企业该怎么使用区块链技术？

区块链技术始于比特币，但自那之后，它成为了众多企业首选的宣传辞令，用于装点其通过加密技术粉饰的数据库。基本上每家公司的创新项目都在试验或至少关注这个趋势——老板，看，我们很有创新力！然而，如果真的要使用这一技术的话，那么该如何使用？

答案：谨慎，务实

咨询公司埃森哲的北美首席执行官朱莉·斯威特在上周三于加拿大多伦多举行的财富全球论坛发表演讲时警告说：“如果你是首席执行官，而且有人向你提出了一个区块链项目，请小心。”斯威特举起了手指在空中给“区块链项目”打了个引号。

斯威特称，“区块链是一项技术，不是成果。”尽管这项技术已经具备了“试验和试行成熟度”，但我们在开始实施前应思考，实施这项技术都存在什么样的挑战，能够带来什么样的机遇？

斯威特说，从商业角度来讲，公司确实应该尝试区块链技术。但各大公司必须在与技术方合作尝试试验项目之前，确立明确的“投资回报”概念。

斯威特举了一个例子：3月，埃森哲携手德国运输业巨头DHL开展区块链试验项目，该项目旨在帮助医药行业跟踪和追查医药的供应。该合作源于实际中存在的一个需求——从根本上杜绝假药。公司意识到区块链技术对于解决这一问题提供了一个“很大的机会”，斯威特说道。

斯威特的第二点建议涉及开展区块链试行项目的时机和深度。她说：“今天，鉴于该行业、技术的现状及其复杂度，大多数公司仍然应该做观望者，而不是做第一个吃螃蟹的人。”

换句话说，各大公司应保持其对区块链技术发展态势的关注，但不应不加思索地为了成为第一家使用区块链的公司而调整自身的运营。区块链行业还处于初期阶段，还有很多问题有待解决。

与斯威特一同参加专题研讨的还有摩根大通的区块链项目负责人克里斯汀·莫伊，他对这位埃森哲首席执行官的看法表示赞同。莫伊谈到，她的团队向摩根大通不同业务线的负责人介绍了区块链技术概念，为的是让他们在采用区块链技术之前，了解其自身的整体策略，首要任务和痛点。

莫伊讲述了其团队很久以前与摩根大通理财服务部的一次合作经历。该部门每天处理的支付达到了数万亿美元。当摩根大通研究利用区块链网络重新改进其跨境交易时，公司意识到这一系统的实施成本将超过其收益。

莫伊说：“每个人感到有点迷惑，因为从清算和结算的角度来说，当前的跨境支付清算和结算机制还是可以的。”换句话来说，摩根大通发现投资不能带来合理的回报。

莫伊说：“与抛弃老系统、进行迁移并打造一个全新的系统来比，无论区块链的优化效果有多么好，但它在实际上并不划算。”

因此莫伊的团队重新评估了其对区块链技术的看法。最终，公司发现一个确实适用于区块链技术方案的实际问题：把与国际交易制裁相关的信息合并至由往来银行共享的单一数据库。

莫伊指出，有时候支付请求在通过中介银行的“菊花链”时会“刚好处于进退两难的境地”。出现卡壳的原因通常是因为一些银行要求获得更多交易接收方的信息。

“然后就是向持有信息的上游链条打电话、发邮件，支付方则在苦苦的等待”，莫伊说道，并指出卡壳可能在任何地方发生，而且持续“数天甚至数周”的时间。

莫伊的团队认为区块链技术能够完美地解决这个问题。她说，如今团队的“银行间信息网络”已于三周前开始运行，拥有90多名参与者，能够让银行在区块链上交换信息。

一开始，大家都认为区块链将“改变世界，而且会取消所有中间环节，包括银行、清算所等等”，莫伊说道。“如今我们的认识又更进了一步，也趋于成熟，我们认为区块链技术并不具有颠覆性，只是有助于业务的转型。”

另一名小组成员、热销科技书刊《区块链革命》的合著者亚历克斯·塔普斯科特则敦促人们不要总是处于观望状态，他指出，对于很多曾经未能意识到互联网潜力的企业来说，互联网让它们感到措手不及，并颠覆了其业务。

塔普斯科特说：“如果在1994年我是一名首席执行官的话，我可能会认为互联网只是一个用于发布信息的媒介。”这种思维模式导致很多企业领导者犯了一个致命的错误——忽略了这一技术的潜力，他说道，并援引了最近西尔斯百货（美国曾经最大的零售商）的破产作为案例。

塔普斯科特还表示：“你必须向后退一步，然后去思考这项技术在未来的潜力。”塔普斯科特是多伦多区块链研究所的联合创始人，该研究所是一个研究区块链技术、与企业开展项目合作的智囊团。

然而斯威特强调，公司必须拥有明确的目标，并秉持商业至上的理念。“如果这项技术不能带来投资回报，那么就不值得做。”

因此，在废弃传统的系统、鲁莽地采用区块链技术之前，首先请考虑这些高管的感悟之言：区块链技术能用来干什么？我的公司在现在是否有必要采用这一技术？如果不采用区块链的话，是不是会步西尔斯的后尘？（财富中文网）

译者：Charlie

审校：夏林

Blockchain technology began with Bitcoin, but it has since been coopted by businesses as the preferred brand name for all sorts of cryptographically spruced up databases. Just about every corporate innovation program is experimenting with, or at least eyeing, the trend—look, boss, we’re innovative! But how should companies really approach the technology, if at all?

