T
E
C
H
N
O
L
O
G
Y
PERFORMANCE
DELIVERED
• HEAVY,;DENSE;BALES
• RELIABLE;AUTOMATIC;TIER
• LOW;OPERATING;COST;PER;TON
AmericanBaler.com
800.843.7512 AMERICAN BALER TAKES PERFORMANCE TO NEW HEIGHTS!
INTEGRITY I QUALITY I RELIABILITY I VALUE
panies may be inclined to adopt a more
complex blockchain solution if it prevents
one entity from having so much power
and control.
STARTING A FIRE IN 100 PLACES AT
ONCE
As an investor in business software, I meet
a lot of visionary people with great ideas.
Most of the time, their pitches describe
a steady-state, at-scale, to-be scenario.
Those can be very compelling. However,
often when I follow up with “But how do
you get there?” I get a far less compelling
answer.
Indeed, I personally think that one of
the least discussed (but most important)
topics in the area of blockchain for supply
chain is this: What is the adoption model?
Selling business software is hard, and the
more people you have to sell it to, the
harder it gets. I would rate convincing a
single user to adopt a solution as a one-star level of difficulty. Convincing an
entire company to adopt: two-star level
of difficulty. Convincing an entire supply
chain to adopt: three stars.
Now, I argue that supply chain blockchain is at least four stars in difficulty. That’s because of the distributed
nature of blockchain. Let’s go back to
“Supplybook.” Here we have a group of
entrepreneurs with a vision and a clear
financial motivation to achieve adoption. They raise capital by selling venture
capitalists on the ultimate value, hire top
sales professionals, win early customers
who “bring” their supply chain partners
along—which attracts more capital, more
sellers, and more customers. Ultimately, a
flywheel effect sets in: Supplybook is successful and goes public. But wait, wasn’t
one of the benefits of blockchain the fact
that there was no Supplybook? But if
there is no central third party, no entrepreneurs who stand to benefit from the
fruits of their hard labor, who will do all
the work and why? That’s why I give it
four stars.
From what I see in the market, there
seem to be two workable adoption mod-
els. Both share the four-star level of dif-
ficulty. I’ll call one “industry-led” and
one “entrepreneurial.” In the industry-led
model, a set of key industry participants
And that is what a distributed led-
ger is designed to avoid. In theory,
it provides all the same advantages
without the third-party risk.
Depending on the specific supply chain problem, companies may
be willing to give up control to a
“Supplybook.” But in others, com-
