The Open Web and the Future of Corporate Governance with Yei Sung Kim

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The 4NTs research team recently began a series of events dedicated to the future of the Open-Web and crypto. The second live stream about the future of corporate governance in the Open Web era featured blockchain expert and business transformation leader Yei Sung Kim. Yei has worked for many years in Accenture and Oliver Wayman as a senior manager and principal respectively.

During our discussion, Yei shared her experiences working as a consultant for big corporations and gave us a clear picture of the challenges and reservations that big corporations display towards DLT solutions.

https://youtu.be/XUO_KyhzyAo

DLT’s Advantages are Clear But there is Still Skepticism around it

In the past few years, DLT adoptions have been rapidly growing across industries and that hasn’t gone unnoticed by big corporations. Most of the big companies currently rely on outdated, cumbersome, and expensive methods to deal with data and transactions, they could thus greatly benefit from the adoption of DLT. Nonetheless, they are confronted with particular challenges and worries that prevent them from keeping up with technological innovation:

“What I’ve heard the sentiment a lot from our clients is that they love the idea of the efficiency, the transparency it brings. And bringing traditional players that usually do not trust each other into a single source of truth. But the sentiment that I do hear a lot is that they are waiting for a leader or the gorilla in the room in the industry to take it on first and then they would like to be a follower to see what the adoption was like, what was some of the pitfalls, what were some of the successes, and what’s the infrastructure they can follow. So, some of these giant corporations, one of my clients is even an oil and gas supermajor, they said they wouldn’t even be a fast follower in the space, they would be a slow follower in the space. Getting traditional players who are competitors or who are even working with other parties who might be competitors with each other and having them use a single source of truth without figuring out the actual owner of the data and who gets to manipulate these data that’s been a big hurdle that I’ve seen so far”.

Because of their hierarchical structure and outdated decision-making processes, big corporations are not likely to swiftly adopt DLT solutions even though they can help improving the efficiency of their operations. Organizational restructuring has both financial and emotional cost which is what prevents most of them from changing and embracing new technologies.

Another issue hindering DLT adoption is the lack of a clear understanding of what this technology is and how that can benefit them:

“A lot of times hear blockchain and the sexiness behind Bitcoin and now you have NFTs so how do you explain this technology that supports Bitcoin which is another kind of currency but isn’t ruled by a governmental entity, how do you explain how this technology also works in other areas, environments, spheres?”

A lot of corporations are often so entrenched in old ways of functioning/workingthat they struggle to keep up with the innovations around them. Their old patterns are hard to change even when the benefits and rewards for the investment are almost banally obvious, that means until some other big company shows how profitable change is.

Good Use Cases Will Lead to DLT Adoption

The blooming of good use cases will lead to faster adoption and there are encouraging trends:

“I’m hoping that Elon Musk and Tesla because he has so much Bitcoin right now and he’s going to accept Bitcoin for purchasing Tesla. […] But I think that these big magnitude, high publicity kind of cases will make it more acceptable. But you also need to think that if you are a disruptor, there are a lot of cool advantages behind Bitcoin, you are kind of off the grid a little bit. You don’t have to worry about the government, and how does it transfer from bank to bank. It’s real-time, it’s a really fast transaction, but we are still operating in a world in which corporations still need to pay taxes. How do you regulate this? How do you make sure that if you do accept Bitcoin will the US treasury have to take Bitcoin as a currency when you pay your taxes? There are all these interesting implications behind it”.

As it happens with all technologies, good use cases for private-public partnership will drive a certain product mainstream since they will help to emphasise their value and reassure them of their potential to boost businesses. Along with the increase in adoption will arise legal questions, but there are good reasons to believe that governments will not try to get into the way of economic growth in a period characterised by stagnation.

Big Corporations Need People that Understand Data

Companies are confronted with a lack of talent and knowledge that hinders the fast development of tailored solutions for their businesses. There is a shortage of blockchain developers and data scientists, and that creates a lot of costs and uncertainty:

“There is a greater importance on having data-savvy people and then not only that, it’s the human + machine equation because we’ve seen so much misinformation because the algorithm AI tends to amplify certain voices, so how do we call the biases and use the human side, the empathy side and making sure that we are not inadvertently making ourselves more biases decision making entity as well? So, bringing that merge between people that understand data to the business implications, to the human and customer implications as well”. 

It might still take several years for big companies to tap into the potential of DLT, partly because of a lack of successful use-cases, mainstream adoption, and lack of knowledge and regulations. But as companies such as Tesla help making crypto more popular a favourable environment will spontaneously arise.