Information Systems: A manager's guide to harnessing technology: Chapter 6
Like most open-source efforts, bitcoin was created by a consortium of for-profit corporations hoping to fuel adoption of a beneficial new standard. A. True B. False
B. False
Yahoo!'s mobile team didn't have an executive champion to protect and nurture the team during the pioneering phase when financial results couldn't be realized. It couldn't show substantial results, so managers were reassigned. This is an example of: A. the options portfolio of innovation B. the Creosote Bush effect C. overspending on unproven projects D. social engineering
B. the Creosote Bush effect
disruptive innovation
The tech industry is perhaps the most fertile ground for _____________ ___________
intermediary, transaction, 3, Overstock.com, 2
Much of the blockchain's appeal comes from the fact that asset ownership records are transferred from person to person like cash, rather than using an ____________ like banks or credit card companies if a cryptocurrency is used as a cash replacement. Getting rid of card companies cuts out ____________ fees, which can top __ percent. __________________ was one of the first large online retailers to accept bitcoin. Its profit margins? Just __ percent. Needless to say,__________ CEO is a bitcoin enthusiast.
potentially
there's no guarantee that ____________ disruptive innovation will in fact become dominant
come to market with a set of a performance attributes that existing customers don't value, over time the performance attributes improve to the point where they invade established markets
2 characteristics of disruptive tech:
national, ownership
A blockchain-based transfer would be immediate and could theoretically eliminate all transaction fees, although several firms are charging small fees to ease transactions and quickly get money moved from ___________ currency to a cryptocurrency and back. In such a case, the bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies used are less about the currency itself and more about transfer of _____________. For example, if someone in the US wishes to send dollars to Nigeria, a service could buy bitcoin in the US for dollars, then immediately sell these bitcoin in Nigeria in the local naira currency.
Bank of America, Citigroup, HSBC, ING, R3CEV
A collection of over forty-five of the world's leading financial institutions, including ____________ ___ ______, _________, _______, and ______ have formed ________ to build infrastructure based on blockchain technology, and have engaged several national central banks, including the government of Singapore and the Bank of Canada in participation.
Cryptocurrencies
A digital asset where a secure form of mathematics (cryptography) is used to handle transactions, control the creation of additional units, and verify the transfer of assets. Cryptocurrencies usually take advantage of a technology known as a blockchain.
Blockchain
A distributed and decentralized ledger that records and verifies transactions and ownership, making it difficult to tamper with or shut down.
cheaper, faster, secure, exchanging value, recording ownership, adoption
A paper by Deloitte University sees the blockchain as far more than a replacement for money—it could make all sorts of financial transactions better by (potentially) making them __________, _________, and more __________. At its core, blockchains are a *standard for securely _____________________ _________ and ______________ ____________ over a network without an intermediary*. Most new blockchain technologies use software that exists outside of bitcoin (network effects are at work here—success will depend on the widespread ____________ of any new blockchain standard).
Which of the following is true of disruptive technologies? A. Initially under performing incumbents, over time their performance attributes improve to the point where they invade established markets. B. Disruptive technologies and disruptive innovations are independent concepts. C. The term disruptive technologies is a simple one because few technologies are able to create market shocks and catalyze growth. D. They come to market with a set of performance attributes that existing customers have demanded. E. The tech industry is the least fertile ground for disruptive technologies.
A. Initially under performing incumbents, over time their performance attributes improve to the point where they invade established markets.
Identifying and nurturing potentially disruptive technologies requires constant vigilance and relentless and broad environmental scanning. A. True B. False
A. True
Low-margin retailers are interested in bitcoin because it may allow the elimination of fees associated with credit card transactions. A. True B. False
A. True
Big firms fail to see disruptive innovations as a threat because: A. they primarily focus on the bottom line. B. they concentrate only on future financial performance. C. they don't indulge in playing catch-up. D. they fail to listen to customer needs. E. they overestimate the impact of these innovations.
A. they primarily focus on the bottom line.
single, software, open source
Also note that there is no blockchain software used by all efforts. While bitcoin has its own blockchain, other cryptocurrencies have their own versions, often involving different __________. Many firms have also developed their own technologies or created solutions built on existing ______ __________ efforts.
