Both the Doughnut Model of Kate Raworth’s book “Doughnut Economics” and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (in short: SDGs) have been getting a lot of attention. Amsterdam has recently made headlines for aiming to adopt the Doughnut Model in practice, with global initiatives following suit. The SDGs have gained global attention and popularity over the last years, especially in the field of social entrepreneurship. Investors are increasingly evaluating their portfolios according to ESG factors. As in many sectors, this is leading to a growing set of abbreviations and frameworks for which the connections are sometimes hard to grasp.

Early last year, I looked into the links between these various frameworks. And because I love visual models, I tried to map (some of) them. I included the Sustainable Development Report of 2019 and other sources, and explored the connections of the Doughnut Model with the SDG entry points highlighted here. This effort greatly helped to inspire and inform our priorities of 2020, and was one of the factors that got us to ultimately launch Tiramisu and refine our view on what we should dedicate our time to.

But as 2020 went on, my draft publication titled “Starting points for the Decade of Action” became just one of the items in a forgotten folder. All the starting points had shifted. But hey — the mapping still holds. So with some delay, here is what I found — in the hope that it will inform some of your initiatives as well.

First off, let’s start with some basics for everyone who is not familiar. If you know all concepts and frameworks, go ahead and skip right to the comparison and mapping exercise.

The basics of SDGs, ESG targets, SDG entry points — and the Doughnut Model

What are the SDGs?

Although sometimes mistakenly used as nice ornaments for project presentations, the SDGs are a thorough framework for sustainable development. Each goal holds an in-depth list of indicators and sub-indicators on which basis progress is measured at global scale. You can find the full list of indicators and sub-indicators here.

The United Nations Statistics division publishes a yearly progress report on the goals. You can find the 2020 version here (spoilers — it is not very positive).

What are ESG targets?

ESG stands for environment, social and governance factors. Among both retail and institutional investors, ESG factors gain importance — a study shows that 7 in 10 investors want to invest with a focus on ESG factors. However, many are not sufficiently informed about ESG strategies available to them. So while the evaluation of ESG credentials is in high demand, there is not yet one consistent methodology when it comes to measurement and traceability (side note: the linked article shows some interesting approaches for more accessibility including Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing to capture true investor sentiment).

What are “SDG entry points”?

Next to an extensive overview of status and gaps in our process towards the Sustainable Development Goals, the Global Sustainable Development Report 2019 highlights 6 core entry points for SDG achievement:

• Human wellbeing and capabilities
• Sustainable and just economies
• Food systems and nutrition patterns
• Energy decarbonization with universal access
• Urban and peri-urban development
• Global environmental commons

Interestingly, these entry points come very close to the “Six Fundamental Transformations” highlighted in the 2018 “The World in 2050” report. Those are (i) Human Capacity & Demography; (ii) Consumption & Production; (iii) Decarbonization & Energy; (iv) Food, Biosphere & Water; (v) Smart Cities; and (vi) the Digital Revolution. Apart from different groupings of similar topics, the Digital Revolution as a standalone topic is a key differentiation that “The World in 2050” went much deeper into in 2019.

Technology is mentioned in the Global Sustainable Development Report — just in a different context. The Report identifies four levers, which can be coherently deployed through each entry point to bring about the necessary transformations:

• Governance
• Economy and finance
• Individual and collective action
• Science and technology

What is the Doughnut Model?

The Doughnut Model, introduced with the book “Doughnut Economics” by Kate Raworth in 2017, essentially represents the “safe zone” between social equity and environmental boundaries that we should strive to get into. It introduces an “era of the planetary household”, which reflects the idea to manage our collective household in the context of these inner and outer bounds. In a visual, these boundaries remind of the shape of a doughnut, hence the name. Here is the model:

What I really like about this model is that it is extremely easy to grasp, and it clearly focuses on the “target area” (the doughnut) where all activities should land in terms of outcomes.

Let’s look a bit closer at the outer bound: It represents the environmental ceiling of the model. This ceiling is defined in terms of planetary boundaries.

What are Planetary Boundaries?

The planetary boundaries are a list of nine environmental boundaries, introduced by a group of earth system and environmental scientists. Johann Rockström, a prominent figure in this research, has given Ted Talks on the topic in both 2010 and 2020, and the Stockholm Resilience Center provides details and data on all boundaries.

Bringing them all together: A mapping experiment

How do ESG targets link with SDGs?

The link depends on the measures of sub-indicators, and which environmental, social or governance factors those measures relate to.

This is the one mapping I did not do myself: A mapping by Berenberg in their ESG office study titled “Understanding the SDGs in sustainable investing” divides SDGs across ESG factors in the following way:

How does the Doughnut link to ESG targets?

The context of ESG targets is extremely easy to grasp when it comes to the Doughnut Model: the outer bound defines environmental limits that should not be crossed, the inner bound defines social standards that need to be met. Governance is a bit more abstract and therefore harder to visualize. But as the key insight of the model lies in the “household management” that is needed to bring our systems in balance between the environmental ceiling and social standards, governance seems to be very much embedded in the Doughnut itself, like this:

Mapping the SDGs to the Doughnut Model

Now let’s move on to placing the SDGs in the context of the Doughnut Model. Here is my try, looking at the core focus of indicators for each factor:

My main insights from this mapping experiment were:

• The SDGs are quite people-centric, with many factors having their core (though not all) focus on the social standards side of the Doughnut Model. Only 3 SDGs are fully focused on the environment.
• Only few SDGs are formulated in a way that clearly defines multiple or all targets within the Doughnut. This is exactly why it can sometimes feel that goals are “cancelling each other out”, where progress on one goal is directly or indirectly linked to steps back on others.
• SDG 17 is hard to place in terms of targets and seems to be more of a means to an end.

In which cases do SDGs fit right into the center of the Doughnut?

