| | NOVEMBER 20208CIOReviewIN MY OPINIONIN MY OPINIONConsider that Amazon web services was released in 2006, but after thirteen years, even the most sophisticated of companies are still pondering how to make the most of cloud services. In 2010, IBM Watson demonstrated a powerful blend of new technologies that could win against human contestants at the game show Jeopardy, yet firms are just scratching the surface relative to the full potential of Watson-like capabilities of natural language processing and machine learning. More recently, the promise of blockchain's value was received enthusiastically early on by many. Early gains led to the filling of the proverbial reservoir of goodwill, such that firms invested considerable resources toward exploring the emerging idea in hopes of gaining significant returns. The reality is that it will take a long time to bring to fruition production-ready, enterprise grade, value-creating blockchain solutions--with the large network of participants required for success. Furthermore, due to non-technical challenges of establishing governance and incentive modeling, blockchain solutions are likely to take more time to achieve widespread adoption and usefulness than other types of technology advancements. Some are beginning to worry whether the enthusiasm will dwindle and the reservoir of goodwill (and with it, investment) will run dry before we realize blockchain's full value. How can we keep the reservoir full?Recognize the nature of the shift. Blockchain requires a major culture shift. It's a shift from the familiar centralized entity to a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO)--a long, arduous journey to be sure. The playbook for governing such a decentralized network takes time to write. To keep the journey alive in the meantime, small steps forward are needed to demonstrate viability. One likely step may be operating in a hybrid model that balances the goal of a DAO with the realities of existing laws, regulations and organizational risk tolerance. Additionally, incentive models that motivate the desired behavior among stakeholders while sustaining the underlying blockchain-powered solution is another puzzle to solve, and the solution may vary by use case. These challenges differ dramatically from those faced by other technology advancements because, with blockchain, they are not all technical barriers. Overcoming them requires more than a just group of talented engineers and a dataset. It will take creative, busy savvy minds collaborating. In fact, the mindset of enterprise network participants will need to be changed from "competitors who compete" to "competitors who compete AND collaborate." Make use of collaboration. Many of the current blockchain-enabled consortiums By Kyle Culver, Director, Emerging Technologies, HumanaBLOCKCHAIN: THE PATH FORWARD
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