ASICs, FGPA, Intel x86, Google
Also, as was mentioned in the prior chapter, technologies such as _______ and __________-based chips are being used by data centers with heavy artificial intelligence and machine learning needs, further eating into a market that was once dominated by the ______ ____ standard. ________ has built its own AI-focused chips. It could do this because it buys on such a massive scale that customization made sense—and by selling access to these chips via its cloud computing services, Google aims to make the market for its own chips even bigger. In fact, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook are all working on their own chip designs—all firms are among the biggest buyers of technology and each is a customer of Intel.
online
Although you might see news reports that include a graphic of a bitcoin token, that's all just the graphic arts department. In reality there is no such physical representation of bitcoin—it exists only and entirely _________.
option
An ________ is a right, but not the obligation to make an investment so if a firm has a strake in a startup, it may consider acquiring the firm, or if it supports a separate decision, it can invest more resources if that division shows promise.
liquid
An asset which is liquid can be easily turned into cash. Stocks of public companies traded on major exchanges are highly liquid. Private shares in a company that has not yet gone public are illiquid since there is not a readily available public market.liquid
Bitcoin
An open source, decentralized payment system (sometimes controversially referred to as a digital, virtual, or cryptocurrency) that operates in a peer-to-peer environment, without bank or central authority.
Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin, asset
And bitcoin isn't the only player in town. Other cryptocurrencies, such as ________, _________, and ________, have all grown to the point where the value of tokens in circulation is well into the billions of dollars for each. Deloitte has written that the negative hype surrounding bitcoin and related technologies has underestimated its potential to revolutionize not just payments but all sorts of ______ transactions.
Moore's Law, invade, low-power, cheaper
As ________ ______ advances, ARM chips (once computational weaklings) are now fast enough to ________ the established market for server chips. This has left Intel scrambling to create ____-________ chip offerings in an attempt to attack ARM in smartphones and satisfy the needs of its traditional customer base. ARM chips can't run software that conforms to the Intel x86 standard used in most PCs and servers, so all of a firm's old code would need to be rewritten and compiled (turned into patterns of ones and zeros that can be executed by a chip's instruction set) to work on any ARM-powered servers, laptops, or desktops (a potentially big switching cost). But the chips are also _________, threatening Intel margins.
community of computer users, ledger
As the Wall Street Journal points out, most documents "can be digitized, codified and inserted into the blockchain, a record that is indelible, cannot be tampered with, and whose authenticity is verified by the consensus of a _____________ ___ ___________ ________ " and not by the "discretionary order of a centralized authority." It's important to recognize that while bitcoin uses a blockchain_________, not all blockchain technologies use the bitcoin blockchain. If blockchain transactions are to emerge as mainstream, governments would likely want to link to such systems when ownership needs to be verified, but all this is technically possible to build, and if it works, the disruption across industries would be massive.
Bitcoin transactions are recorded in a public ledger known as the bitcoin wallet. A. True B. False
B. False
Cross-border bank transfers are not likely to adopt bitcoin since these functions are already electronic and highly automated. A. True B. False
B. False
Firms that listen to existing customers and tailor offerings based on this input are far more likely to identify potentially disruptive technologies than those that experiment with products that existing customers do not demand. A. True B. False
B. False
listen, focus, poor-performing, margins
Big firms fail to see disruptive tech as a threat because they ________ to their customers and ______ on the bottom line. And because of the first characteristic mentioned, the majority of a firm's current customers don't want the initially ______-________ new tech. The most disruptive tech also often have worse ________ than the initially dominant incumbent offerings.
early mover, 800, Ethereum
Bitcoin used its ______ ______ status to jumpstart network effects value from a larger number of buyers and sellers. However, there are quite a few alternatives to bitcoin. The Guardian says nearly 800 cryptocurrencies are in existence, with some of the larger efforts being Ethereum, Ripple, and Litecoin. You might even have seen a NASCAR sponsored by Dogecoin (the fact that this bitcoin rival was named after an Internet meme dog doesn't help credibility among the financially conservative). As of this writing, ________ is getting the most traction. Its market cap had, at one point, come within 80 percent of the total value of all bitcoin. Larger firms, including Microsoft and JP Morgan Chase, are working together on Ethereum-based technologies, which from the start have been designed to be a transaction-recording platform as well as a cryptocurrency. To get a look at the current value of leading cryptocurrencies, check out https://coinmarketcap.com/.
bank, Verification, time-stamping, miners
Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies are transferred from person to person like cash. Instead of using a _______ as a middleman, transactions are recorded in a distributed, decentralized public ledger (known as a blockchain). ______________ and ______________ of transactions in the blockchain is performed across the network by a pool of users known as ________.
disrupt, property, contracts, management
Blockchain technology has the potential to _______ all sorts of systems that rely on intermediaries, including the transfer of ___________, execution of _________, and identity _______________. The paper's authors envision using the blockchain as a sort of ownership stamp that is attached to things like vehicles, where repair history and accidents can be referenced to an ownership-representing bitcoin fragment in the way registry paperwork happens now, and where vehicle titles can be transferred by passing the ownership token from one person to another—no lawyers, no notaries, no vehicle registration required—and hence the predictions of less expensive, faster, and more secure transactions.