• They are linked to natural resources where both people and planet benefit from renewable concepts
• They have multiple indicators with sustainability embedded in the target formulation

Mapping SDG entry points to the Doughnut Model

As a reminder, the 6 core entry points for SDG achievement defined in the 2019 report were:

• Human wellbeing and capabilities
• Sustainable and just economies
• Food systems and nutrition patterns
• Energy decarbonization with universal access
• Urban and peri-urban development
• Global environmental commons

Additionally, the report highlights 4 key levers:

If we map them to the Doughnut Model, this happens:

My main takeaway from this mapping experience is that t he 2019 report makes a clear effort to formulate targets that are more in line with the “Doughnut” thinking.

Conclusions

1. When getting into and explaining all these concepts, I often find myself learning a new language. Of course this is commonplace for complex work environments, professions and organizations. But given that anyone in the world should factually care about and understand where we collectively need to drive our future, complexity can be a key barrier to progress.
2. I better understood why it is so hard to look at SDGs in a tabular way, and why goals seem to cancel each other out: because they in fact are.
3. Better defining the “middle ground”, as was done in the 2019 report, might be a viable solution to solve this problem.
4. The Doughnut Model provides a simple and easy to grasp representation of that precise middle ground, putting it in a both measurable and understandable context. I keep coming back to this model after I first read about it in 2018, mainly for its simplicity.

In practice, hitting that Doughnut sweet spot means focusing on building solutions that fall right into this middle ground: where environmental preservation is simultaneously great for people, where we tackle inequalities without causing more harm to our planet, and where citizens can play a key role in driving progress.

And as the final takeaway from the Doughnut Economics book, I will reiterate the quoted statement of statistician George Box: ‘All models are wrong, but some are useful’.

If you find my mapping exercise useful or think it can be improved, please let me know.

Kate Raworth. Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist. London: Random House, 2017

Independent Group of Scientists appointed by the Secretary-General, Global Sustainable Development Report 2019 : The Future is Now — Science for Achieving Sustainable Development, (United Nations, New York, 2019)

TWI2050 — The World in 2050 (2018). Transformations to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Report prepared by The World in 2050 initiative. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria. www.twi2050.org

TWI2050 — The World in 2050 (2019). The Digital Revolution and Sustainable Development: Opportunities and Challenges. Report prepared by The World in 2050 initiative. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria. www.twi2050.org

Originally published at https://www.scrypt.media.

The Doughnut Model, SDGs, ESG factors and SDG entry points — A mapping experiment. was originally published in Scrypt.Media on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The mental health impact of Covid-19

Times of crisis are stressful for almost everyone: whether it is the effect of reading the news, the fear about our own health or the health of loved ones, fear around economic safety and potential or acute unemployment — stressors are manifold. Below are the key areas of direct and indirect mental health impact of Covid-19.

Loss of coherence

First studies show the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on our sense of coherence. Coherence can be an important buffer in managing stress and anxiety during the pandemic. This basically comes to say: we need stability to deal with uncertainty and stress.

Quarantine

The negative psychological effects of quarantine itself include post-traumatic stress symptoms, confusion and anger, with stress increasing due to longer duration, fear, frustration, boredom, inadequate supplies, inadequate information, financial loss, and stigma.

Unemployment

Unemployment has already been identified as a key source for mental illness in independent studies. Earlier this year, the OECD predicted global unemployment to increase from 5.3 end 2019 to 9.4% at the end of 2020, or 12.6% in case of a second pandemic wave. Millions of people have lost their work during the crisis, with a large number of additional people being affected by the insecurity of their jobs during the crisis and in its aftermath.

External pressure

Perceived or real pressure on performance during the stay-at-home time, whether in the job or in other activities, are increasing the likelihood for individuals to experience stress and burnout. The direct effects of the crisis can be an additional burden, whether through sick or deceased relatives, increased vulnerability, unemployment and lack of finances, or a front-line job.

Healthcare workers & Covid-19 patients

PTSD was the most common psychiatric disorder to arise after the SARS crisis (see examples for healthcare workers in Taiwan and patients in Toronto), and the early outbreak in Wuhan led to similar observations of increased posttraumatic stress symptoms. Recent studies show that nearly 20% of Covid-19 patients develop some form of mental illness three months within testing positive. People with a pre-existing mental health condition were also 65% more likely to contract the virus.

Minorities & vulnerable groups

Unemployment, low income, poverty, debt, poor housing, and other experiences of socioeconomic disadvantage are consistently associated with poorer mental health. Additionally, these very same conditions also increase the likelihood of contracting Covid-19.

In a statement related to the release of a new report, United Nations Special Rapporteur Dainius Pūras pointed out that “Mental health policies and services are in crisis — not a crisis of chemical imbalances, but of power imbalances”. Interestingly, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (and specifically SDG 3 — Good Health and Wellbeing) do not hold any targets or specific indicators related to Mental Health in particular.

Activists & community organizers

Another area that remains largely undocumented are the mental health effects on activitsts, community organizers and leaders of global movements and causes. While those groups usually have a strong drive to support others, their personal resilience alone might not be sufficient to solely lead through a global pandemic. In conferences like HIV2020, activists have been calling for more attention to the mental health aspects of community work. With community organizers and local volunteers being a key aspect of the Covid-19 response especially in areas where support is otherwise limited, the effects on those groups require attention as well.

Our mental health and productivity is suffering — along with our economy

Mental distress

A major longitudinal study among citizens in the UK highlighted the mental health impact of Covid-19. It shows that participants experiencing clinically significant mental distress rose from 18.9 to 27.3% in April 2020, one month into lockdown. The study found comparatively higher scores of mental distress in women, young people, those with school children and those living alone. People who were unemployed, key workers and those living in low-income households also seemed to be disproportionately affected. Taking previous trends into account, the study clearly highlights an increase in mental distress during the crisis.

