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How blockchain can help marketers build better relationships with their customers

This article originally appeared in the Harvard Business Review. We’ve included an excerpt here.  Blockchain has important implications for marketing and advertising. But according to The CMO Survey, only 8% of firms rate the use of blockchain in marketing as moderately or very important. Blockchain technology is not well understood and subject to a lot of […]

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Blockchain revolution without the blockchain

“It’s really important to look at blockchain technologies separately because they all bring different benefits…and they can be implemented separately.” In this talk, presented at our 2018 Digital Transformation Summit, Hanna Halaburda from the Bank of Canada untangles three elements commonly grouped together under the umbrella term, blockchain technologies: encryption/cryptography, “smart contracts,” and distributed ledgers. Hanna […]

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Is your company ready to buy into the “blockchain” buzz?

“We need to adopt blockchain technology. It’s going to solve all of our problems!” How many times over the past two years have you heard a colleague say this when exploring options for solving some core business problem? Blockchain, mostly due to the hype surrounding Bitcoin, has become the “go to business strategy.” Fueling the […]

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What blockchain can’t do

This article originally appeared in the Harvard Business Review. We’ve included an excerpt here.  Blockchain technology has the potential to do amazing things. It can provide an immutable, digital audit trail of transactions, and can be used to cheaply verify the integrity of data. It can help businesses and individuals agree, on a global scale, […]

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Blockchains are a bad idea: more specifically, blockchains are a very bad idea

“It’s so funny that we were able to build, for example, the pyramids without the blockchain and manage supply chain. And now all of a sudden, everyone is claiming without the blockchain, nothing can get done.” In this flash talk, presented at our 2018 Future Assembly, Professor James Mickens from the Harvard John A. Paulson […]

On Target: rethinking the retail website

This article originally appeared in Working Knowledge.  In the mid-1990s, Target was a discount superstore behemoth. The retailer had set itself apart from chief rival Walmart with a focus on more upscale but wallet-friendly fashion and lifestyle lines, spurring double-digit growth by double-digits each year for more than a decade.

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Evolving digital Baker

What’s the best description of an academic library? The iconic heart of the campus? A quiet, contemplation study space? A buzzing collaboration hive? A vibrant faculty water cooler? Literally miles of unique and rare materials? A virtual gateway to the world of information? A complex organizational knowledge hub? All of the above? Although its shape […]

Sports venue seats

The fan of the future requires venues to be “smart”

The sport industry is at a critical juncture. Over-the-top media platforms allow fans to stream sports content anywhere they go, making one’s couch a more enticing way to watch than the metal seats and long lines. For years, industry executives touted sport as the last holy grail for live entertainment, using this argument to prop […]

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Four guiding principles for driving innovation in established institutions

Innovation has never been more essential to the future of established institutions. As brilliant, forward-thinking disruptors reshape our understanding of everything from healthcare to education, and from handheld technology to air quality, companies and academic institutions must keep up. Better yet, they must find ways to get ahead of the curve to remain relevant to […]

Dominos

Making digital transformation (actually) happen in large organizations

This article originally appeared in Innovation Leader. We’ve included an excerpt below. Read the full interview.  Sunil Gupta has seen a lot of your attempts to make your company more digital. And he is not impressed.

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