AirSwap, 50
Bloomberg offers a look inside an initial coin offering. The ICO of Brooklyn-based _________ shows fundraising through phishing attempts, eventually raising $____ million.
cloud
But the future is in the _______, and for conventional packaged software firms (Intuit), this could be threatening.
aquire
Buyer beware: many times firm can't _________ themselves out of missing a market
Which of the following is a way to recognize potentially disruptive innovations? A. Indulge in bottom-line obsession. B. Become more consumer-focused. C. Seeking the opinions of venture capitalists, research academics, and passionate internal engineering staff. D. Increase conversation within same product groups. E. Pay attention to slow-expensive advancements in technology.
C. Seeking the opinions of venture capitalists, research academics, and passionate internal engineering staff.
18, 500
Consider the thirteen guys behind Instagram. In about ___ months, they built a billion-dollar business, and that now has over ____ million users worldwide.
micropayments
Crypto also opens up the possibility of _____________(or small digital payments) that are now impractical because of fees (think of everything from gum to bus fare to small donations).
reputation, Satoshi Nakamoto.
Cryptocurrencies have a ____________ problem. Being embraced by drug dealers, extortion hackers, tax evaders, and fringe libertarians doesn't instill a lot of confidence. And it doesn't help that bitcoin was created by a mysterious, unknown entity referred to as _________ ___________.
cryptocurrency
Despite this checkered start, many think bitcoin and similar schemes (often referred to as _______________) could upend money as we know it.
film, record, mobile, Internet, Skype
Digital cameras have wiped out ______ use, the ________ store is dead, _______ phones for many are their only phone, in many living in merging markets the smartphone is one's only personal computer, ___________ phone service is often indistinguishable from conventional calls, and ________ can be considered the world's largest long-distance phone company
development
Employees who feel so passionate about a trajectory for future tech that they are willing to leave the firm and risk it all on a new endeavor may be a signal that a ___________ is worth paying attention to
expertise, scale, customer
Disruptive innovation have amassed _______ and often benefit from increasing _________ and a growing ________ base.
customers, value network
Early _________ for a disruptive tech are part of a different "__________ _______" than anything addressed by incumbent market leaders
IG, Whatsapp
FB was famously late to the mobile revolution and felt forced to make billion - and multibillion-dollar purchases for ___________ and _____________
PayPal, 1/3, credit, industrialized, limited use
Firms looking at cross-border funds transfer are going after a big market: global remittances total over half a trillion dollars. Cryptocurrencies might also lubricate the wheels of commerce between nations where credit card companies and firms like _________ don't operate, and where internationally accepted cards are tough to obtain. Less than _____ of the population in emerging markets has any sort of credit card, but bitcoin could provide a vehicle to open this market up to online purchases. Remember, credit cards aren't just about cash, they're also about ______, and currently credit works for most people in highly __________ economies. But unique, albeit ________ ______, cases are often the first step in the march taken by eventually disruptive technologies.
lettuce ecoli, RFID
Food-borne illness and a tainted food supply can be a terrifying problem with serious financial and societal implications. The US romaine ___________ ______epidemic sickened people across 25 states and estimates of impact run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. In China, a compound used in plastics production had tainted milk, sickening some 300,000 dairy customers and killing at least six infants. Other recent examples of food foul play include wood pulp blended with Parmesan cheese, horse meat passed off as beef, and plastic found in chicken nuggets. While _______ tags are being used throughout the agricultural industry to track items, another method of following food from farm to fork is the blockchain.
consumer benefit, international remittance customers, credit card
For cryptocurrencies, ____________ ___________ needs to be stronger. While _______________ _____________ ____________ and those otherwise left out of the banking and credit card system can see immediate benefit from crypto cash replacements, most of the population isn't impacted by this market. For most, cryptocurrency is a difficult to understand and often difficult to use technology that offers little benefit. Slick apps and firms offering streamlining support services that allow, for example, the easy and quick conversion from dollars (or other currencies) to cryptocurrencies and back will help, but unless this offers consumer value beyond the _______ _______, few will bother to switch from plastic.