Low life satisfaction

A study by McKinsey shows that average life satisfaction in Europe has reached the lowest level since 1980 this April. It also highlights the proportionally large role that mental health seems to play in citizen’s determinants of overall life satisfaction. This clearly shows that the mental health impact of Covid-19 is an area of necessary attention that cannot be missed in the aftermath of the crisis.

Economic impact and employee productivity

McKinsey quantifies the impact on wellbeing as 3.5 times the size of losses experienced in GDP, and points out further long-term effects. Employee disengagement and productivity loss is a major cost factor for companies as well. A 2017 Gallup study indicates that a disengaged employee costs a company 34% of their salary.

Distanced engagement

Work culture, and a company’s CSR activities, can be potent drivers of engagement — but they are harder to keep up in times of social distancing. A recent study by the Economist and Dropbox shows that one in four respondents see their focus impacted by feeling disconnected from colleagues.

This comes to show the importance of active prevention, early care and strong employee connections not only from the standpoint of care, but from a financial standpoint as well.

The role of technology: Connection in a disconnected world?

It is not only the current effect of the crisis that impacts our health — the technology solutions we use on a daily basis may play a role as well. But despite their often known health implications, during times of social distancing they often stay our only lifeline of connection in a disconnected world. We all heard about and experienced zoom fatigue over the last months, but still sometimes embrace the short moments of connection it can bring.

Social Networks

Especially when it comes to so-called social networks, a negative effect on our mental health is increasingly getting recognized. The latest Netflix hit “The Social Dilemma”, speaks to this act of recognition and a newfound conversation. Teenagers that spend more than 3 hours per day engaged with social media are reporting a higher degree of internalizing problems, which is an aspect of increased mental health risk. While this does not per se indicate that social networks, or technology solutions, are the cause of increased mental health risk, it leads to an important question: How can we build solutions that are actively contributing to building real world social connections, instead of increasing perceived or real isolation and loneliness?

Taking action: Information, prevention and long-term care

Early on, governments, national public health organisations like the CDC as well as the World Health Organisation have shared information and guidance on the mental health impact of Covid-19.

Meditation apps provide free limited services addressing the Covid-19 crisis, and independent therapy apps like TalkSpace provide on-demand therapeutic assistance for a yearly subscription fee. However, while providers see an increase in demand, the focus on this aspect of the crisis is still rather limited.

A need for long-term care

What will probably be one of the key indicators of the long-term mental health impact of Covid-19, along with its impact on economies and healthcare systems, is how well we are able to manage the increased demand for psychological assistance of healthcare workers, communities disproportionately affected by the crisis, those who lost relatives and family members, and those who see a long-term effect of prolonged quarantine, unemployment, or their own Covid-19 diagnosis.

Better prevention

Apart from direct professional assistance and mental health treatment, there is also ample opportunity in preventive mechanisms — solutions that address key influencing factors for mental health. This includes solutions supporting people, and especially vulnerable groups, through the difficulties of unemployment and reskilling, solutions that foster and facilitate close connections and exchange, and solutions that bring more coherence into people’s lives during the time of crisis.

Overall, given the large scope of its impact, interrelations and adverse effects, mental health is likely to emerge as a key priority area for further innovation.

Can technology solutions be beneficial to mental health?

As an innovation studio focused on technology innovation for impact, the key question we are asking ourselves is this: Which, if any, role can technology play in mitigating the mental health impact of Covid-19? How can we improve and lower the impact that unhealthy technology-induced habits have on our mental health?

Solutions that support healthcare and treatment

Digital scheduling and virtual appointments have become increasingly common over the course of this year. This holds especially for psychological treatment without necessary physical exams. Chatbots and virtual assistants are increasingly used to check in with patients and identify crisis situations. Smart textiles and wristbands bring more tactical solutions for stress reduction and biofeedback , while AR/VR can be used to enhance therapy sessions. Overall, it is important to keep in mind that digital solutions can only ever be a supplement to in-person care.

Solutions that improve focus and limit distractions

28% of work time is lost to distractions. The struggle with information overload and false information has been real during this pandemic, increasing our feelings of uncertainty. At the same time, working at a distance makes us more adept to frequently check chats, notifications and incoming messages.

What helps? Solutions that limit distractions and overall screen time, and help us focus on important tasks.

Forest is a great example of such an app — it encourages focused work, while at the same time planting trees based on the progress of users.

Freedom blocks distractions across devices.

Solutions that build healthy habits

Habits and routines are extremely important for our sense of coherence. Digital apps and platforms are known for creating habits and app engagement, although this engagement is often not the healthy routine we seek. Can we use the same mechanisms to build habits that improve mental health?

Headspace and Calm are great examples of apps that help to build mindfulness and meditation habits, while Smiling Minds is a free/ non-profit alternative. Habitica focuses on general habit building with the help of gamification, while Fabulous builds habits through behavioural science insights.

Solutions that motivate meaningful connection and exchange

Digital tools form an important aspect of staying connected in times of social isolation. But for our personal wellbeing, it is crucial that we build connections beyond likes and retweets.

Learning, teaching, and volunteering are some great examples of meaningful connection and exchange. They have a positive effect on our wellbeing and satisfaction. In companies, employee volunteering is a great driver for engagement.

Our very own Tiramisu connects people (and employees) to exchange support and contribute to volunteer causes in their area.

Business Model optimization for mental health

Most end user-focused applications and platforms have been developed for one key objective: to increase the screen time of users. This way, they see more ads, spend more money, have more interactions — and improve the bottom line of the producers. Much time and money has been invested in developing advanced mechanisms for keeping users engaged and connected.

For companies and entrepreneurs, it is high time to revisit the business models behind platform, app and network solutions, and put the focus on those models that benefit both users and customers: combining respectful and healthy user engagements with profit opportunities — and positive impact.

