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Hello, hello. Malcolm Gladwell here. I want to tell you about a new series we're launching at Pushkin Industries on the 1936 Olympic Games. Adolf Hitler's Games. Fascism, anti-Semitism, racism, high Olympic ideals, craven self-interest, naked ambition, illusion, delusion, all collide in the long, contentious lead-up to the most controversial Olympics in history. The Germans put on a propaganda show, and America went along with all of it. Why?
This season on Revisionist History, the story of the games behind the games. Listen to this season of Revisionist History wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to hear episodes before they're released to the public, subscribe to Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm slash plus.
Hello, hello. This is Smart Talks with IBM, a podcast from Pushkin Industries, iHeartMedia, and IBM about what it means to look at today's most challenging problems in a new way. I'm Malcolm Gladwell. We're taking a bit of a summer break this month, but I'll be back at the end of September with a brand new episode unpacking innovation led by IBM.
In the meantime, I wanted to share a Smart Talks episode from our archives. This is a special episode from last season created in collaboration with the podcast Tech Stuff. In it, you'll hear host Jonathan Strickland interview Jason Kelly about the dynamic use of blockchain. Jason is a senior leader at IBM and a blockchain expert.
Jonathan and Jason attempt to demystify blockchain and explain what it really is in its simplest form. Let's dive in. Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio.
Hey there and welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and I love all things tech. And in this episode of Smart Talks with IBM, I speak with Jason Kelly, a general manager at IBM who works with the technology that
For many people, it's something of an enigma. I'm talking about blockchain. As a tech podcaster, I've found it challenging to explain blockchain from a technical perspective because it requires a certain level of familiarity with several other concepts, and by the time I finish explaining those basic concepts, there's very little time left for the star attraction.
Jason, as you will hear, has a very different approach and one that I find particularly effective. I chatted with Jason about his work at IBM, how the pandemic continues to present enormous challenges to businesses and the average person alike, and how blockchain can play a role in industries that found themselves in a rapidly shifting and dynamic situation. Have a listen.
Jason, before we get started, I was hoping maybe you could give us a little background information on yourself and what you do with IBM. So take it away. Tell us all about yourself. Sure. Let me see if I can keep this contained in a minute blurb. Probably not. So
IBM. IBM's been my career within the last number of years. I started out my first career out of school as a military. I'm an Army veteran, airborne ranger, all that fun stuff. My body gave up before I did from the military. I then went through a number of careers from running a subsidiary of a company that was ultimately sold to Berkshire Hathaway. I did a stint as an exec on loan and public service.
Then started my own company, later sold, and then ended up at IBM starting new companies through solutions throughout North America and now globally having started parts of our business in Southeast Asia as well as China. What's consistent in all that is a lot of starting things up, growing them based on solid teams and
technology based in data. And so here we are now, as I recently in the last five years was running our solutions group for all of our services, I ran an experiment on this thing called blockchain. And so here I am now, I've
Four years, almost four years later, at the head of our blockchain business globally and enjoying some of the most talented people I've ever worked with in my multiple careers.
I love that we've already got the cat out of the bag with the blockchain term. I find in technology that every few years, a new term will emerge that the mainstream find it difficult to really grok, like cloud computing was one of those examples, right? And blockchain, I feel, is one of those things for a lot of people where they hear the term, they are...
they might be somewhat familiar with it. A lot of people, their touchstone is cryptocurrency, but they don't really have any grasp of what it actually means. So when you're describing your work to someone who is unfamiliar with blockchain, how do you explain what it is? Well, it's great you asked that question, Jonathan, because I usually leave out the B word. Um,
Let's think of taking the word apart. Get rid of the block part because people hear blockchain and they start thinking crypto and that's not what we're talking about. It's what's behind that. So if you just think of chain, I'll give you an example.
And this example hopefully will help you understand the outcome we get from this technology. And if you just put supply where the B word was and supply chain. And let me ask you. So, Jonathan, do you drink coffee or tea or anything of that sort? Either one? I do indeed. I drink both tea and coffee. Tea and coffee. Okay, great. Now let me ask you this.
At any time, do you have organic tea or coffee? I have had it on occasion, yes. On occasion. Well, you probably paid a little bit more for it because it's organic. Now, I'll tell you a fun fact that many people spread and know that there's more organic food consumed every year than is produced. So think on that for a second, right? So somewhere in there, in this supply chain,
And now think of the linear supply chain. I'm trying to paint a visual picture for you. You know, let's, let's think from, in this case, from, from farm to cup, using that time farm, the fork kind of thing. Think, think of that, that supply chain, forget the B word supply chain and think of how that coffee bean or tea leaf grew someplace and
and then went through a number of stages to finally get to a store where you picked it up or to a location where you bought that cup of tea or coffee. So that chain, it's typically these multiple handshakes. So just think about a matter of moving it from one place to the next very linearly.