Richard Gingras
Google News exec _________ admitted they missed mobile and social trends
Clayton Christensen
Harvard professor who offers a theory about giant-killing market shocks
venture capitalists, mentorship, dumb money, token crowdsales
ICOs got a lot of press in early 2017. The startup Golem, described as a sort of Airbnb where organizations can sell excess computing power, raised $8.6M in twenty-nine minutes. Brave, a browser startup from a former Mozilla CEO, raised $35M in thirty seconds. Another firm, Gnosis, a decentralized predictive market platform, raised $12.5M in twelve minutes. These firms needed to create awareness so that there were buyers for the tokens offered in the ICO, but buyer beware—neither firm had a product that had passed its beta-testing phase at the time of the offering. TechCrunch reports that according to its own data, over the fourteen months from the start of 2017 through the first two months of 2018, blockchain and related startups raised nearly $1.3 billion in traditional venture capital rounds worldwide, but nearly $4.5 billion was raised via ICOs. That's about 3.5x more money from the crowd than from the VC! ICOs have downsides for firms raising capital, too. Startups raising money via an ICO token sale might hit their fundraising goals, but professional investors such as ________ __________ and angel investors that are the traditional source of capital for startups, typically come with professional networks that can offer advice, _________, and important contacts for recruiting, sales, legal advice, and more (some describe ICOs as "_____ _______" as opposed to "smart money"). Right now, ICOs are pretty much an unregulated dice roll. In the early days of this model of fundraising, 35 percent of ICOs failed completely but 45 percent showed returns in excess of 500 percent. And there's no guarantee that government entities won't try to step in—a good thing if that helps curtail the possibility of sham ICOs used by scammers. Efforts including Ethereum and Storj (an online marketplace for cloud storage) were careful to call their fundraising "_______ ___________," both to help investors understand that they aren't purchasing equity or a security, and to try to make it clear to the SEC that they aren't offering something akin to stock.
executive, protect, financial
In many ways, Yahoo!'s mobile team was premature, but more importantly, it didn't have an ___________ champion to _______ and nurture the team during the pioneering phase when ____________ results couldn't be realized
transaction volume, network effect
Increased ___________ __________should help stabilize the market, increase liquidity, and bring some stability to the currency. Substantial volume means a _________ _____________ is present—the technology becomes valuable and useful because so many others are using it. But while volume will be vital for any cryptocurrency or blockchain standard, bitcoin has a long way to go. As of mid-2018, bitcoin's highest daily transaction volume was about 440,000 compared with the 150 million daily transactions that Visa processes. And to get to that kind of volume, bitcoin will need more infrastructure support. Visa currently has the capability to handle 56,000 transactions a second, while the entire bitcoin miner network could only handle seven. That's not seven thousand, that's one hand plus two fingers.
conversations, rotate, Facebook
Increasing _______________ across product groups and between managers and technologists can also be helpful. It's common for many firm to regularly __________ staff to improve idea sharing and innovation. __________ for example, requires employees to leave their teams for new assignments at least once every 18 months
Nationwide
Insurer ___________ wants to put the blockchain on your side with a solution to help verify insurance coverage in real time, benefiting the insured, insurers, and even law enforcement.
Visa, Mastercard, PayPal
It's been noted that following the revelations in WikiLeaks, ________, ______________, and ___________ refused donations to WikiLeaks. In that aftermath, bitcoin became the go-to vehicle for those supporting WikiLeaks' efforts. If a bitcoin transaction is not permitted in your country, go abroad and you've got full access to everything in your wallet.
cross-border remittance, expanding e-commerce in emerging markets, Western Union, MoneyGram
It's often thought that cryptocurrencies could be a boon for international commerce, especially for __________--___________ ________________and in _____________ ____-_____________ ___ ______________ _______________. Family members working abroad often send funds home via services like ____________ ________ or ____________, but these can cost $10 to $17 for a $200 transfer and take up to five days to clear in some countries.
builders, China, CA, NY, Japan, Russia, Australia, operating guidelines, legal protections
Many firms that hope to strengthen cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies (including rival currencies, wallet _______, exchanges, and payment processors) have struggled under an ambiguous cloud of not knowing how they will be regulated and what legal issues apply to them. ______ has banned bitcoin, but ___ has moved forward to legalize the use of alternative currencies. ___ has announced bitcoin-friendly initiatives. The government of _____ now recognizes bitcoin as a legal payment method, _______ has reversed its initial anti-bitcoin stance, and ______ has eliminated a double-taxation penalty impacting bitcoin. The US government has also created regulations around bitcoin that make it less amorphous and safer for investors, while the IRS ruled that bitcoins are property. Trends seem to be moving in the right direction, but financial institutions don't work well in environments of uncertainty, and clear ___________ _____________ and _____________ _________ will be vital for bitcoin to thrive.
