Day: January 31, 2020

The blockchain technology has come a long way since the time it was introduced back in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto. Today, the latest statistics show that global spending on blockchain solutions is expected to grow from US$1.5 billion in 2018 to an estimated US$11.7 billion by 2022. 

Authorities and educational organisations are already pushing forward some fundamental changes in the system. Many well-known and innovative universities, including Cornell and Georgetown Universities, are already offering programmes focused on blockchain technology. 

However, aside from disrupting the usual education programs across global organisations, there is another way blockchain changes the global educational system. 

Blockchain technology has tons of applications, and the same is true for the education sector. In the course of the past several years, blockchain companies and enthusiasts were working on solutions that can allow us to improve the higher education sector.

Below are some of the ways blockchain can start a fundamental change in the global education system, according to Gartner.

Also Read: Why should universities teach blockchain to students?

Record-keeping

One of the greatest applications of blockchain in the education sector involves the digitisation of educational credentials, including the degrees, certificates, diplomas, and the like. This kind of record-keeping can significantly enhance the security of the credentials and make sure that there is no need for an intermediary to verify them. 

Furthermore, blockchain technology can be applied in the case of accreditation of educational organisations. At the moment, this process involves a number of complex steps in some of the countries. This time-consuming and cost-inefficient procedure can be easily substituted by using digital records.

Boosts efficiency 

There is no doubt that blockchain-stored credentials for universities are already a great improvement over the traditional education sector’s approach. Yet, a step-up from this method of application would be the establishment of the virtual transcripts. These transcripts would include all the information about the educational activities and achievements of a person’s history.

This application would diminish resume fraud and speed up student transfers. Another great advantage of this application is the diminished need for staff related to credential verification. Overall, the blockchain-fueled virtual transcripts would streamline a lot of internal processes and increase efficiency for the educational organisations.

Streamline payments

Today, paying for your higher education with cryptocurrencies might sound like crazy talk. Yet, a couple of years from now on, it might very well become the reality. In fact, back in 2014, King’s College in New York City became a pioneer in this field by accepting bitcoin as payment, and thus marking its place as the first accredited US institution to do so. 

Also Read: Ivan Linn’s blockchain-powered social network is music to content creators’ ears

Processing payments for the studies require a lot of labour and time. It also involves a lot of parties, including parents, financial institutions, scholarship-granting companies, educational institutions, and governments.

By simply paying the student fee with a cryptocurrency, people would eliminate the need for intermediaries and cut down on processing fees as well as save a ton of time.

New business models

Aside from the use-cases, which focus on improving record storage, security, and efficiency, there is still a lot of potential in the blockchain technology that can be utilised in the educational sector. One of the ground-breaking applications of blockchain is the creation of new business models. 

Following this strategy,  Woolf University aims to become the very first blockchain-powered borderless university. The university was founded by a group of academics from Cambridge and Oxford. 

This non-profit organisation will be based on blockchain and smart contacts. These will act as the foundation of the relationship between teachers and students. 

How far are we from the future?

While the majority of countries have acknowledged the potential of blockchain, there is still a long way to go before we will use blockchain on a daily basis in our lives. One of the main obstacles on the way of wider blockchain adoption is the lack of awareness among the general public. 

Also Read: Blockchain tech is innovating education, and schools are catching up to the trend

When it comes to learning about this technology, people are usually divided into two groups: those who are not interested in understanding the ways this technology works, and those who are willing to learn but have limited resources to do so. 

The latter group usually comprises of younger individuals, and they are eager to learn and apply their knowledge in the industry. Yet, due to the limits of the educational system, not many universities offer blockchain-focussed degrees. So, many ambitious students are choosing to learn about blockchain online, via guides and video courses. 

Nevertheless, as blockchain becomes more popular, many global organisations move to help educate the growing generation about this technology.

In addition, the help also comes from within the industry, with a number of blockchain projects organising events and seminars to teach students around the globe about the ins-and-outs of blockchain. 

It is crystal clear that blockchain application is a game-changer in the education sector: it can increase productivity and security, boost efficiency and help cut costs. In addition, blockchain technology gives life to many new beginnings and projects that inevitably improve the quality of life. 

Hopefully, thanks to the efforts of the global authorities, educational organisations, and blockchain projects across the planet, people will soon be more comfortable with using blockchain technology in their everyday life.