And handshakes passing it from one place to the next so that when you get it, that final handshake where you get to consume it, Jonathan, you say, okay, with that handshake, I know that this coffee is organic because it says it on the label or it said it on the menu. That's all you have at this point.
Think of those handshakes as just a passing of data forget the tea or coffee It's just data about the tea or coffee that you're going to consume something you're putting in your body That data is going from one place to the next until you consume it and in that chain Those handshakes are what you trust and there's something that you're trusting there first that that data is shared accurately and then no one's changed it that chain of data
is something that you trust just inherently. Now, what if, Jonathan, what if you could guarantee that that bean or that tea leaf that you consumed was actually organic by ensuring that that data could be accurately shared and you wouldn't have to worry about it going from handshake to handshake. You would know from where you consumed it all the way back to that farm or to that tree or wherever it was grown.
If you could get rid of the handshakes, instead of having a supply chain, you would have a blockchain because each one of those handshakes would be digital technology that is unchangeable, often called immutable. And you would be able to make sure that that technology
tea is organic because you, as the consumer, would be able to see digitally all the way back to the point of origination. So there you go. Excellent. Well, I love that explanation. I love that narrative approach. From a certain perspective, I think a lot of people immediately can kind of identify with the importance of this technology. I mean, we...
We've seen depictions of or perhaps even encountered the experience of the, hey, kid, you want to buy a watch kind of thing, right? The idea of the guy who's got the – these are all – trust me. These are all Rolexes. These are all brands that you want. And immediately the red flag should come up of, really? That's probably not true. So –
In a lot of ways, from what you're describing, this approach is a way of verifying through every single step of the process that the thing you are trying to take possession of or the thing you're trying to purchase or sell is
is genuine. It's the actual thing. And you can easily see where that would be a really valuable approach. That's exactly it, Jonathan. And to simplify it even more, the outcome is what's key here. Think of that chain of custody almost going from one to the next, or here you go, watch the dad joke, chain of trustity. So it's that trust going from source to
to the consumer. And so that's called provenance. And it's one of the three letters that we call out here that you've mentioned in your luxury good or Rolex example, is that first there's a thought of tokenization. I just mean tokenizing an asset, digitizing something that has physical value. So you've now tokenized that watch because you've made it digital. You've given it a digital, and here comes the second word, identity. And so whether it's an identity of a good or
or of a service or of a person, you have identity. And then I mentioned the P, provenance. So T-I-P. If you can remember those three things, that's all you need to know about that B word because that's what it delivers as an outcome. And not mutually exclusively either because in your Rolex example, there is a digitization of it. So it's tokenized. There is, you could say, an identity to make sure it's that same watch. And then from the
from the source, the manufacturer, to your wrist. So you know then the provenance. So those three things will be common outcomes of using this new technology. To kind of shift a little bit, we've also seen, obviously, this past year, some tumultuous changes as companies have had to find new ways to be flexible in the coronavirus outbreak. And
That ended up being a big news story in itself, that the coronavirus outbreak and COVID-19 were having a major impact on companies and their supply chains. Can you go into a little bit about why that was? Why was that such an enormous impact early on and continues to be for several companies with the outbreak of COVID-19?
I think you got to a key point there, Jonathan. It continues to be. And it always, this thought of supply chains and supply chain visibility, having that understanding has always been elusive, always talked about. So what happened with our current pandemic is that I think everyone realized just how fragile, or in this case, how brittle their supply chains are.
Not flexible at all. And what we also realized was that the current demand is different than it's ever been before. In the pandemic, it was, to give you an example, we had everyone needed hand sanitizer and mask, right? You had PPE, personal protective equipment, and everyone was looking for it.
and couldn't make enough. And we had challenge companies that said, well, maybe if I make some of that, I can save our company. So a brewery that says, now I'm going to make hand sanitizer. Now you have a brewery that is creating something they've never created before, trying to tie into an ecosystem and a supply chain that they've never tied into. And they're going to try and get that to, let's say, a hospital that needs a lot of hand sanitizer. Now keep the story going, but not too long.
