Blockchain will bring about profound changes to business, and even to the nature of business itself. This technology will disrupt how enterprises are funded and manage, how they create value, and even how they perform basic functions like marketing and accounting. We'll see changes to the deep structure and architecture of the firm, and how we orchestrate capability in society to innovate, to create goods and services, and to engage with the rest of the world. Businesses of the past were vertically integrated, meaning that they did everything from soup to nuts, and there's a reason for that. The costs of transacting in an open market were prohibitively high. So we brought all this capability inside the boundaries of a firm where transaction costs were lower. These big companies dominated because it was costly and complex among other things to start a business, to find customers, to raise funds from investors. In that case, the list of potential candidates for funding being limited to a few local venture capitalists or banks. Well, many of these challenges and costs will be reduced or solved by blockchain. By reducing the transaction costs of doing business, companies will be able to launch, grow, create value more cheaply. The enterprise of the future may not look like the enterprise of the past at all, but rather more like a group of networks. In fact, the most successful companies may not be companies at all, but networks of organizations, individuals, and autonomous agents connecting via smart contracts to deliver all the value of today's big centralized behemoths. My name is Don Tapscott, and I'd like to welcome you to Blockchain and Business: Applications and Implications. In this course, you'll learn how blockchain technology will penetrate into the structures of organizations encouraging innovation. You'll learn how blockchain enables decentralization of value creation, and of the enterprise. You'll understand four kinds of transaction costs of a firm, and explain how blockchain reduces each kind of cost. We'll dive into how blockchain search differs from Internet search, and the factors business leaders should consider when to finding their corporate boundaries. You'll also be able to define four types of blockchain organizations; One, the distributed application or DApp. Two, the autonomous agent. Three, the open networked enterprise. Four, the distributed autonomous enterprise. We'll discuss seven new business models, and how blockchain technology could enhance these models. You'll learn how to find new ways to manage and protect intellectual property on a blockchain. We'll look at how blockchain will transform the rules of the C-suite executives. We'll also review the difference between regulation and governance of blockchain, and we'll get into the challenges of regulating in this new environment. You'll be able to identify the different layers of the blockchain technology stack, and how these layers help or hinder the governance of blockchain systems. You'll be able to describe 10 types of governance networks, and seven qualities that a region and the world needs to attract technology startups and build a vibrant ecosystem. If you have no prior knowledge of blockchain, then I recommend taking our course Introduction to Blockchain Technologies first. Before we dive into these really exciting lessons on blockchain and business. In the next video, I'm going to share with you some more details about my career, and introduce you to my co-instructor, Alex Tapscott. We'll explain why we're so passionate about this technology, and so committed to sharing our knowledge with people just like you.
