A recent exchange in a management meeting: "Blockchain, everyone is talking about it in the food industry, it seems complicated, should we start now?
And first of all, what is blockchain?
The principle is quite simple. Let's imagine that each member of the network manages a stack of data, like a stack of legos. When one of them sends a piece of data, it is not sent to a single stack, but to all the stacks in the network at the same time. The data is instantly overlaid by others, so it is impossible to modify data on all the stacks. Hence the security of exchanges, one of the points that makes the blockchain a radically new concept, but also the need to send only totally reliable, up-to-date and consistent information. In most French companies, both large and small, this is still quite problematic.
So, should we stress about the arrival of blockchain?
Urgent ? Important? Yes and no. No, because it is still, and probably for years to come, at the experimental level. No, because blockchain is a pipe. An extraordinarily sophisticated pipe, but a pipe.
But yes, because this pipe has the particularity of not tolerating error, approximation, or out-of-date information. Already the new techniques based on the Internet (drive, marketplaces, commercial and noncommercial sites, etc.) do not cope well with the insufficient quality of the data produced.
But it takes much longer to improve data quality in a company than it does to connect a pipe: it involves people, organisations and relations between departments, and we know that the French agri-business is still very much organised in silos. At KEENDOO, our job is to help with this transformation, and we know something about it.
With hindsight and common sense, it ishigh time to prepare for blockchain and more broadly for digital, if the company is to be ready in time, if it is to face the technical challenges, and even more so to turn it into a competitive advantage.