they finally get that hand sanitizer to that hospital. And then a hospital gets so much because they've over, overbought. Now they need to get rid of it. They want to make sure, and they're not just going to throw it out. They need to get to another hospital perhaps. So now they were,
Instead of being a buyer, they're now a supplier. So how do they tie into a different type of business process where they're supplying other hospitals? I imagine that visibility also comes in very handy when you are trying to identify the specific points within a supply chain where you've got
active problems or potential problems down the line. Since I cover technology, I cover a lot of companies that are building products that have numerous components within them, potentially all of them from different suppliers or different manufacturers. And I
Any one of those, any one point of failure can cause a delay in production and shipping. So something like this where you're able to have that kind of overview of the full supply chain because of this approach, I would imagine that ends up being really valuable from that perspective as well, being able to detect where any potential problems are going to be and be more proactive in
in finding ways to solve those challenges. So can you talk a little more about how IBM is specifically helping organizations like hospitals manage their supply chains? We kind of touched on it a little bit, but do you have any other stories or examples you could share with us? Well, I think you started with PPE, but right in, we're all talking about the vaccine, right?
Right. And this thought that we all, and this, this crosses hospitals, but then also, um,
Your pharmaceutical dispensaries, whatever that may be, your local drugstore, or it could be a healthcare provider for elderly. And so that thought, how do you take this capability that we've just talked about, the new operation system for trust, and look at this value chain now that does, as I've mentioned before, cross industry,
as well as ecosystems. And so we started with this thought of bringing together the healthcare providers, the first responders with all the suppliers for PPE, as well as ventilators. And that's the example I gave before. And I left out the name of what is called Rapid Supplier Connect.
which was really just taking some IBM components that we had in blockchain as well as things that we had in something called Sterling from a supply chain perspective and a solution called Trust Your Supplier, and you brought them together. So that was the first. That was when you say, what were we doing? We created that, call it matchmaking service on steroids with Trust.
And then as you progress to the example I'm giving now, where we say, oh, well, what about vaccinations? Think about the challenge we have in just the United States. You have federal level people really working hard to get things into states. And we know that that challenge, just what we've seen dynamically from how can you get a state or how can you see a state back to this? How do you share trust amongst states?
players in what we think are the same ecosystem. And then even within that state, there's even more entities that are moving a vaccine around. And so we have what's called the Vaccine Accountability Network that does just that. What you have is a capability that gives you this trusted data that will partner with, you think of your classic enterprise resource,
management systems. You have your contact management systems, in this case, contact tracing systems. You have all of these systems that are in place. And what's great is because this is delivered in a cloud. I was dropping those hybrid words. It can be on any cloud. It can be multi-clouds and on-premise, off-premise. So that's the hybrid term.
And you don't have to rip things out. This is a data sharing and data trust layer that goes across what already exists. So you hopefully now see, Jonathan, when I talk about this thought of a vaccine accountability network, that it brings...
the capabilities together. This is truly where we, like we as IBM, we see this as good tech and tech for good because it's bringing great outcomes for our citizens. It's tech that matters for us and for the world. And on top of that, just as a sort of a, my own little anecdotal addition here, I think that it's incredibly valuable, not just from the supply chain and technical side of things,
But the fact that you have that reassurance that this is – it's all accounted for. We understand exactly where this has been every step of the way.
It helps combat something that we have unfortunately really seen become more and more prevalent, which is just the vast amount of misinformation that can come out, whether purposefully or unconsciously, and then just it can spread so quickly. Having the capability of
saying this is trustworthy and we have the technology to prove that it's trustworthy and have that reassurance there, I think that ends up being a valuable tool as well. It's sort of an additional benefit of this, something that, you know, we're fortunate that the technology has that capability while we are unfortunately in an era of misinformation. So having something that you can actually depend upon, you know,
is incredibly reassuring and refreshing in a world that occasionally feels like that is a luxury as opposed to something you should just expect.
So to me, like that is another benefit of this technology on top of the logistical side of it. It's sort of a psychological side. Right, right. And I think personalizing it like that, when you start talking about trusted information, it brings to light something else that we've seen in this pandemic where
Whilst people tend to think trust and information, they go straight to maybe media and news, but we think of things that all of us can personalize and it's credentials. I talked about identity, but not just our
are you who you say you are, Jonathan? But what about your credentials? What about, you know, your diploma, your learning credentials? You know, something that sits somewhere out and we go, wait, which government agency do we go to for that? Or do I have to go to my college? You know, all of those things that you start thinking about credentials in the thought of, you know,
information about my health back to current pandemic. How do I know if I've been vaccinated or how do I know if I'm COVID negative or positive? Don't we want to document that in a credentialing type of way? Well, this type of information is starting to become even more powerful when we take what I've just said and applied it to a vaccine or to your health status. And we have this wonderful way, if we went through that vaccine thing, you know,
How do you know if you have been immunized, you could have a health pass? And that's something else you can Google as we work with that capability. But beyond health, think about opening up new opportunities with this technology and using information that can help others where you and I may use it to validate that we went to high school or that we have graduate degrees or college degrees. What about using this to empower information that allows people
someone who may not go to school for four years, but just needs a certification to get a great job. You can't say, okay, well, great, go back to college and come back to me in four years. So what if we could put that personal credential on a device that you have in your pocket? So that's what we start to, we start about accuracy, reliability, and trust, as well as portability of information. That's what this capability enables. And that's where I think it should
you know, really get people excited when we talk about real information and real trusted information is empowering and opening up markets, finding not something that's a blue collar job or a white collar job, but thinking about these new collar jobs that just require trusted certifications.
