping in can count on bigger financial and human capital, blockchain technology is fortunately low enough in cost (see this Ruby Garage tutorial) that entrepreneurs can absorb the necessary information and try their own hand at deploying it.
In fact, those entrepreneurs can look to the big brands starting to employ the blockchain and three key lessons those bigger players can offer startups seeking a competitive edge within their industries.
The surging popularity of cryptocurrencies and the blockchain technology that underlies them has meant more and more people wanting to be part of the action. However, despite the praise for blockchain as a magic bullet to solve various technological issues, this technology is neither useful nor even applicable for all business models.
Simply adding blockchain to an existing platform, in fact, is likely to result in a scrapped project and an income-statement loss.
Instead, to ensure successful implementation, companies must find a practical use for the technology which adds value. Such is the case with ASKfm, which is expanding its already popular service by launcing its blockchain-based ASK 2.0 initiative.
The company, already one of the world’s largest Q&A social platforms, is set to add an educational component and improve the quality of its answers by using tokens to incentivize professionals to respond to queries. Eventually, ASKfm hopes to create a massive open online course (MOOC) platform delivering tutoring, private lessons and more.
Takeaway: Entrepreneurs often feel the need to jump on new trends to “stay with the market.” However, understanding why blockchain can be a valuable integration is the first step toward a company opening up this avenue to improve or transform its services.
For enterprise-level companies in retail or logistics, expansive and complex supply chains are commonplace and difficult to efficiently manage.