Answer: with caution and commonsense.

“If you’re a CEO and someone is coming to you with a blockchain project, beware,” warned Julie Sweet, North American CEO for Accenture, the consulting firm, speaking at the Fortune Global Forum in Toronto, Canada, on last Wednesday. Sweet thrust her fingers upward to couch the phrase “blockchain project” in air quotes.

“Blockchain is a technology, not an outcome,” Sweet said. While the tech is “ripe for experimentation and pilots, it has to start with, what’s the business challenge or opportunity?”

The business side of a company should lead any blockchain foray, Sweet said. Businesses must have a “clear ROI,” or return on investment, in mind before partnering with the technology side to move ahead on a pilot.

In March, Accenture teamed up with DHL, the German shipping giant, on a blockchain trial designed to track and trace medicine distribution for the pharmaceutical industry, Sweet said, citing one example. The partnership started by identifying a problem—rooting out counterfeit drugs—and it recognized that blockchain tech presented a “big opportunity” to address the issue, she said.

Sweet’s second piece of advice involved when and how deeply companies should wade into the depths of blockchain experimentation. “Today, given the state of the industry, the technology, and the complexity, for most companies the answer is still going to be monitor and participate as opposed to being a first mover,” she said.

In other words, businesses should maintain their awareness of what’s going on, but shouldn’t upheave their operations in order to be the first out the gate with some ill-considered blockchain stunt. The industry is nascent, and there are plenty of kinks still to work out.

Christine Moy, J.P. Morgan Chase’s blockchain program lead, who spoke on the panel alongside Sweet, agreed with the Accenture CEO’s guidance. Moy described how her team embeds itself with the heads of J.P. Morgan’s various lines of business in order to understand their overall strategies, priorities, and pain points before pursuing a blockchain application.

Moy offered an anecdote about her team’s early experience working with the bank’s treasury services business, which handles trillions of dollars in payments per day. When the group dug into the potential for a blockchain network to revamp cross-border transactions, it realized the cost of implementing such a system would outweigh the benefits.

“Everyone was a little bit bewildered because, from a clearing and settlement standpoint, the actual mechanism of clearing and settling a cross-border payment works just fine,” Moy said. Put another way, the bank did not see a reasonable return on investment.

“Whatever incremental optimization a blockchain could enable when stood up against the business case of having to retire legacy systems and migrate off and build an entirely new system, it just didn’t really make sense,” Moy said.

So Moy’s team reevaluated its approach. Eventually, it identified a real problem that did seem suited to a blockchain-based solution: consolidating international sanctions-related information into a single database shared among correspondent banks.

Sometimes payment instructions “just get stuck in the middle” as they’re passed through a “daisy chain” of intermediary banks, Moy said. The hold-ups are often the result of some bank requesting more information about the recipient of a transaction.

“Then it’s telephone calls, emails back up the chain—who has the information—I’m waiting,” Moy said, mentioning that delays can take anywhere from a “couple days to a couple weeks even.”

Moy’s team viewed this as a perfect fit for blockchain tech. Now the team’s “interbank information network,” which went into production three weeks ago with 90 participants, she said, lets banks swap that information on a blockchain.

In the beginning, everyone thought blockchain was “going to change the world, it’s going to disintermediate everyone—banks and clearing houses and everything,” Moy said. “Now we’ve come to this next level of maturity where we think of it less as disruption and more as transformation.”

Alex Tapscott, another panelist and coauthor of a popular book on the technology called Blockchain Revolution, urged members of the audience not to get too comfortable with the wait-and-see approach, noting that the Internet blindsided—and overturned—many businesses that failed to recognize its potential.

“If I’m in the CEO seat in 1994, I might think the Internet is just a medium for publishing information,” Tapscott said. That mentality led many business leaders to fatally ignore the potential for the technology, he said, citing the recent bankruptcy of Sears, once the nation’s biggest retailer, as proof.

“You have to take a step back and understand what could this could represent down the road,” continued Tapscott, who cofounded the Toronto-based Blockchain Research Institute, a think tank that studies the technology and partners with businesses on projects.

Sweet, however, reiterated that companies must maintain a targeted, business-first focus. “If it doesn’t have an ROI, then it’s not worth doing,” she said.

So, before you go ripping up your legacy systems and diving headfirst into blockchain, first consider these executives’ words of wisdom: What is it good for? How involved should my company be at this moment? And will I end up like Sears if I don’t?