Read more insights on technology implications of the Covid-19 crisis in our in-depth report on the topic.

The Mental Health Impact of Covid-19 — Can Technology Help? was originally published in Scrypt.Media on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Coronavirus is obliging millions of people to work from home for the first time of their life. We have been a 100% distributed company since the start (2018) and worked with various remote clients and partners. As we transitioned from an office environment ourselves, we know how challenging remote work can be sometimes. We thought it might help to share our experience on remote work and working from home.

Get a routine

At the office we get used to a specific routine: We arrive at the office; get a coffee; chat with few colleagues; work on few tasks; go to a series of meetings… etc. When finding ourselves working from home, it might intimidate and confuse us at first as we don’t have these references anymore. The point is to build a new routine. Here is some advice for (healthy) remote worker routines:

Wake up early

When working from home, we need not commute and dress-up anymore. That will save us 30 minutes to 1 hour in the morning. It can tempt us to sleep more, but waking up at the same time as usual will allow us to take control of our time and the upcoming day.

Build a (healthy) morning routine

Use the saved time in the morning to build healthy habits: Sport, meditation, or just having a good breakfast and listening to music…

Separate your workspace

In the beginning, it might feel tempting to do your work just sitting on the couch. The problem with this is that boundaries between work and relaxation get more and more fluid. What usually helps is to have a defined space in which you do your work — and to keep it apart from the rest of your life as much as possible. If you can’t have a dedicated work desk in your home, just try to put your work items out of sight in the evening.

Check-in with your colleagues

Working from home shouldn’t kill our social behavior. Just send a “good morning” on Slack (or any discussion board used) and have a chat with a few of your colleagues.

Use video-calls

Keep your regular meetings scheduled and use videoconferences as much as you can. However, you can take this opportunity to discuss with your colleagues and cut the unnecessary meetings (we are sure there are a lot).

Stay available

You are working from home and needing an urgent information from a colleague. But he is not answering your messages and calls. That can be annoying. Now think about the opposite situation… To avoid this, remote workers have to stay available and notify their colleagues if they have to go offline for more than an hour or two.

Socialize and take breaks

If you are not alone at home, take some breaks and discuss with your partner, children, roommate… If you’re alone, stop working for a few minutes to enjoy a good cup of coffee, or pick up the phone and call someone (a colleague, a friend…).

Finish your day

Keep track of your time and don’t forget to “finish” your workday. When you’re home, it will be easy to work late on non-urgent tasks.

Upgrade your communication

Everyone knows that non-verbal communication can be more important than verbal communication. Our expressions, gestures and tones send a considerable amount of messages while communicating. That is why good communication can be a challenge for remote workers.

The first step to overcome this challenge is to be conscious about it. For example, after writing an email, take a step back, read it again and ask yourself: What emotions are you emphazising? Can some sentences be misunderstood?

In the same way, when receiving a message from a colleague, always try to assume “good intentions”. And in case of doubt, ask him or her to clarify or rephrase before getting mad at the message.

Get the right tools

Most companies already have their set of tools to use, and some of them are even restricting the use of other unauthorized tools. In that case, just stick to what you have and try to get most of it, or try to negotiate with your management and get temporary approvals to use other tools.

Emails

Emails are the most popular, and the most used communication tool in companies. According to Statista, global email users amounted to 3.8 billion in 2018, and are forecasted to grow to 4.4 billion in 2023. Emails are 25 years old and most of the email clients are providing only basic features. However, there are clients making organizing and handling emails easier. We were using Newton email, a cross-platform client having features such as snoozing, send later, read receipt… and implementing a very simple interface. However, they just announced that their service will stop in April. So here are some alternatives: Spike, Missive, Spark.

Messaging and collaboration

The first one that comes to one’s mind is Slack. Slack allows to organize the communication in teams and channels. Many businesses and communities uses Slack now as it became the leader in its market.
Microsoft, as the leader of business package software, developed “ Teams” to compete with Slack, so if your company is using Microsoft business suite, chances are you are already using it, and enjoying it as it is a powerful and intuitive tool. There is also an open source product called Mattermost that is providing all of Slack’s features, but is still lacking the integrations with other tools and platforms.

There are also more and more Email clients that are implementing messaging features to compete with Slack. We already mentioned Spike and Missive above. We will add Front email as another option here.

Meetings and Video-calls

For some years, the question was about whether to use Google (Hangouts/meet) or Microsoft (Skype for business/Team) products. But there is a new leader: Zoom. Zoom stands out thanks to the call/video robustness and its efficiency, even in poor internet connection (there is still a minimum configuration required). This is very important as no one likes to spend the 10 first minutes of a one-hour meeting trying to fix connectivity issues or making sure everyone hears everyone. Zoom is free for 40 minutes calls and you will need to choose a subscription if you want to get rid of this limit. However, the limit can sometimes also be a nice feature to keep meetings short and concise.

Google and Microsoft solutions are still relevant and can work pretty well too, so they are still options to consider. There are also many other contenders such as GoToMeeting, Jitsi (open source and free)…

Project management

There are hundreds of project management tools out there. It will all depend on your project management style, your team, your organization, the product you’re developing… to choose the right one for you. But here is a brief list of the ones we use for our projects and with our partners.

• Trello is a card-based project management tool. It can allow you to create boards and organize your tasks and information in columns (Kanban-style).
• Asana is a simple yet powerful project management tool. It allows you to create projects, break them down into tasks, and collaborate with your team.
• Freedcamp is a complete project management tool with task lists, Kanban view, Gantt charts, issue tracker, Wiki, CRM (limited though)… It offers an easy-to-use interface and is free for most of the key features.
• Notion is one of our favourite tools. It allows to create notes, wikis, databases and organize tasks in Kanban or list views. Its flexibility makes it one of the most complete tools I have worked with.