Quark, Curie, Internet of Things, heartbeat, Altera
Meanwhile, Intel has developed lower-power chips to attack the smartphone market where ARM dominates. Intel's ________ and ______ chips aim even lower, targeting the ____________________. To demonstrate possibilities, Intel's CEO has been wearing a "smart shirt" embedded with sensors that monitor ___________ and other vitals. And Intel's acquisition of _________ was meant to give it a strong offering in FPGA chips popular with the data center machine learning crowd.
Apple, Google, purchase, vigilance, environmental scanning
Microsoft bought Nokia after its continued attempts at mobile missed , deeply lagging behind _________ and _________. Just two years after making the purchase, Microsoft wrote down the Nokia acquisition by over $7.6 billion dollars (a loss that was more than its ___________ price). Identifying and nurturing potentially disruptive tech requires constant ________ and relentless and broad ___________________ ______________.
former employees of the disrupted giants
Note that many disruptive firms were started by
insurance, bankruptcy, jobs, illness, saved
Of course, blockchain is just software, so procedures and auditing need to be put in place to ensure that the data that goes into the system is, in fact, valid, but the societal impact may be massive. _________ lowered, supplier and restaurant __________ avoided, _____ saved, ________ avoided, and of course, lives ______. One study estimates that for every 1 percent reduction in food-borne diseases in the US, would prevent half a million people from getting sick, resulting in a net $700 million benefit from reduced sick days and work interruptions
Carrefour, blockchain, World Wildlife Fund
One firm experimenting with the technology is French department store giant ______________. The retailer sells over a million chickens under its house brand, and now the life story of those birds is available by scanning a QR code on the package. Carrefour's supply chain is set up so that each step along the way, from hatchery to producer to store, is tracked via a _____________ entry. And the blockchain isn't just for the birds. The__________ __________ ______ is using an RFID plus blockchain solution to track tuna from boat to processing plant, potentially keeping your sushi ocean friendly and healthy.
Intuit, personal finance, small business, tax prep,
One firm that appears to be successfully navigating the rough waters of disruptive innovation is _______ The highly profitable, multibillion-dollar firm is the leader in several packaged software categories, including ________ _________ (Quicken), ________ ________ (QuickBooks), and ______ _________(TurboTax) software.
Intel
One firm threatened by disruptive innovation brought about by the advent of new fast and cheap technology is, ironically, processor giant _______.
scalability, hard fork, standard
Perhaps most troubling, early bitcoin technology couldn't handle increasing transaction volume. A limitation in the structure of underlying bitcoin software limits transaction processing, and processing times ballooned to the point where several firms that once accepted bitcoin have stopped doing so. Fixes for the scalability problem (which has also hampered other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum) are possible, and several have been proposed, but issuing a fix involves a massive upgrade of software, and certain factions of the community (including many in the large network of small-time bitcoin miners) are wary of the impact of any change. A controversial 2017 proposal to improve __________ and reduce steadily increasing bitcoin transaction costs resulted in a "______ ______" of bitcoin into an adjacent currency known as bitcoin cash. Your old bitcoin could work on the new network, but there were effectively two ledgers at that point. Confused? It gets worse. Less than a year after bitcoin cash appeared, there were no less than 44 additional "forks" of bitcoin, new software ledgers that TNW referred to as "useless." Blockchain technology is hurt by a lack of standards, and while there may be successes if a single ________ emerges around, say, food safety or music licensing, we're not there yet. As crypto continues to get repeatedly "forked up," bitcoin balkanization and other software schisms will reinforce a perception that these technologies are not yet ready for widespread use.
banking, entertainment
Real world examples of blockchain technology can be found across industries—from __________ to _______________—practical examples and experiments that point to disruptive possibilities.
customer-focused, experimental, researchers, capitalists,
Recognizing potentially disruptive innovations involves removing shortsighted, ______________-________, and bottom-line-obsessed blinders. Having conversation with those on the __________________ edge of advancement is key. Top-tier scientific ________________ and venture ____________ can be particularly good sources for info on new trends
initial coin offering, capital, liquid
Some firms are engaging in a new type of fundraising, widely referred to as an ICO or ________ ______ _______. Firms raising money via an ICO issue a coin or other token that represents some form of value. While some ICO tokens represent an ownership stake in the firm that can even be matched to voting rights and future dividend distributions like a stock, others simply issue an amount of a new cryptocurrency (e.g., a bitcoin rival), or offer usage credits or loyalty points for a given service—usually something they plan on building. In this respect, ICOs can be a sort of crowd sale and share something in common with crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter. The advantage of an ICO for issuing firms is that they can raise ________ with limited to no regulation. The advantage for consumers is that a token can be instantly traded with anyone, provided the coin or token received is linked to some publicly available blockchain used by both buyer and seller. An investor that owns shares in a public company can trade those shares in the stock market for cash. But an investor that makes a private investment in a pre-IPO company has private shares that are less ________(i.e., harder to turn into cash). In theory, the owner of ICO tokens (even those that aren't tied to any sort of equity or ownership stake in a firm) can trade them at any time, if they can find a buyer; no need to own publicly traded shares or even a stock market.
