Don Tapscott's Blog, page 16

BLOCKCHAIN REVOLUTION: The Brilliant Technology Changing Money, Business and the World

Coming from Portfolio in April 2016

The Portfolio imprint of Penguin Random House has acquired world rights to BLOCKCHAIN REVOLUTION by Don Tapscott, the bestselling author of Wikinomics, and his son Alex Tapscott. This will be the first book to explain why blockchain technology – a truly open, distributed, global platform – will fundamentally change what we can achieve online, how we do it, and who can participate.

Literary agent Wesley Neff at Leighco Inc. negotiated a three-way deal with Adrian Zackheim at Portfolio US, Andrea Magyar at Portfolio Canada, and Joel Rickett at Portfolio UK. Simultaneous publication in all three countries is expected in April 2016.

Over the past thirty years, no theorist of the digital age has better explained the next big thing than Don Tapscott. In Wikinomics (2006) he was the first to show how the Internet provides the first global platform for mass collaboration. Now he writes about a profound technological shift that will change how the world does business – and everything else – using blockchain technology, which powers the digital currency Bitcoin.

The Internet as we know it is great for collaboration and communication, but deeply flawed when it comes to commerce and privacy. The new blockchain technology facilitates peer-to-peer transactions without any intermediary such as a bank or governing body. Keeping the user’s information anonymous, the blockchain validates and keeps a permanent public record of all transactions. This means that personal information is private and secure, while all activity is transparent and incorruptible – reconciled by mass collaboration and stored in code on a digital ledger. In other words we won’t need to trust each other in the traditional sense, because trust is built into the system itself.

Bitcoin is only one application for this great innovation in computer science. The blockchain can hold any legal document, from deeds and marriage licenses to educational degrees and birth certificates. Tapscott calls it “the World Wide Ledger.” It enables smart contracts, decentralized autonomous organizations, decentralized government services, and transactions among things.

The forthcoming book will show how the blockchain will shape the next era of prosperity in finance, business, healthcare, education, governance, and many other fields.

About the authors:

Don Tapscott is the CEO of the Tapscott Group and one of the most influential living theorists about business and society. In November 2013, Thinkers 50 named him the 4th most important business thinker in the world. A June 2013 Forbes.com analysis of social media identified him as the most influential management thinker in the world. He is the author or co-author of 15 widely read books about new technologies and new media, including Wikinomics and The Digital Economy.

Alex Tapscott is a chartered financial analyst, working in New York and Toronto as vice president of institutional equities, at the investment bank Canaccord Genuity. He is on the faculty of the Global Solutions Network Program conducted by the Martin Prosperity Institute, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. He is author of the book, Towards the Breaking Point: The Law and Political Emergency.

Both authors live in Toronto.

 

Don Tapscott Invited To Lecture By Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi

The Majlis of His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, hosted on Wednesday a lecture on “Digital Economy” by Don Tapscott.  The lecture was focused on the digital economy.  Tapscott listed social media, mobility, cloud computing, robots and big data as the key ingredients to transform industrial-age companies into digital natives.

Read the full article here.

Don Tapscott lectures at Mohamed bin Zayed Majlis

The Majlis of His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, hosted on Wednesday a lecture on “Digital Economy” by Don Tapscott.

Read the full article here.

Marketing Chiefs Need To Embrace Technology

We have grown so used to being interconnected, to having the means of communicating with other people or finding out information at the touch of a screen that it is hard to believe that when the current generation of senior managers were in the early stages of their careers Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter did not exist. The thought occurs because Don Tapscott has just published the 20th anniversary edition of The Digital Economy (McGraw Hill), the book that gave many the first glimpses of what today’s business landscape might look like. Tapscott had already made his name by co-authoring Paradigm Shift, a book that – as well as helping to bring a hitherto reasonably obscure scientific term into the mainstream – went some way to explaining that the technological developments emerging in the early 1990s were going to amount to a revolution in how we did business. But The Digital Economy went rather further and – viewed today – was remarkably prescient.

Read the full article on Forbes.

Don Tapscott, The Global Economic Crisis and Capitalism

In a recent article for the magazine “Thinkers”, Don Tapscott writes about the global economic crisis and what it means for capitalism.

“Perhaps the problem is not capitalism per se that is ailing – but rather its first iteration: Industrial capitalism.”

Read the full article in Thinkers – Volume 1, Issue 2 April to June, 2015

Don Tapscott on Digital Disruption

On a recent visit to China, Tapscott, who recently released the 20th anniversary edition of The Digital Economy, talked to CKGSB Knowledge about what the future has in store for us and how we can cope with the disruptions caused by technology.

Read the full interview with The Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business here.

Digital Disruption

Technology is changing how Canada governs itself. The evolution isn’t without risk. In this month’s Canadian Government Executive, Don Tapscott’s prescient words about the ineffectiveness of the current representative system of reform is at risk offer warnings – and solutions – to addressing issues in a modern era.

Read “Global Solution Networks: A revolution in Governance”.

SXSW Preview: What’s the Next Generation Internet? Surprise: It’s all about the Blockchain!

by Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott

Yes, the digital revolution has brought countless wonders. The Internet, World Wide Web, Social Media, Mobile Computing, Geospaciality, Big Data and The Cloud, have enabled myriad wonderful developments in virtually every aspect of life.

But when it comes to business, a careful analysis shows that the changes to date are only scratching the surface. Capitalism’s basic institution, the corporation, has remained relatively unchanged. Hierarchy, vertical integration and bureaucracy — hallmarks of the industrial age still reign. And when it comes to the economy as a whole, the digital revolution has not had a positive impact on prosperity for most. Social inequality is growing and most economists are predicting decades of structural unemployment.

Continue reading on LinkedIn

SXSW Preview: Reality Check: The Dark Side of Digital Economy

Not everything I’ve written holds up well. But in re-reading the Digital Economy for 20th Anniversary edition re-write, I’m both struck by how the book has withstood the test of time, and deeply concerned about where we have arrived.

The subtitle of the book was “Promise and Peril in the Age of Networked Intelligence.” The book was pretty breathless about the opportunities but equally it warned of the huge dangers ahead. I wrote:

Some signs point to a new economy in which wealth is even further concentrated, basic rights like privacy are vanishing, and a spiral of violence and repression undermine basic security and freedoms. Pervasive evidence exists that indicates the basic social fabric is beginning to disintegrate. Old laws, structures, norms, and approaches are proving to be completely inadequate for life in the new economy. While they are crumbling or being smashed, it is not completely clear what should replace them. Everywhere people are beginning to ask, “Will this smaller world our children inherit be a better one?

In hindsight, the digital economy has brought us many wonders. But I’m sad to say that every single “dark side” danger I mentioned in 1995 has in fact come to fruition. I outlined 8 issues.

Keynote Address: Emerging Issues NC

Don Tapscott was the keynote speaker at the North Carolina Emerging Issues Forum. The forum featured some of the world’s top thinkers about the future to speak on the state of innovation, from business to education to health.

Don spoke about trends in the innovation economy and the importance of Millennials.