We listed here some solutions we used and liked. There are many others we didn’t have the time or the opportunity to use. While we already found some tools that work for us, we are always checking what’s new. If you have any suggestions, post them in a comment.

Scheduling meetings and calls

I am available tomorrow from 2pm to 5pm? Oh, I am only available from 11am to 1pm? What about your Tuesday?… and this discussion can continue for a few emails or messages. The easiest ways I found to schedule a call are:

• 1–1 calls: just share your calendar with your counterpart and let them decide. There are several tools allowing to do that: Calendly, Acuity, BookLikeABoss… We are using a tool called Amelia that we are embedding to our website.
• Group meetings: Doodle is the best tool for this. You can choose different slots for a meeting and let people decide depending on their availabilities.

Collaborative documentation

This will be short, as everyone knows about Google and Microsoft office suites. They both allow to create documents and collaborate in real-time. We don’t have any preference as we use both of them (depending on the context and the partner we are working with) but I would say that Google suite (Drive, docs, spreadsheet and slides) is the best if you want to work online in a browser. And Microsoft office is the best if you have the office software suite installed on your PC.

Design and product management

You can always use the project management tools above for this. But for prototyping, mind-mapping, user stories mapping… in collaboration with your team, we would suggest a tool like Miro. Miro allows to create boards and share them with your colleagues. They can then comment, edit, and add items to them.

It is a powerful tool and many companies are using it for almost any product design and development effort.

Lucidchart is another powerful tool for collaborative diagramming, flow charts and boards.

Then what?

You installed or subscribed to some of those platforms. So now what?

The tools will still not do the work for you. If you don’t organize your days, no tool will help you do the work.
If your work requires a lot of collaboration and communication, remote work can be a challenge. Not being in the same building will require upgrading your communication, initiative taking and leadership skills.

The best way to do so is to plan your daily/weekly agenda, over-communicate about your work, decisions and progress and take more initiative and lead.

Remote work is not a suitable option in a hierarchical organization, as that will require an additional effort for managers used to micro-manage their employees. We don’t mean that micro-management is the rule in every hierarchical structure. But we believe that a remote worker should be independent, empowered and accountable. These 3 characteristics are often difficult to meet in a multi-layered structure, where the lower-level has very limited decision-making power. So maybe it is also time to rethink our organisations and structures? We will write more on that in a next blog post. So stay tuned!

Originally published at https://scrypt.media on March 13, 2020.

New to working from home? Here are some tips! was originally published in Scrypt.Media on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Challenge

Every project idea emerges from a unique viewpoint on a problem or difficulty. Very often, the founders are personally connected to the problem they are solving. They build a team with likeminded people, build a first prototype and test it within their circles. The team gets validations and constructive feedback from first customers, and things are going great. Everyone is enthusiastic about the new idea.

So, the founders start to think bigger and build a more aggressive business plan to attract more funds. This plan includes the projection of huge adoption rates. When the plan is put in practice, adoption is much slower than anticipated. A lot of people might even say they like the product or service, but don’t end up using it. What happened?

There are various perspectives on a problem

What happened is that the team is looking at the problem and solution from their own unique perspective. They surround themselves with a group of likeminded people that is validating the idea and specific solution.

But the ambition of the project is to be used by a broad audience early on. With the growing number of potential users, the perspectives and references with which people are looking at both problem and solution are growing as well. The solution however might not take all these viewpoints into account. Here is a little graphic to illustrate this dilemma:

What makes users look at problems in a different way?

In order to understand the different perspectives of users, it is important to understand their differences in reference. There are a lot of factors that make people look at or experience things in a different way. Here are just a few of them:

Examples of personal differentiators

• Expertise and experience
• Upbringing in terms of culture, family traditions and views
• Gender
• Living environment
• Interests
• Personality
• Age
• Education
• Familiarity with technology

In short, the daughter of a doctor that grew up in India and went on the study and live in the UK will look at problems in a uniquely different way than the son of a farmer in Texas that lives close to his family and has the ambition to take over the family business. Are both perspectives relevant? If both are potential users, the answer is yes.

The great barriers of adoption

When are people not likely to use your product?

When the product or service contradicts a behaviour that they have already established.

Changing behavioural patterns is something that takes a lot of time and effort. It is also something that can only be done by thoroughly understanding the behaviour in the first place. Behavioural change usually takes a lot of time. Again, the kinds of behaviours we engage in on daily basis are strongly related to our personal differentiators and to where we live.

Why is this especially important in emerging tech?

Because using new technologies is often all about disruption of existing behaviours. And yes, even if the aim is to make things easier. But what if we are used to the complicated processes?

What if the behaviour is so deeply engrained in our life that we don’t even think about it anymore?

Unconscious behaviour: For they know not what they do

People might tell you that your product is a great idea, but they don’t end up using it. Are they just being nice but don’t really like it? Are they lying? Maybe. But they might also just not be aware of their own behavioural patterns.

A lot of our actions are determined by our unconscious mind. This makes gathering user feedback even more difficult, as you can’t even trust all the things that people tell you they would do. In this case, actions really speak louder than words. So how to get insights on what people will actually do with your product or service?

The dilemma: Limited budget, limited time

The larger an audience of a suggested solution becomes, the more diverse viewpoints we need to consider. Maybe the initial solution needs to be drastically adapted to fit the needs of different user groups. Maybe the team anticipated the behaviour of users in a different way.

But there are a few hurdles that especially starting projects need to overcome.

• It is hard to consider various perspectives and do in-depth research with a small team and limited budget.
• It is equally hard to invest in full solutions that might not be applicable to all users, or to change already developed projects. This is both a factor of time and cost.

How to overcome this dilemma?

The best way to overcome this dilemma is to integrate your users into your processes early on. The earlier you integrate users into product definition and development, the more attractive your products and services are going to be later on.

