For the starters, HBR books are a collection of articles published on the Harvard Business Review. These articles are written by experts from the industry, ranging from practitioners and academicians to journalists. Hence, rather than buying into the thoughts and opinions of a single author, you get an overview of thoughts that are prevalent in the industry, enabling you to peek through multiple perspectives.
Thus this book brings you a collection of articles, spanning across a decade, written by practitioners from different application areas and academicians with different specialisations.
Currently blockchain is perhaps at the point, where computers were back in the early 90s, maturing from the enthusiasts and entering into mass application at home and business. And as the government of some countries outline their goals to migrate onto blockchain, the blockchain transition seems inevitable in the next few decades.
As crypto currencies and blockchain applications start to become more common, it gets important for us to understand the underlying technology before onboarding the system. The first set of articles is dedicated to explaining the technology along with its evolution. They convey the must-have understanding, as many multi-level marketing and Ponzi schemes are selling crypto currencies, and flourishing through naivety as victims pay their cost of ignorance.
Also read Blockchain Revolution, for easy understanding
Since the technology can be applied to numerous use cases, the challenge is to envisage the priority applications that will be adopted. Although timing is a matter of luck, it is not entirely a grey area. Few articles focus on the factors that affect the adoption of technology such as power consumption and processing power, user adoption, regulatory hurdles, effort-benefit ratio, and more that are used to determine the priority of use case. And this is critical subject for entrepreneurs venturing into Fintech or blockchain applications.
Today, the governments not only have acknowledged blockchain but also have engaged efforts to draft policies necessary to regulate the emerging applications. And crypto currencies as well as NFT assets (Non Fungible Tokens) have been at the focal point of the discussion as they affect the monetary system of any country. There are many regulatory hurdles that would need to be overcome. And these hurdles persist not only from a policy perspective but also from operational perspective of managing the system.
Especially with storage and processing of data, since unlike conventional centralised computing, on the server or cloud, the blockchain is a decentralised system with numerous participants, spread across the globe. In the later part, there are articles discussing alternate type of private blockchain managed by a proprietary owner rather than the democratic system. Although one of the fundamental purposes of the technology was to dilute the bureaucracy through extensive decentralisation of power, there are articles that discuss regulatory and reliability challenges involved in the process.
This wide spectrum of perspectives and applications addressed through articles will help you connect the dots. Hence, rather than a technology focused understanding, you will be enlightened with the knowledge necessary for a practitioner. Although it is an easy to read book, owing to the depth of subject matter, unlike the story narrative in most easy reads, you might need breaks. Thus, it is a two or three flights book. Overall, this a relaxed yet enlightening read.
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Savvy Munshi 