McKinsey & Company, 1, 109, 5, cut, McCaw Cellular, Bell South
Sometimes consulted experts get the trends wrong. At the down of commercial mobile phone tech AT&T hired stories consulting firm __________________ to forecast US cellphone use. The prediction of 900,000 subscribers was less than ___% of the actual figure of _______ million (worldwide mobile subscribers would balloon to roughly ___ billion a decade later). Despite having invented the cell phone in its Bell Lab, AT&T ____ future investment in the tech-based on the incorrect prediction. In order to make up for the mistake, AT&T eventually acquired ___________ for $12.6 billion. The need to further expand into mobile was also credited with AT&T's $67 billion merger with ______ _______
servers, margins, ARM
The Intel firm's most lucrative chips are the ones in ___________—they cost a lot and have great ____________. But a market in which Intel never had much success is now threatening to invade the server space. Chips based on Intel rival ______ power nearly all of the smartphones on the planet. Samsung, Apple, Motorola, Xiaomi, and LG all use those chips.
The Bank of England, blockchain
The ____ ______ ___ ___________has issued a report describing bitcoin as a "significant innovation" that could have "far-reaching implications." Others look beyond crypto as a money substitute, instead focusing on an enabling technologies known as the _____________, a highly secure, decentralized, distributed transaction recording and verification mechanism that has been adapted for all sorts of uses, including stock sales and digital document signing.
newspaper, 118, 18
The ___________ industry has been gutted by Internet alternatives to key products, and online ad revenue for newspapers isn't enough to offset the loss of traditional sources of income. As an example of how bad things have been for newspapers, consider the San Jose Mercury News, the paper of record in Silicon Valley. In a span of five years, the Merc saw revenue from classified ads drop from $____ million to $___ million. Says Scott Herhold, a Mercury News columnist, "Craigslist has disemboweled us."
Nasdaq
The ___________ stock exchange has tested blockchain technology for transactions in its private market subsidiary, stating the exchange could eventually use the technology for Nasdaq trades in the public market. Nasdaq is also using the technology to allow private companies to issue stock and stockholders of public companies to vote their shares.
tools, services, do-it-yourself, cloud, Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft
The availability of ______ and _______ from mainstream suppliers are likely to spread blockchain use. Blockchain services, which might include ___-___-_______ software and ______ services or consulting and setup for creating a functioning market using blockchain, are now offered by mainstream tech firms like _______, ___________, _____, and ____________
cash-cow
The best engineers are likely going to be assigned to work on ______-_____ offerings, not questionable new stuff.
threatened, engineers
The desert-dwelling creosote bush excretes and drops a toxin that kills nearby plants that might otherwise siphon away resources like water or soil nutrients. ______________ managers can act just like the bush - they'll pull high quality __________ off emerging projects if a firm's top offerings need staff to grow
cloud-based, SnapTax, 10, connected services,
The firm's TurboTax now has ________-_______ offerings and a free ____________ app—take a photo of your W2 and the app fills out your taxes for you automatically (you pay to electronically file). And engineers are able to use ___% of their work time to explore new, experimental ideas. While so many firms have been thwarted by listening to existing customers and clinging to old models that are about to become obsolete, Intuit has managed to find growth through disruption. So-called ___________ _____________ that either run in the cloud or enhance existing offerings make up over 65 percent of the firm's revenues.
Xerox, Hewlett-Packard, Salesforce.com
The founders of Adobe came from _________,Apple's founders worked for ____________-__________, Marc Benioff worked for Oracle before founding software-as-a-service giant ____________________
Singapore, Australia, Canadian, Kazakhstan, short-term, 1.3
The government of ____________ has worked with several large banks in a test of its own digital currency, used in a trial of a blockchain-driven system for interbank payments. The National Bank of ___________ and the ____________ Imperial Bank of Commerce have tested international currency transfer using the Ripple. The Central Bank of _______________ has developed a blockchain system to sell ____________ bonds directly to retail customers without commissions or transaction fees. These technologies have demonstrated enough promise that venture capitalists have poured over $____ billion into crypto and blockchain startups in the fourteen months from January 2017 through February 2018 and this does not include ICOs (initial coin offerings) described later.