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Collaborative innovation definitely has its benefits. Whereas at first, it may seem intuitive, it is actually not so simple and straightforward to integrate your innovation practices with another company through collaboration. 

According to Akyuz and Gursoy, collaborative innovation can be defined as “the process of managing the interaction and collaboration of multiple partners to deliver new solutions within a business ecosystem.”

The need for collaborative innovation arises because each participant individually does not have the capacity to carry out the innovation implementation, so they reach out to partners to deliver it.

A great example of collaborative innovation is P&G’s Pringles Prints. In 2009, the company conceptualised a new product, which would have custom words and images printed on each Pringle crisps.

In collaboration with a small-bakery, which came up with a method for printing in ink-jet method on edible products, P&G managed to quickly adapt its technology. This enabled them to reduce product development costs and time-to-market. 

Also Read: A multi-disciplinary approach to product development requires collaboration

But there are many prerequisites that need to be met before successful collaborative innovation can be implemented within a company:

• Preparation for sharing intellectual property
• Organisational mindset that is beyond competition and adversarial sentiments
• Ability to learn and combine different company or department cultures
• Synchronised analytics and measuring

Although this seems achievable (and with the right amount of time and resources, it definitely is) a total transformation has to happen on a company or department level before collaborative innovation is implemented. 

Surpassing limits

The most obvious benefit of adopting open, collaborative innovation is that a company will be free of the constraints of closed innovation. Every company that decides for a closed innovation approach will also have to factor in its limits. 

However, this closed innovation paradigm is not all negative, the way open innovation is not all positive. Closed R&D, after all, let to some of the most important achievements and business successes in the 20th century.

It was also an innovation model that was used by most US companies in the previous century. 

At the same time, this past success of the closed innovation model does not guarantee efficiency in the 21st century’s realm of warp-speed technological progress. 

Also Read: Why you shouldn’t resist collaboration and remote work

Why has the Silicon Valley of the 21st century become a playground for collaborative innovation?

The answer is the exact benefit we’re talking about – getting rid of the limits of closed innovation: high investment requirements, a limited span of ideas, high demands from employees and the costs of creating high-performing teams.

Higher returns

According to Kalypso’s whitepaper Best Practices in Collaborative Innovation, there is a potential for a 10-15 per cent increase in sales and profit for companies that decide to take this approach. 

This is achieved through a reduction in R&D costs, speeding up time-to-market and creating new revenue streams. 

In closed innovation models, a huge portion of the revenue is spent on in-house R&D, talent and product development. When you take this out of the equation, there is a much higher profit that will remain to be used by the company for other purposes that can boost sales, such as marketing. 

Rethinking labour division

According to Pavitt and Steinmueller’s Collaborative Innovation study, collaboration within companies prompt innovations in the division of labour and will ultimately lead to “enquiry into the future of capitalism”. 

In another research paper from 1947, Schumpeter argued that the major determinant of the future division of labour and the very nature of capitalism, our companies, and corporations, will be their ability to make innovation routine. 

Also Read: Startups need to collaborate in order to build decentralized products that make an impact

In a less apocalyptic and world-shattering sense of the word labour division, collaborative innovation actually has the capacity to remodel organisational hierarchies in the short-term. 

Creating customer focus-friendly environments

When different departments within a company gather to provide an innovative approach, their common view will reflect that of a customer. Given that the issue has to be viewed from all sides at the same time, the final solution will be exactly what the customer would want in each step of the buying process.

For example, a tech employee or team from the IT department might have an innovative idea, but the sales and marketing department might contribute and add that this idea is not really marketable to the general audience.

The finance department might warn that the idea is not very cost-effective. In this example, in order to come to a collaborative solution, all three departments will have to make up these differences in order to actually achieve the desired result. 

“When we think about innovation, we usually think about disruptive businesses and industries and ways in which this disruption will skyrocket their profits. However, those who actually use these products and services – customers – are the ones who are on the other side of the story, and focusing on customers should be the number one priority of collaborative innovators within a company,” says Mitchell Foreman, HR manager at AllTopReviews.

Also Read: Tribe Accelerator facilitates additional US$15.7M fundraising to boost blockchain innovations, commencing collaboration with Dubai

When the joint goals of partners in collaborative innovation are to create win-win situations, this is always done through the lens of the customer. 

