Web3 and Blockchain in Global Commerce

In this fourth and final course of the specialization, you will synthesize your learning into a project deliverable called a Blockchain Opportunity Analysis. The goals of this course are twofold: One, it’s for you to identify a specific need or problem in Global Commerce that can potentially be solved using blockchain technology. Two, it’s for you to investigate possible solutions to this problem, including how these solutions might be executed. You will accomplish different project milestones each week, and will be introduced to several tools that entrepreneurs use to organize their findings. Throughout this process, you will hear from real-world practitioners who have hands-on experience in the blockchain ecosystem. Additionally, by participating in this course you will gain access to our Blockchain Case Commons—a crowdsourced collection of blockchain applications and use-cases spanning multiple industries. As an outcome of this course, you’ll walk away with a consolidated, peer-reviewed Blockchain Opportunity Analysis, which you can use to pitch your idea to your organization or even to potential investors.

The global supply chain is a $50 trillion industry and is the foundation of our global economy. While information technology has improved the flow of goods globally over the last few decades, as the COVID-19 crisis revealed there is still critical work to do. Today’s supply chains are complex, with parties conducting their transactions through a Byzantine network of computer systems with disparate applications like e-mail, phone, and fax. There are invoices, letters of credit, bank guarantees, bills of lading, tax forms, receipts, and other paperwork moving through this complex labyrinth. Payments are made through a hodgepodge of intermediaries, and consumers and supply chain players alike struggle to get accurate information. Enter blockchain—the Internet of Value. For the first time in human history, individuals and organizations can manage and trade their assets digitally peer to peer. These assets can be digital like money, identity, and private information; or they can be physical assets represented by digital tokens. Parties to a transaction achieve trust not necessarily through an intermediary, but through cryptography and clever code. In this course, you will learn how blockchain can improve global supply chains by streamlining processes, reducing costs and fraud, improving supply-chain visibility, authenticating assets and their origins, and ultimately fuelling product innovation. Development of this course was made possible thanks to the generous support of FedEx. Dale Chrystie, Business Fellow & Blockchain Strategist at FedEx, appears in several of the course videos, bringing a real-world industry perspective to the course. The scripts for these videos have been written and/or reviewed by the Blockchain Research Institute and approved by INSEAD to ensure that this content is pedagogically sound, unbiased, and academically rigorous.

This course discusses the limitations of the Internet for business and economic activity and explains how blockchain technology represents the way forward. After completing this course, you will be able to explain what blockchain is, how it works, and why it is revolutionary. You will learn key concepts such as mining, hashing, proof-of-work, public key cryptography, and the double-spend problem. You’ll be able to describe seven design principles for blockchain technology, and the challenges facing the people developing it. By the end of this course, you’ll learn how and why transacting on the blockchain can help us bring about a future that is faster, fairer, and more distributed than the world we inhabit today.