price elasticity, catalyst
The market-creating ___________ ____________ of fast/cheap tech acts as a ___________ for the fall of giants
tokens, transaction, peer-produced, private key, wallet, open source, altered
The miners get an incentive for being involved: they can donate their computer power in exchange for the opportunity to earn additional __________ in the cryptocurrency—for example, fractions of bitcoin—and sometimes miners earn modest ___________ fees. This means bitcoin and other crypto is a _______________ financial instrument. While the ledger records transactions, no one can transfer the asset without a special password (called a _________ ________, which is often stored in what is referred to as a cryptocurrency _______, which is really just an encrypted holding place). The technology behind most crypto and blockchain technologies is _________ ___________ and considered rock solid. Passwords are virtually impossible to guess, and verification makes sure no one spends the same currency in two places at once. And the decentralized nature of the system makes it extremely unlikely that the system can be directly tampered with or __________.
rivals, power-efficient
Unlike Intel, ARM doesn't manufacture chips itself—instead, it licenses its hyperefficient designs to _________ who tweak them in their own offerings. ARM designs are especially attractive to smartphone manufacturers because they are far more ______-__________ than the chips Intel sells for PCs, laptops, and servers. The Intel chips were never designed for power efficiency; they evolved from markets where computers were always plugged in.
innovate, customer, brand, threaten
When East Coast storage giant EMC (now part of Dell) acquired a majority ownership in Silicon Valley's multibillion-dollar VMware, it left the latter largely free to ___________, nurture its __________ base, and grow its own ____________, even as some of the firm's product and partners ________ parent core products. VMware even has it s own publicly traded _______, despite the fact that shares are majority held by the now-_________ Dell
Only the Paranoid Survive,
Who wins remains to be seen, but Intel's battle cry comes from the title of a book written by former Intel CEO, the late Andy Grove—______ ____ ___________ __________. An adherent to the power of the Disruptive Innovation framework (Grove and Christensen once appeared together on the cover of Forbes magazine), Grove stated, "[The] models didn't give us any answers, but they gave us a common language and a common way to frame the problem so that we could reach consensus around a counterintuitive course of action."
former CEO struggled to justify keeping talented engineers on underperforming projects
Why was Yahoo!'s mobile team disbanded?
Innovator's Dilemma
Yahoo! ran into a classic ____________ ____________ (the name sometimes is ascribed to disruptive innovation theory, which is the title of one of Clayton Christensen's books
private key, fraud,
You can create your anonymous __________ _________ and have someone transfer funds to you, or earn cryptocurrency via mining, and no one can see who you are. This also means that these distributed, decentralized blockchains have *no single controlling entity where ________, corruption, damage, hacking, or government shutdown could occur.* While governments can try to shut down or legislate blockchain activity within their borders, there's no single "bitcoin" company, no "blockchain" organization to take to court and force their servers to be unplugged.
De Beers
___ ___________, a firm that mines, trades, and markets about one-third of the world's diamonds, is developing blockchain technology for tracing diamonds from the mine to the customer purchase, a practice that should reduce fraud and help ensure that gems in the age of "Blood Diamonds" are indeed conflict free.
IBM
____ is bringing together major players worldwide, including food suppliers Dole, Nestlé, Unilever, and Tyson Foods, plus retailers Walmart, Kroger, and China's JD.com, in a similar scheme to track items through the food supply..
HP, AMD, Microsoft, patent violations
____ offers a line of servers that use ARM logic, and _______, an Intel rival that has long made chips compatible with Intel's x86 standard, has a new line of server chips based on the incompatible but power-stingy ARM logic. ____________ has committed to using ARM chips in its data center, it offers an ARM-compatible version of Windows Server, and it is working with a consortium of firms to provide a better translation of programs that run on Intel's x86 standard, so that this software could be translated on-the-fly to run on ARM-based chips (Intel threatens to sue over _________ _________).
civil libertarians, transparency, privacy, blockchain, anonymous, private-key
______ __________ like the idea of transactions happening without the prying eyes of data miners inside card companies, having their transaction history shared by others, or the government. As Wired points out, blockchain technologies *straddle the line between _________________ and ____________*. All transactions are recorded in the open, via the _____________ but individuals can be _____________.
IBM
______ has a growing blockchain practice, including efforts focused on managing products in the firm's supply chain, tracking items location and ownership from sourced raw materials through distribution to customers. IBM is also creating a whole new firm with shipping giant Maersk (look for their name along the side of container ships) to commercialize blockchain use in shipping.
analog, digital
________ -----> __________
Spotify
________ acquired the blockchain startup Mediachain Labs to help the firm build attribution systems, so that music rights holders are tracked and paid.
fast, cheap
________ technology fueled the Internet and created a superior substitute for newspaper classifieds—ads that were unlimited in length, could sport photos, link to an e-mail address, and be modified or taken down at a moment's notice, and were, in many cases, free.
