Tech giants discuss blockchain: Should it take off quickly or take it slow?

Rage Review : Three large technology companies and a startup that has invested heavily in blockchain are arguing over whether to use blockchain technology gradually or quickly to disrupt the entire industry. Cognizant senior partner Lata Varghese believes that experimenting with proof-of-concept mechanisms first is a necessary step, but there are also corresponding drawbacks - a paradigm shift may result in slow growth.

Translation: Nicole

Three major technology companies and a startup investing heavily in blockchain technology are arguing today over whether to adopt the technology gradually or quickly to disrupt entire industries.

The executives, representing $571 billion in market value and $76 million in venture capital, gathered at the 2016 Consensus conference in New York to debate which approach is best.

Austin Hill, founder and CEO of bitcoin blockchain startup Blockstream, isn’t interested in companies adopting blockchain technology incrementally.

Austin Hill

Hill said:

“We are not looking for use cases that will only incrementally use blockchain technology.”

If a company wants to achieve sustainable growth using this approach, Hill suggests it might be better off using traditional solutions.

Instead his company, which has raised $76 million in venture capital, is looking to identify these potentially paradigm-shifting applications.

Important Experiments

On the other hand, though, there is something about breaking blockchain into smaller use cases, argues Lata Varghese, senior partner at Cognizant, a publicly traded IT company with a market cap of $35.37 billion.

Lata Varghese

Varghese said one of the values ​​of the initiative is to help employees incorporate blockchain technology into the company’s services. She said:

"I think the proof-of-concept mechanistic experiments we've done now are very important steps."

Varghese believes that companies should understand current enterprise applications, understand how blockchain technology can help the company operate and come up with cohesive solutions.

She explained:

“You just want to simplify. You don’t want to add more blockchain applications to existing use cases.”

While Yorke Rhodes, global business strategist at Microsoft, agreed with Varghese, he also pointed out the potential drawbacks of this approach, encouraging the audience to think about the impact of slower growth caused by paradigm shifts.

Yorke, whose company is valued at $397.58 billion, said:

“The benefit of using blockchain technology step by step is that you can quickly get profits. But the problem is that there is not much value.”

Working together

Jerry Cuomo

IBM’s Jerry Cuomo, vice chairman of the company’s $138.8 billion blockchain effort, gave a contrary view.

Cuomo, who has participated in talks with Hyperledger, Blockstream and other projects, told the audience how several of his clients were using blockchain technology in ways he considered inappropriate.

It turns out that in order for these projects to be funded, clients believe that these services must be built on blockchain technology.

Cuomo generally agreed with Varghese's strategic views, adding that current problems can be solved through cooperation.

He agreed that every small step counts, concluding:

“You have to have your own plan for using blockchain technology.”