Thomson Reuters executive: Blockchain will have thousands of applications

In the past six months, mass media giant Thomson Reuters (Reuters international news agency) has made two major moves in the blockchain field.

The widely publicized news came in late March of this year, when the company joined the Hyperledger open source blockchain project led by the Linux Foundation (which is backed by many highly-known technology companies and financial institutions).

Less publicized was the company’s investment in Fluent, a startup pursuing供应链应用through permissioned blockchains. Thomson Reuters said at the time that the move was a strategic one.

Scott Manuel, vice president and head of product management at Thomson Reuters, told CoinDesk:

“Our legal clients…are really excited about the potential of smart contracts, what they can do, and what they allow in the blockchain world.”

Global Applications

Manuel recalled that he first read about Bitcoin's anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, in a 2011 article in The New Yorker magazine, which was one of the factors that prompted Thomson Reuters to start investing resources to investigate the technology two years ago.

Since then, he said, the company, which employs more than 50,000 people, has begun experimenting with blockchain technology.

“We started putting our finger on the pulse and building small proofs of concepts around our business units and products,” he explains.

According to Manuel, there appear to be thousands of potential applications for blockchain. These include数据传输and数字身份, an application he believes is of particular interest to Thomson Reuters.

“We have a very large (know your customer) business with individuals and institutions,” he said, “so how would digital identity fit in there? Our engineers are already working on some internal proof of concepts.”

Speaking about Fluent’s investment, Manuel pointed to the company’s attraction to supply chain connectivity with blockchain technology, an application that has received attention from several Hyperledger project members, particularly in the pharmaceutical manufacturing sector.

“Supply chain is very interesting and it’s going to be a very disruptive business,” he said.

Looking ahead

For now, Manuel said Thomson Reuters will continue to support and participate in the Hyperledger project, saying the company is not yet clear where the most impactful applications of blockchain will be.

At the same time, he said that participating in the open source project would be a good learning opportunity for Thomson Reuters.

In addition, Manuel said the company is continuing to work with the startup Fluent and does not rule out further investment.

He concluded:

“At the end of the day, it’s about making real progress, working closely with customers and implementing real applications, that’s the point.”

Scott Manuel will be speaking at Consensus 2016 in New York, the full list of speakers can be found here.