“The world is ushering in a new era and new opportunities. The digital economy will reshape the world economy, and bring about new models. Not only China but the whole world will enter a new era.” Ma Yun, Chairman of Alibaba's Board of Directors remarks the digital economy.
When the wind blows, it senses the direction and it wins the starting trend. It is not difficult to find that the digital economy is expanding into every corner of production and life, bringing about comprehensive changes to the human society and promoting the transformation of the economy from exogenous to endogenous growth. As the basic technology of the next-generation Internet, blockchain not only has close links with big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence, but also is able to combine with a wide range of application scenarios and become an important technology foundation for the development of digital economy.
Are you going follow the trend or waiting to be blown off by the wind when in the midst of a wave? For the enterprise, to think about the future is not only necessary to fully clarify the business logic behind the digital economy, but also to know what kind of far-reaching impact it will bring to the company.
Blockchain will open a new era of the Internet
Through the vision described in Nakamoto's white paper, we can predict that the blockchain will open a new era of the Internet. However, Satoshi Nakamoto only mentioned the monetary aspect, and did not mention to create second era of Internet, nor did he mention issues such as changing company models, reforming institutions, or raising civilization. Based on these years research on the blockchain, I have extracted seven elements that have influenced the digital economy's organizational model.
First, decentralization. There is a concept of cost, such as transaction costs, the cost of finding money, and the cost of finding workers. In fact, decentralized organizations have no leaders. For example, if a VC company wants to invest in an innovative field, it first needs to be financed, and such an entity may return funds to investors in the future. In other words, it is indeed possible that a company will have no employees in the future.
Second, collaboration. For example, to recruit people work in the factory, we need to pay, the cost is called a contract. In an open market, it is better for companies to cooperate than do alone. Nowadays, the boundaries of companies are increasingly blurred, that is, more and more companies want to form a network. In the era of the fourth industrial revolution, it is distributed value creation. The company is more like a network, and the networking companies would have more influence.
Manufacturing itself will also become a network. The original model was to sell products to customers. Customers were passive recipients, but as the environment changed, more and more consumers became producers. I gave it a name in 1994, called Prosumers, which means that a person is both a producer and a consumer. For example, a car company produces highly customized products whose specifications are determined by the consumer and the cars different. In fact, this company is like creating a network of suppliers, and the consumers of cars are working with the company to create and produce cars.
Third, the asset chain. We first pay attention to the supply chain. Currently the total market value of the supply chain has reached 15 trillion, and there are already some excellent companies in this area. One of them is called Spridge. This company uses EDR electronic systems and can mortgage the supply chain to get money, this part of the money can be paid to the user by the RMB or the US dollar, and the user can also pledge the money to a financial institution to make a loan. Therefore, the organizational structure and manufacturing process of the company in the future will undergo great changes.
When everything becomes smart and connected, devices and devices can not only communicate but also make transactions with each other. The equipment in the supply chain becomes a cognitive machine. Through these devices, we can operate independently. This is a completely decentralized way.
Fourth, the Internet of Things. The Internet of Things is also an interconnected concept that allows the real world to become more intelligent and connected.
Fifth, Big data and continuous improvement. Big data is one of the wealth of the third industrial revolution, but it is now undergoing many new and profound changes. Many technology companies can not only collect and transmit relevant data in real time through smart sensors, but also visualize and analyze the activities in the factory in real time. These devices will eventually become autonomous decision makers and everything will go to a new level.
Sixth, transparency. The new business model will have a great impact on transparency. I wrote a book about this 15 years ago. Openness and transparency should be our friends. We should not be afraid of it. When business becomes transparent, there will be many good things happen. In addition, as a company, whether you like it or not, you will become "naked", so you'd better have "a strong body." In other words, transparency will encourage companies to continuously improve and bring about various improvements.
Enhancing transparency will help promote the metabolism of the supply chain. When companies are willing to tell employees about their management decision and compensation, they will help reduce office politics, increase loyalty, and accelerate corporate innovation. BRI members have a set of marketing rules. One of them is that our customers should know all of our information. For large companies, if you want to produce best-selling products, you must do this.
Seventh, cognitive machines. In the research, we have been thinking, can we spontaneously form a cognitive machine. On the one hand, it has a very high degree of intelligence. On the other hand, it is also a very complicated supply chain organization and can produce together with consumers and suppliers. The supply chain will become an asset chain, and the Internet of Things will not only be an information exchange, but also be a vehicle for trading. The application of big data in the future will be even bigger and better, because the blockchain technology guarantees the ability of data. Transparency will be a powerful driving force for the supply chain to promote metabolism. We will create a world in which entities are more autonomous and have better learning capabilities. The supply chain will become a cognitive machine, an autonomous decentralized entity managed by software, autonomous agencies, AI, blockchains, and so on.