Lucrative, credible
_________ old tech has a _______ case for big budget allocations and is first in line when planning corporate priorities.
Kodak
_________, the poster child for the disrupted market leader, is developing blockchain system for tracking rights and payments for photographers.
acquisitions, Mint.com, free, cannibalizing, alternatives
___________ are one way Intuit has dealt with disruption. ___________ is a personal finance offering delivered over the Web and in an app that wasn't just cheaper than Intuit's Quicken product—it was offered for ______. (Mint makes money by making recommendations of ways to improve your finances—and takes a cut from these promotions.) Intuit decided to buy the upstart rival even though it was clearly __________________ Intuit's efforts. It even killed an internally developed but less successful rival product following the acquisition. Mint today remains as a separate brand and is helping inform the rest of the firm on how to succeed with _______________ to packaged software.
Voltality, Ethereum, 50, 20
___________ is also an issue. The chart below shows bitcoin's wild ride, over a less than 18-month period, swinging from a low of $368 to nearly $20,000. The world's second largest cryptocurrency, _________, saw its value increase ___-fold during the first half of 2017, but lost ___ percent of its value shortly after an erroneous report that its founder had died in a car crash. This kind of volatility makes bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies less useful as dollar-like currencies, limiting its appeal to speculators, who often seem like get-rich-quick schemers, or the much smaller legitimate market that is looking for in-and-out transactions such as cross-border payments. Some also worry about a crypto valuation bubble.
Incumbent, needs, demanded, invade, better, lower
____________ tech satisfy a sweet spot of consumer _______. It often improves over time, even overshooting the performance needs of the market. Disruptive tech comes to market with performance attributes not ________ by existing customers, but they improve over time until the innovation can __________ established markets. Disruptive innovations don't need to perform _________ than the incumbent; they simply need to perform well enough to appeal to the customers of the incumbents ( and often do so at a _________ price)
FB
_____________ has a blockchain division run by the former head of PayPal.
security, mt. Gox, wallets, virus
______________ concerns also pose a problem. While bitcoin software is considered to be solid, it's not a guarantee that other entities are as secure. The multimillion-dollar theft from ___.____ is a prime example. The ________ that hold your private key are also potentially vulnerable. If your computer is wiped out by a _______and you haven't written down your password or saved a backup copy in another secure and accessible location, you're hosed; it's like money burned up in a fire. Hackers that steal passwords—whether they're on your computer or the cloud—effectively have access to anything in your crypto wallet; they can walk away with all your cash and it's unlikely that there'll be a way to recover the loot. And for all of the security and anonymity promised by the blockchain, if the sender or receiver of any data is compromised, information could escape into the wild or be captured by the nefarious.
Overstock.com
______________has used blockchain to issue corporate bonds, and was one of the first well-known Internet retailers to accept bitcoin as payment. The firm has since created its own subsidiary tZero, to work on blockchain innovations.
decentralized
blockchain is ______________
stock sales, digital document signing
blockchain is used for (2)
disruptive technology
disruptive innovation is also referred to as
market share, revenues, profits, losses
disruptive tech will take ________ ______ away from a firm's higher-margin incumbent offerings. The result of the transition could contract corporate ________________, lower _________, and incur __________ - a tough thing for many shareholders to swallow
bitcoin, miners, 6, property
is the transaction method favored by cybercriminals and illegal trade networks like the now shuttered Silk Road drugs bazaar. It's not backed by gold or government and appeared seemingly out of thin air as the result of mathematics performed by so-called "_________." It's been a wildly volatile currency, where an amount that could purchase a couple of pizzas would, in three years, appreciate to be worth over $____ million. Its one-time largest exchange handled hundreds of millions in digital value, yet it was originally conceived as the "Magic: The Gathering Online card eXchange" (Mt. Gox), and that service suffered a massive breach where the digital equivalent of roughly $450 million disappeared. Many don't even know what to call bitcoin. Is it a cryptocurrency, a digital currency, digital money, or a virtual currency? The US government has ruled that bitcoin is ____________ (US marshals have auctioned off bitcoins seized from crooks).
parent, geographical, autonomy
it's also important that these experimental efforts are nurtured in a way that is sufficiently separate from the ________ - _______________ distance helps, and it's critical to offer staff working on the innovation a high degree of _____________
market share
many dominant firms have seen ________ ________ evaporate due to the rise of a phenomenon knows as disruptive tech