So how to do that?

There are two steps I want to introduce: The first step is to identify and get to know your users early on. The second step is to work with human-centred design and agile development. This step helps to integrate user insights and feedback into every aspect of the development process.

Step 1: Identify your target users and (actually) get to know them

As a first step, it is really important to understand who your users are. The first part of that is often defining who you think they are — the next step is to validate your assumptions with actual users.

What tools can you use here?

My favorite tool: Persona Map

Why is it great? Because it lets you think of your users as actual people you get to know. Give them a name, get to know them, consider them as friends and think about whether they would approve new developments at every step of the way.

How to validate it?

• Reach out to people in your network

You might already know people that qualify as different types of users. Talk to them! Get to know them and fill out your persona template with a real person in mind.

• Bring diversity into your team

The best way to bring diverse perspectives into your team? Hire them. There is no easier way to achieve initial validation on a broader level than to have a diverse group of people develop ideas in the first place.

Step 2: Work with human-centred design and agile development

In order to really build user-centricity into your product definition and development processes, it is best to integrate human-centred design at the core of your processes. One very established and known method to do this is to work with Design Thinking.

The Design Thinking process works a little bit different whether you are initially defining or improving a product or service. In the first case, you are looking to make your solution specific to your customer needs and integrated into their daily life. In the second case, you want to test and improve an already existing product or service. You might let your users use what you have, then think about improvements you can quickly test with them. Overall, you will go through the same process steps:

1. Empathize: Truly understand customer behaviour

In the first phase of the Design Thinking process, you want to go a bit further than understanding who your customers are. You want to understand why they do the things they do, what motivates them, and what problems they are facing on a daily level. This step ideally includes both interaction and observation.

2. Define: Identify barriers and patterns to overcome

In this step, you compare insights, group your observations and identify patterns, and clearly define the problems you need to solve.

3. Ideate: Brainstorm solutions

What are the best ways to overcome the problems you identified? You want to be as broad and open as possible in taking different solution perspectives into account. Nothing is too crazy or impossible in the first stage. Once you have gathered enough ideas, group them and select the ones that seem best tailored to overcome the problem. Specify those as much as possible.

4. Prototype: Make your solution tangible

Prototyping is cumbersome and a lot of work. Does that need to be the case? Can you find some ways to make your idea specific and open for feedback without spending a lot of effort? In Design Thinking, creativity is key. You can draw out your solution, record it as a video, or build it in prototyping tools like InVision. The easier and faster you can bring your prototype into the hands of actual users, the better.

5. Test: Gather feedback

Now it is time to gather feedback. Show your prototype to potential users, and let them experiment with it. Listen to what users have to say, and observe how they interact with your prototype!

6. Update or repeat

Did your test indicate that users are happy with your idea or improvement? Perfect. You are now ready to turn it into an actual product or update. Did you get mixed or negative feedback? No problem — you did not waste a lot of time and money yet. You might need to go back to your brainstorm ideas and follow another path, or update and redefine the problem you were trying to solve with your new insights.

How does this fit into your development process?

Design Thinking and its iterative nature fits perfectly with agile development processes. In more detail, the first time you would cycle through a Design Thinking process is in your early product definition.

The outcome of this first cycle (or more than one if you need to repeat) is a tested easy prototype of your product or service. You can transform user insights and feedback into user stories for your backlog.

Throughout the development process, you can add iterations to define and test improvements or new features.

Do you need more guidance on how human-centred design could fit into your processes? Do you need help with reaching your user base? Or do you want to book a workshop? Contact our team to have a chat and explore your options.

Scrypt.Media guides emerging tech projects on their way to change the world. We bring the revolutionary ideas of our customers to life through the refinement of strategy, communication and usability. We help our customers navigate the difficulties of early stage organization, development and funding. In doing so, we help them to focus on the important thing — changing the world.

Originally published at scrypt.media on March 26, 2019.

Human-centred design and design thinking in emerging tech was originally published in Scrypt.Media on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Traditionally, a person’s identity is mainly stored and accessed through certified documents: ID cards, passports, birth certificates. It includes names, address details, and a few more identifying features of an entity. In this case, an entity is a person or organization. Digital identity is essentially a digital representation of the information known about the entity. We store it on servers or in the cloud. Digital identity also expands into identifying objects, like computers or software, but this will not be the main topic of this article.

As the world economy is shifting to the web, where we do online shopping, online banking, and use our Email and Social Media accounts on a daily level, the amount of Personal Identifiable Information (PII) increases. This information consists of account logins, passwords, and more detailed insights on our behaviour and interests. It subsequently becomes part of our digital identity. Therefore, it is quite important to understand the critical aspects of Digital Identity Management.

What is Digital Identity Management?

In short, we can summarize Digital Identity Management in 5 different levels:

Data Management

Data Management defines how to store, secure, change, retrieve and archive data about a person. It also needs to define how to delete personal identifiable information.

Authentication

A user provides proof that they are who they claim to be. Examples are a login via password, device or 2-factor authentication, or biometric user authentication via fingerprint or facial recognition.

Verification

The step of verification checks whether provided authentication and proof of identity are valid, and information given is correct and in line with previously stored data.

Access

Access refers to the right of a user to access their account, and the right of a user or third party to access personal identifiable information.

Interface

The user can interact with the service and will see any information relevant to and targeted at his/ her user profile.

The challenges of Digital Identity Management

Trust and Security

People tend to not trust organizations or governments to protect their personal information. A 2017 survey on data privacy and trust found that 68 percent of interviewees across the US and UK do not trust brands to handle their personal information appropriately. This survey also indicates that a majority of people does not trust governments to effectively protect personal data either — 63% of respondents indicate that this should be the concern of individuals.