Optimised resource allocation

Collaborative innovation can have far-reaching consequences for the business ecosystem, which is often among the primary goals of companies in collaboration. However, it can also result in many other positive effects, such as better use of your own company’s resources. 

More often than not, innovation and optimisation are sparked by an employee or a team noticing that the company is “losing” money somewhere in the operational process. For example, a customer support team at one of the paper writing websites or at a skills assessment software company might notice that they’re wasting too many hours on identical tickets and demands and recognise the need for an AI-powered chatbot.

In this way, innovative thinking and collaboration among different departments can lead to savings and better attribution of your company’s resources. This can also happen in collaborative innovation processes with another company. 

Agility and adaptability

An important aspect of innovation is also for a company to be able to adapt quickly to market demands, requirements and challenges.

Also Read: Today’s top tech news: Singapore, India ink collaboration to develop fintech industry

If your departments are cooperating and collaborating on innovation issues, it will be much easier to predict where adapting is in order. It will also be much easier to speed up the innovation process and actually see ideas come to life (from ideation, analysis to commercialisation) much more quickly. 

The time to market acceleration is also one of the major benefits of collaborative innovation. Given that products are developed faster than ever and it’s important to launch a high-quality product faster than your competitors, this will become one of the main benefits of companies competing in crowded markets. 

Agility and time to market are one of the most important factors that led to the popularity of collaborative innovation in the ICT industry. 

Improved decision-making with data

Of course, shopper and customer data is a precious resource across all departments within a company, and innovation is no different. Not only that, but innovation is actually among sectors that can benefit from data and insight the most and translate it to actual business results most evidently.

In innovation departments and collaborative innovation processes, ideas don’t have to appear “on their own”: they can actually result from a question or issue posed in consumer data analytics.

Also Read: Meet design thinking: An approach to problem solving that can increase the probability of breakthrough in innovation

For example, an e-commerce company might notice that women over the age of 50 are most likely to abandon their carts. The task of the collaborative innovation team would be to identify the possible causes of this and to generate ideas that would tackle this issue. 

This also happens to be one of the double-edged swords of collaborative innovation: when you share your consumer insights with a partner company, you will simplify the decision-making process and make room for better, insightful ideas. On the other hand, you will also be sharing one of your most valuable assets. 

Higher degree of differentiation on the market

This is another benefit of CI that is intuitively understood but is rarely utilised and taken to its maximum.

When you’re working with a partner company in a mode of collaborative innovation, you can present the best of both worlds to the market you’re competing in: and the same goes for the company you’re partnering up with.

This is especially applicable when you have an exclusive R&D or collaboration arrangement with another company. 

There are so many benefits to collaborative innovation within a company that it’s become simply irrational to not include this approach in your operational structures, when possible and when necessary. 

Whether you want to decrease your product development costs or simply start cooperating with companies that possess high-value innovation property, this is one of the best approaches you can make as a company.

However, it’s important to keep in mind that the model does have its drawbacks, so you will have to do a careful cost-benefit analysis before you even enter that realm.

For example, for companies that find it very risky to share their intellectual property or consumer data, collaborative innovation will be a no-go.

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BlibliMart store is the latest innovation from Indonesia-based e-commerce platform Blibli. The brick-and-mortar retail store uses a cashless and cashier-less shopping system, with shopkeepers available to check their purchases after the payment is made.

Blibli’s move with its grocery brand BlibliMart is aimed at establishing an offline presence to complement the growing BlibliMart online grocery store, as reported by The Jakarta Post.

With its cashless and cashier-less shopping experience, it seeks to cater to millennials’ fast-and-cheap shopping preferences. By using the Blibli app on their smartphone, customers can scan the product barcode and pay using the Blipay digital payment service or the GoPay payment app by gojek.

Blibli senior vice president of trade partnership Fransisca Krisantia Nugraha emphasise that 66 per cent of shoppers are omnichannel shoppers.

“It means they are the type of shoppers that use both online and offline platforms for their shopping needs. That’s why the retail store will hopefully bring us to these omnichannel [consumers],” said Nugraha.

