Is the Blockchain Democratizing Innovation?
The surge of new technologies over the past few decades has had a tremendous impact in all areas of life. The internet, for instance, gave us unprecedented levels of communication and informational access. It has fundamentally changed the way we do talk to one another and do business, things that remained nearly unchanged for centuries.
Specific technologies have this effect, things that slowly but surely creep into society. These tend to be rejected at first, but over time the benefits outweigh the doubter’s stubbornness and humanity inches ever forward.
Anoop Nannra is a veteran of the tech industry and technology strategist at Cisco. They recently sat down with Tech Republic in an interview at Mobile World Congress 2018. In this dialogue, Anoop spoke about the blockchain and its potential to shape innovation in a similarly the way internet has shaped communication and why Cisco has thrown so many resources into the niche as of late:
“When the internet was created, what it did over the last 20-25 years is it’s fundamentally democratized access to information. In the blockchain space, with the blockchain technology that’s emerging, what we’re seeing is a dramatic change where blockchain has the ability and is actually democratizing innovation itself. If you look at where innovation is happening within the blockchain stack, it’s at the protocol layers, at the smart contract layers, even at the ledger storage itself, what you’re seeing is a global impact in people’s ability to deliver value into these spaces with technology.”
“There Hasn’t Been the Emergence of A Killer Application…”
Nannra goes on to mention the global innovation that they are looking at through the blockchain communities. Where companies are starting up by rallying forces from all over the globe to create platforms that just simply weren’t possible for the advent of this tech built by those who want to see actual change in the world. Though Nannra sees the future the blockchain is heading towards, he thinks there is a lot of work to do still on using the technology properly:
“I think one of the challenges that still exists within the blockchain space is that there hasn’t been the emergence of a killer application and when we started doing our investigation in blockchain and its application in enterprise, we realized that supply chain is an interesting opportunity, an interesting space where there’s significant value that can be extracted…”
The supply chain field is where Nannra’s interest lies for Cisco. Being already one of the most significant supply chain operations currently, he wants to set a new global standard for how things should be operated. By bringing the inherently efficient blockchain tech to the equation, he hopes to do just that in the hopes that it will create for Cisco and other companies within their spectrum.
It’s fair to say that Anoop, as is Cisco, are looking at the current innovations evolving through the blockchain and are highly interested in the way this is going to affect technology as a whole. Cisco is no small name in technology, so be assured they arere not the only ones starting to put their hat in the crypto-ring.