Security breaches that happened in the past and will happen in the future offer a partial explanation for this lack of trust. According to a Gartner report, by 2020, 60 percent of digital businesses will suffer major service failures due to the inability of IT security teams to manage digital risk, and weak or stolen passwords cause 66% of data breaches. Breaches are up 27% year-over-year.

On the other hand, the anonymity of an online presence makes it also very difficult for a service provider to correctly identify a user, which can be a great risk factor. Providers therefore need to rely on authentication processes that are usually cumbersome and time-consuming for the user, and costly for the organization.

Consent and Control

Apart from data breaches, users are also increasingly concerned about the use of their personal data. In Europe, the GDPR regulation has introduced major guidelines that give end users more control over these aspects. As a result, its implementation in May 2018 has already caused global effects, and other countries will likely follow suit and implement similar regulations.

Ownership

Similar to trust and consent, ownership is a key concern for Digital Identity Management. Who owns personal data? Who owns personal identifiable information, and who can benefit from it? Currently, many internet corporations like Google and Facebook are basing their business models on ads. Other than gaining access to the offered services, end users do not gain any benefit from their data in this model. Apart from the more philosophical question around data ownership, a solution also needs to solve the technical problem of effectively tracking and collecting the value of this data.

Customer Experience

Contrary to a physical identity, the volume of digital identifiers is increasing. Every user has to manage a multitude of accounts, logins, and environments that all hold some personal information. But those environments are rarely connected. As Joseph Lubin of Consensys recently stated at a conference in Paris: “The internet is incomplete. It does not have an identity construct.” The results are a multitude of credentials that users often struggle to manage. A recent survey found that 61% of respondents were using their passwords across multiple sites. This calls for more seamless customer experience and channel integration solutions.

Cost and robustness of infrastructure

Current systems are not robust enough to protect data from being stolen by third parties. Apart from being a security risk, the central storage of large amounts of personal identifiable information also carries a huge price tag of infrastructure cost.

Organizations and governments are acting

Both governments and organizations are working hard to find solutions for these concerns. A multi-stakeholder collaboration on Digital Identity has been launched in January 2018. In this context, Kristalina Georgieva, Chief Executive Officer of the World Bank, announced to secure over $750 million investments in ID-related projects in the next three years. The OECD has recently declared identity and inclusiveness as the top trends in government innovation.

Consequently, it is not surprising that both governments and organizations are considering, or should consider, Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology in their quest for Digital Identity solutions.

What makes Blockchain a viable solution?

Imagine you had a way to keep your identity private and securely encrypted, while at the same time letting anyone see that it exists, is valid, and is up to date. If you want to access a new service, you can choose to give the provider access to the necessary details. Those details have been verified by trusted third parties before, but you only had to do that once. So, neither you or the provider are wasting time or money in the process. Here is in more detail how Blockchain can make such a solution work:

Trust and Security

With Blockchain, there is less dependency on one authorising party due to the decentralized nature of the solution. This means that there is no single point of failure.

Consent, Control and Ownership

Cryptographic transactions make is possible to verify the validity of a document or identity without necessarily providing access to specific personal information. Likewise, blockchain enables recording and tracing of transactions in a decentralized manner. These factors make it easier to enable users to control their own personal information, and how that information is used.

Customer Experience

Decentralized data storage along with secure identifiers (public/ private keys) make it much easier to share and exchange access and identity information across platforms. This enables multi-access solutions without risking the security of personal data.

Cost and robustness of infrastructure

Thanks to cryptography and hashing, personal information can still be protected and secured, even if that information, or references to that information, gets stored in a decentralized way. In addition, Blockchain can radically decrease
infrastructure costs for organizations and governments, as it is based on a decentralized network.

Real-life Blockchain use cases for Digital Identity Management

There are different levels at which blockchain can be implemented to provide a solution for Digital Identity Management. The scope and vision of these use cases is increasing from authentication mechanisms to fully self-sovereign ID systems:

Various projects are currently developing or implementing solutions at each of those levels. Here is a summary of highlights for each level:

Authentication of identity documents

On the lowest level, Blockchain can be used to verify the authenticity of an identity document. This solution uses Blockchain to store and access authentication information, which streamlines the verification process while providing data protection. Two local governments in West Bengal, India, are integrating the application for birth certificates on a blockchain system developed by Lynked.World.

Identity verification

Blockchain-based KYC solutions allow for a streamlined and fast process of identity verification. Historically, KYC is a business process that requires a lot of time and manual or automated labour. Apart from speed, blockchain brings additional security and trust to KYC processes, as the cryptographic signature of a verification can be checked on the blockchain.

IBM is providing blockchain-based KYC solutions as part of the IBM Trusted Identity program.

Civic Reusable KYC is another example of a blockchain-based KYC solution that builds on local storage of user data, along with verification of trusted third parties that provide a reusable proof of identity.

Multi-platform login & access management

Once a user’s identity is verified, that identity should provide access to not only to one, but multiple services. Civic’s Secure Identity Platform uses a verified identity for secure registrations and logins on web and mobile apps without the need for usernames or passwords. A public identifier with hashed identity data is used for the authentication process; a flag indicates whether the data is still valid.

Self-Sovereign Identity — the ultimate Blockchain use case

Above all, the concept of Self-Sovereign Identity is the ultimate level of Blockchain implementation for Digital Identity. Self-Sovereign Identity comes closest to our definition of identity in the offline world: A person is owner of their own identity and can provide proof that this identity is valid. On the Blockchain, proof is provided through decentralized, verifiable credentials. Ultimately, that person can also control the information that is shared, which is the core of the concept of self-sovereignty.

The challenge of implementing a Self-Sovereign Identity system is that it must be widely accepted to provide a real user benefit. While this concept is still in an early development stage, there are a few very interesting examples of Self-Sovereign Identity solutions implemented today:

A Swiss city with a digital ID

Being a haven for Blockchain enthusiasts and developments, the city of Zug (Switzerland) has become one of the first communities worldwide to offer digital identity to their citizens. UPort is the technological solution behind this project.

