B-Schools Are Building on Blockchain

WHEN TODD TAYLOR FIRST HEARD of blockchain technology, he was working for IBM China. It was around 2013, and Taylor was part of a team conducting lab research on new ways to connect devices across the Internet of Things (IoT). One of the team leaders had heard of blockchain, a new technology for recording transactions securely in public digital environments. He suggested that it might be worth exploring for the project.

“The computer code for blockchain is open source, so we took the code kernel and fine-tuned it to record transactions between appliances with sensors and other connected devices,” says Taylor. In one experiment, the team used blockchain to connect a washing machine to a device that would deliver more detergent to the machine when sensors indicated that its supply was running low.