Also Read: We mapped out the e-commerce competition scene in Indonesia and found 5 interesting trends

The store, which is located at the Sarana Jaya building in Central Jakarta, adopts a similar shopping experience in US-based convenience store Amazon Go, that allows customers to purchase groceries and other goods without any cashier checkout or clerk interactions.

The test run started in November last year and according to Nugraha, the retail store had recorded more than 1,000 orders daily.

However, unlike Amazon Go, BlibliMart retail store shopping still needs former customers to check out their purchases with a shopkeeper to prevent theft.

“Because there is currently no applicable technology solution [to prevent theft] in Indonesia,” Nugraha said.

“There are still a lot of questions from the customers, and there are a lot of connection problems too, so we provide free Wi-Fi for the customers,” Nugraha added.

According to the company’s vice president of development Sherwin Sasmita, in facilitating customers with such experience, Blibli uses its online consumer data to determine the product preferences of consumers near the store to ensure suitable product selection and stock availability.

“We can identify the market segment. We can identify what people in Jakarta buy from our online data, what people in the area [of the store] buy,” Sasmita said.

Also Read: Blibli acquires Tiket.com, further strengthening its foray into travel industry

Nugraha said Indonesia had a US$200 billion grocery market opportunity, with 1 per cent, or a US$2 billion market potential, forecast for e-commerce.

Aside from the addition of retail stores, the company also plans to strengthen its online service by providing scheduled delivery, product subscription, and in-store pickup services through a partnership with third-party retailers.

In Indonesia, e-commerce platforms are embracing offline retail to complement their existing online presence. From beauty and fashion platforms such as Social Bella and Berrybenka to mom-and-pop store platforms such as Warung Pintar.

Even Chinese e-commerce platform such as JD has also tested an offline retail store in Indonesia.

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Indonesia’s leading ride-hailing app gojek has made an investment of an undisclosed amount in tech wearables and apparels called Zulu, according to Deal Street Asia. The news was first reported by DailySocial.

The proceeds will be used by ZULU for team expansion and launching stealth projects. ZULU co-founder Yusuf Syaid has declined to disclose further details on the startup’s plans for the new capital but has planned on raising a Series A round, as reported by Deal Street Asia.

Founded in Indonesia in 2018, Zulu is a tech and lifestyle company which creates Bluetooth motorcycle helmets, pollution control masks, motorcycle jackets, gloves, and goggles, all of which are currently available on e-commerce site Lazada.

Also Read: From sports drink to Alibaba: A look into Kobe Bryant’s legacy in startup investment

“We secured funding from gojek in August 2018 after pitching our business in January 2018. From there, we were part of the gojek rebranding campaign – managing production, QR, and delivery of the two types of jackets [for gojek driver-partners],” said Syaid.

“We created smart barcodes using RFID in the new jackets and helmets, producing over two million pieces [in total], with more ongoing for their future driver attributes like the GoFood bag and so on,” he continued.

According to reports, GoJek is the sole investor in ZULU, but it is also its first investment in the consumer goods space in the region.

GoJek itself is seeking to complete its Series F round by this year.

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Image Credit: Afif Kusuma

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The National Bank of Cambodia (NBC) reportedly plans to launch a blockchain-based, peer-to-peer payment and money transfer platform in the next few months, as shared in Blockchain News.

According to the NBC Director-General Chea Serey, the platform would be known as a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).

Another report from the Phnom Penh Post revealed that the ongoing project is dubbed ‘Project Bakong’. Serey has been quoted to say that the scheme already rallied the support of 11 banks, and expected more to join soon.

Project Bakong itself was launched on a trial basis in July and will kick off operation within the present fiscal quarter.

Also Read: Report: Cambodia saw 140 per cent rise in tech startup investment in 2018

“Bakong will play a central role in bringing all players in the payment space in Cambodia under the same platform, making it easy for end-users to pay each other regardless of the institutions they bank with. Eventually, we hope to allow cross border payment through the Bakong system too,” Serey said.

Unlike most cryptocurrencies, which are decentralised, Bakong will deploy a closed system backed by banking authorities. This will enable the project to close the possible loophole.

Apart from Cambodia, another country that has been making headlines with its national cryptocurrency plan is China.

In August 2019, a Forbes report stated that China is planning to issue the cryptocurrency to seven institutions that included tech giants such as Alibaba and Tencent.

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