I love that you have really gone to kind of the end point, the individual person with that sort of application of this technology and how that can make an impact. Because a lot of the time when we talk about these big ideas in tech,
It can seem distanced. It can seem like, oh, well, that's something that's going on at like the enterprise level. But I don't see how that has any impact on me. You've turned that around entirely with that description to show this is a way where the impact of this technology can have a real impact.
positive influence on the individual as opposed to this is like these are these big financial or big industrial kind of ideas that otherwise seem distant. That being said...
With the new normal that we have, how is blockchain making an impact in other industries outside of the medical industry? Are we starting to see other sectors adopt this technology? And if so, in what ways is it manifesting? So you called out one of the first industries that really embraced this, which was the financial services sector. Banking, for example, was
this thought of transacting digitally and being able to verify, validate, and settle financial transactions. And ultimately, when we think about that original example I gave you, those handshakes are transactions. And the more that you can make those trusted, and obviously, more often than not, those handshakes have an exchange of some monetary value. And so,
Industries such as the banking industry have picked this up to say, look, can we quickly transact and make sure that it's digital? We all appreciate this now. When I used to say it, people said, oh, yeah, we'll go digital someday. Now, we're all trying to figure out how we do everything digitally and touchless. Well, We.Trade is a company that does 12 of the largest banks in Europe that came together. These are banks that typically compete.
And back to this thought of blockchain using the B word is a team sport. Again, you have competitive banks that say, look, we can actually raise the tide here and raise all boats by transacting digitally and availing trade finance quicker, better, faster to small and medium-sized enterprises because it's digital and we can make it happen quicker. So you see this type of
transacting happening in financial services. And you see things, as I've given a financial services example, it's no different than what you have in retail here in North America. And you have some forward thinking entities that say, my account's receivable, account's payable. It's a process that takes 30 days to settle. But what if I could see all the way through those handshakes, as we mentioned before?
I could settle in 10 days and I don't have to make phone calls and send emails and that would maybe reduce my overhead. And then finally, when you look at where that's going,
Jonathan, as we've looked at different industries, I've told you that's going cross-industry. There's words that identify in most industries, words that people will nod their head and say, yeah, we're trying to figure that out, such as sustainability. And so that's where we're starting to see big concepts become material when you can put, as you mentioned, trust and accountability in front of it.
Jason, unfortunately, when we're recording this, we're recording this as there's a new surge of COVID-19 in North America. The UK has recently entered a month-long lockdown period.
Clearly, we're at a new phase that's at least as difficult as the initial challenges were when we first started seeing regions around the world locked down. Are you seeing any difference in approach this time around? Are companies getting better at
handling this with their supply chains. And I assume those that are reliant on things like blockchain are having less of a challenge in adapting to that than others. But what are you seeing out there? We're seeing what you just alluded to, where...
Those that have existing capabilities knew before that they were challenged in their supply chain, and now they're thinking beyond the supply chain, and they're aware of the value chain that I mentioned, that it's not just...
that layer of getting a package, good or service across a linear spectrum, but it's very dynamic, more like a series of concentric circles of trying to get from point A to point B, wherever that is. They realize how flexible it needs to be and that there's this capability, as you call out, that says, look, you don't have to
do the rip and replace of what you have, but you can actually work with what you have and connect it in a permissioned way to use data with more power. And no one has to ask to explain
Instead, what they're saying is, how can I get the outcomes? As you talk about things such as, and you alluded to, supply chain management, you start to think about using your value chain and value chain integration of these ecosystems.
