Why Blockchain Is Becoming the 'New Normal' In Enterprise

Richard Gendal Brown is the CTO at R3. After years of discussion and planning, enterprise blockchain is now becoming a reality across industries as diverse as insurance, healthcare, gold, oil and gas, finance and more.

Have you ever stopped to think about the difference between the way businesses function and the way the markets in which these businesses operate function?

Most businesses are centralized, with the standard corporate structure of a CEO, a board of directors and all the departments necessary in order to run effectively; yet most markets are decentralized, with no central body in charge.

It's really quite remarkable how little has changed in so many markets.

It's only when markets have introduced centralization, such as with the creation of highly regulated centralized infrastructure in the financial markets, that we've seen a transformational change at the level of an entire industry.

They have come at the cost of new intermediaries, greater risk concentration and a resulting regulatory need to ensure these new institutions do not become rent-seekers or stifle innovation once established.

So we find ourselves in today's world, where each company in a market has an insanely complex IT estate with hundreds or thousands of corporate applications, many of which do the same thing as their competitors.

It could be the Holy Grail for optimizing entire markets without forcing these markets to reshape themselves to conform to the badly-fitting centralized models that today's software would demand.

Now, thanks to enterprise blockchain technology, entire markets are in the process of being transformed and it's happening without forcing new intermediaries into the mix or driving these riotously decentralized markets into inappropriate centralized models.

Blockchain is decentralized software for today's markets, and over the next decade, it will become the new normal in industries across the globe.