Crypto, Blockchain and Digital Transformation in the Second Era of the Internet

Don Tapscott, Executive Chairman of the Blockchain Research Institute, is one of the world’s leading authorities on the impact of technology on business and society. He has authored 16 books, including Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, which has been translated into over 25 languages.

In 2016, with his son Alex, he co-authored the global best seller Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies is Changing the World, now translated into 20 languages. According to the late, great Clay Christensen of Harvard Business School it is “the book, literally, on how to survive and thrive in this next wave of technology-driven disruption.” The paperback version of the book, updated with new material covering recent developments about digital assets, sovereign identity and Central Bank Digital Currencies was published in June 2018.

In 2017, Don and Alex co-founded the Blockchain Research Institute, whose 100+ projects are the definitive investigation into blockchain strategy, use-cases, implementation challenges and organizational transformations. Since then Don produced a new book entitled Supply Chain Revolution: How Blockchain Technology Is Transforming the Digital Flow of Assets. The book debuted in June 2020 as the “#1 New Release” in the commerce category on Amazon.com.

Don is a member of the Order of Canada and in 2019, then ranked as the 2nd most influential Management Thinker by Thinkers50, joined Professor Christensen, Michael Porter, Peter Drucker and others in the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame. He is an Adjunct Professor at INSEAD and Chancellor Emeritus of Trent University in Ontario where he served as Chancellor 2013-2019. It is hard to imagine anyone who has been more prolific, profound, and influential in explaining today’s technological revolutions and their impact on the world.

For the last 40 years we’ve seen the rise of mainframes, mini-computers, the PC, the Internet, mobility, the Web, the mobile web, social media, the cloud and big data. 
 
We’re entering a second era where new technologies are infusing into everything, and every business process. Innovations as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, even technology in our bodies, drones, robots and new materials are enabling entirely new types of enterprises.  Foundational to these innovations is the underlying technology of crypto currencies. – blockchain.
 
The Internet of Information is evolving into the Internet of value -- a new, distributed platform that can reshape business and fix the old order of human affairs for the better.  This new Internet, based on blockchain – the underlying technology behind crypto currencies, can transform financial services; change the deep structures of the corporation; animate the physical world; recast the role of government, and help solve the crisis of legitimacy of democracy.  
 
New business models will disrupt most industries.  This Second Era of the Digital Age has profound implications for strategy and leadership as through it, every asset can become a digital asset and every business can finally become a digital business. It also has profound implications education, healthcare and solving some of the world’s most intractable problems.
 
In 1994 Don Tapscott introduced The Digital Economy in his seminal book of that name and since has been the most prescient theorist of the ever-accelerating changes around us. In this speech he outlines new business models that will shake the windows and rattle the doors of traditional thinking about competing.