for outcome management, not just change that data, but also think about the business processes that have to change with that. Because as we said, we're pulling out some of those handshakes, which means you're changing the workflows. You're making those workflows just a little bit more intelligent as well as transparent, right? So if you're doing that, that's not easy because regardless of how cool it sounds when we talk about it, Jonathan,
on this podcast. It might sound cool, but it's change. And we know that change is not easy. A fortunate outcome of an unfortunate situation is that the sense of urgency and also collaboration and teamwork are overcoming that challenge right now. And that's what we're seeing as a positive outcome here where people are coming together
And saying, I'm not going to get all wound up in the who, what, why, and how of technology, but I'm going to focus on the outcome. And what does it take to put what I currently have
on steroids to that next level of capability around data and trust. And that's the magic spot we're in right now with this capability. I think what you say, essentially, it really does lend credence to the old saying, necessity is the mother of invention. The idea that we have found ourself in this incredible circumstance and that it calls for
really innovative solutions. And so this is an example of that, about how when we are faced with these massive challenges,
There is a way to rise up to meet those challenges, and it requires that sort of flexible thinking and that adaptability and that determination to adopt these new approaches and not a fear of it. You know, there comes a point where you really need to look at the options and say, what makes the most sense? What is going to work?
With that in mind, to sort of conclude our conversation, we're kind of seeing a trial by fire with this particular implementation of this concept of the value chain in extreme circumstances. But where do you see the future of this? What's in store for us once we have cleared this –
incredibly important hurdle and we're beyond it. What is the future of IBM's approach and how our industry is going to make use of this moving forward? I think use of this, and I would say the operative word is this, because this is beyond that bucket of blockchain that I mentioned. I believe that it's this thought of an open platform
for innovation. And platform then becomes this, oh, he said the big word of platform. What's that mean for you? But just think of it as this new capability that says, I'm not limited to the walls of my enterprise. I'm not just a pharma company. I can pull down my barriers of business and
and work collaboratively with a regulatory body, a government or a shipping group. I can work all the way down to that retail store or pharmacies that's distributing my good because I can see. Or I'm somewhere in that value chain
where I'm a supplier to a supplier to the supplier to the cooperative that's supplying one of the players. And if you see, if you can get that far down, it opens up the market and allows for new players, new areas of collaboration. And it really allows us then to think about
what that platform of business looks like tomorrow. And it blurs the line then between industries, as I've called out, because you have them working together. It then becomes a blurring of my ecosystem and your ecosystem. So it's less about my enterprise, my ecosystem, and it becomes a collaborative team sport of outcomes. And your competitiveness
becomes based on your ability to transact in that ecosystem and convene outcomes around how you deliver value in that value chain. So it sounds complicated, but think about getting outcomes out of a much more level and transparent ecosystem
versus me putting my arms around a walled capability. That's where the future is, and it's going to be built on open platforms of capability with data always in the center. So you can call out all the buzzwords from AI, robotic process automation, IoT, advanced analytics, all of those use data.
and they're going to be operating in an open platform and that's where we as ibm see the future and that's where we're running hard and fast and leading uh
leaving as quickly as we can. Well, Jason, that to me sounds incredibly exciting. I love the idea of this approach opening up new opportunities because ultimately that's going to manifest as benefits to everyone down the road in some way, whether it's a consumer good or a service or something like life-saving pharmaceuticals. Like,
The idea of being able to find new ways to collaborate and new ways to innovate, to have that enabler there really makes me excited about the future, which I think is something that is sorely needed. Honestly, the idea of being excited about the future is a great thing. So I thank you for coming on to my podcast. And
And explaining this in a way where it doesn't make someone's eyes just glaze over as they start to think about...
you know, hashing and making up blocks and adding another block to the chain and all of the ways that you can try to explain that process that tend to lose 95% of the audience right off the bat. So I appreciate your approach very much. Thank you for joining the show. Jonathan, thanks for the conversation. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And anytime. All the best to you and the rest of you. Stay safe, stay healthy, stay happy.
Jason's focus on outcomes rather than the technical process is a useful one to explain how important blockchain is from a practical application standpoint.
As we've seen, flexibility and adaptability are two important qualities for businesses in general, but particularly during times of rapid change. With respect to that, I think it's pretty clear how blockchain technology can play a part in helping businesses understand exactly what's going on throughout the entire supply chain.
I would like to thank Jason Kelly again for coming on to the show and explaining his work. To learn more about IBM's work in blockchain, visit www.ibm.com slash blockchain. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hello, hello. Malcolm Gladwell here. I want to tell you about a new series we're launching at Pushkin Industries on the 1936 Olympic Games. Adolf Hitler's Games. Fascism, anti-Semitism, racism, high Olympic ideals, craven self-interest, naked ambition, illusion, delusion, all collide in the long, contentious lead-up to the most controversial Olympics in history. The Germans put on a propaganda show, and America went along with all of it. Why?
This season on Revisionist History, the story of the games behind the games. Listen to this season of Revisionist History wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to hear episodes before they're released to the public, subscribe to Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm slash plus.