Blog 4: Strategy and Implementation, the new fad.

The focus on strategy development, execution, and follow-through is a very interesting one, as many a company’s performance and future are wired to how well they perform these tasks.  On one end you have companies like Edward Jone’s which does an impeccable job of developing a succinct strategy and implementing it uniformly, and on the other end we see many companies who jump at incorporating the latest thing into their business.  Not surprisingly, successful implementation doesn’t come easy, it requires both thorough development and strong execution even then it may fail.  In 2017-2018 an ever increasing, number of companies began talking about blockchain and how they could utilize it and or were utilizing it. 

As bitcoin become more and more valuable, we continued to see an increase in companies talking about blockchain with a majority of top executives asking about how they could take advantage of it.  The use of blockchain within various organizations was a nice goal for companies to attempt to reach as the benefits it could bring seemed endless.  But at the same time the capability of these organizations who wanted to use blockchain and the information technology providers who were pushing blockchain solutions was not up to par.

It is rather amusing that so many organizations were seeking to use blockchain to stay ahead of the curve and gain some sort of advantage.  This makes sense though because at the same time, we saw a majority of advisory and consulting businesses touting their capabilities to clients.  Yet today it seems obvious that we don’t see blockchain solutions in place every where we look because this new technology had many roadblocks to implementation.  Nonetheless there are still plenty of examples blockchain solutions that are still being pursued.  Conveniently enough we can look at Kodak who missed out big time on digital cameras even though they were pioneers in development.  One trend they didn’t miss out on per say is blockchain.  But I wouldn’t be surprised if you haven’t heard of KodakCoin. Their licensing solution for photography, it has been in the works for several years however its release has been delayed multiple times.  Interestingly enough and not knowing Kodak’s true motives and just believing they were hoping to be a first mover with a blockchain, they definitely made it very clear to the market that they were “developing” this solution and their stock price soared.  Kodak’s stock now seems to be correlated with the price of cryptocurrencies even if KodakCoin/KodakOne has not been rolled out and may never be.