A progressive government effort

Estonia has proven to be a front runner when it comes to technological innovation. With their e-Estonia program, the country makes public services available to physical (and digital) residents of the country. The e-ID program is providing access to those services.

Striving for a cross-national solution

Veridenkey is another Digital Identity startup that strives to implement Self-Sovereign Identity systems at a broader level. Aiming to build a cross-national identity solution, the team is keeping close contact with government agencies, regulators and trusted institutions, and states to have designed a data architecture that is compliant with EU regulations.

Providing Digital Identities where there were none before

Currently, a large portion of the world population does not have access to digital services, or lost access due to misplacement. BanQu provides an economic identity solution that provides access to transactions for poor, displaced and stateless communities. Their identity solution was piloted with several hundred refugees in Kenya.

UnCHAINed, a recent winner of the Consensys Blockchain for Social Impact incubator, is building a Digital Identity and Resource Allocation System (DIRAS) that aims to help displaced people with both identification and aid distribution.

Identity for all

Sovrin has the ambition to build a global peer-to-peer identity solution, along with governance and trust frameworks that ensure the integrity of their solution. The non-profit organization aims to build a public network, secured and maintained by trusted Stewards. Each individual can establish an identity and link it to various credentials.

Originally published at scrypt.media on October 2, 2018.

Blockchain for Digital Identity Management was originally published in Scrypt.Media on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Some months ago, we all probably received tens of notifications from our service providers announcing changes in their Privacy policy. Facebook, Google, Amazon, your phone provider, your supermarket chain (where you have a loyalty card) … They all needed to comply to something many of us never heard about before but which became quite popular in a really short time: GDPR.

What is GDPR?

According to the official EU definition:

The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was designed to harmonize data privacy laws across Europe, to protect and empower all EU citizens’ data privacy and to reshape the way organizations across the region approach data privacy. The key aspects of GDPR, as well as information on its business impact, can be found throughout this site.

GDPR User rights

In a nutshell, service providers need to take into account the following EU Citizen rights when collecting their personal data:

• Right of rectifcation: “The data subject shall have the right to obtain from the controller without undue delay the rectification of inaccurate personal data concerning him or her. Taking into account the purposes of the processing, the data subject shall have the right to have incomplete personal data completed, including by means of providing a supplementary statement”
• Right to erasure (‘right to be forgotten’): “The data subject shall have the right to obtain from the controller the erasure of personal data concerning him or her without undue delay and the controller shall have the obligation to erase personal data without undue delay”
• Rights related to automated processing: “The data subject shall have the right to obtain from the controller restriction of processing where some conditions applies”
• Right of access: “A data subject should have the right of access to personal data which have been collected concerning him or her, and to exercise that right easily and at reasonable intervals, in order to be aware of, and verify, the lawfulness of the processing”

Above all these rights, there is the obligation of requesting users consent for collecting and processing their data. This consent should be “freely given, specifc, informed and unambiguous” and the user has the “right to withdraw his or her consent at any time”

GDPR Actors

When the EU defined these rules for GDPR, it took the assumption that it would be possible, in all cases, to identify 3 actors:

• Data subject: is a natural person who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person
• Data controller: means the natural or legal person, public authority, agency or other body which, alone or jointly with others, determines the purposes and means of the processing of personal data; where the purposes and means of such processing are determined by Union or Member State law, the controller or the specific criteria for its nomination may be provided for by Union or Member State law
• Data processor: means a natural or legal person, public authority, agency or other body which processes personal data on behalf of the controller

The data controller is then playing a major role here and is the main responsible for GDPR application. However, as we will see, in case of Blockchain products and services, it might not always be obvious who the data controller is.

What is Blockchain?

Blockchain is simply a decentralized database. It means that many actors keep a copy of information and can propose signed modifications or transactions that are then approved thanks to consensus mechanisms.

Blockchain technology has a huge potential as it allows to store information, and perform transactions without the need of a centralized entity.

When Blockchain appeared, with Bitcoin, its main purpose was to disrupt banks and finacial transactions. It was also aiming to preserve the privacy of its users. All it needed to know to perform a transaction was the wallet addresses of the sender and the recipient. However, a lot of improvement has been done since then. Thanks mainly to smart contracts, it is now possible to perform complex transactions involving much more data than just a wallet address.

Advantages of Blockchain

Thanks to this evolution of the Blockchain, many companies are starting to propose new services and products running on Blockchain. The benefits for them and for their customers are not negligeable. According to IBM, these are the top 5 benefits of Blockchain :

• Greater transparency
• Enhanced Security
• Improved traceability
• Increased efficiency and speed (compared to traditional paper work and contract at least)
• Reduced costs

GDPR Compliant Blockchain

Considering the intrinsic characteristics of Blockchain, it seems, at first glance at least, difficult to imagine a GDPR compliant Blockchain. However, as nicely said in the ConsenSys report made on behalf of the European Union blockchain observatory and forum, “GDPR compliance is not about the technology, it is about how the technology is used”.

Private VS Public & Permissioned VS Permissionless

Bitcoin is the first application of Blockchain and it’s, without doubt, the most famous. Bitcoin is using a public permissionless Blockchain network. It means that anyone can join and participate to the network.

Majority of known Blockchain Networks are working the same way. However, in some cases, a Blockchain application can be:

• Private: The Blocks are not visible to anyone. An autority is responsible for providing access to some users or entities. For example, many banks and entreprises are experimenting or running private Blockchain-based solutions.
• Permissioned: The Blockchain can be private or public (anyone can see the the blocks). However, an autority is providing permission to some entities to validate and run the network. For example, Ripple is using a permissioned Blockchain.

Who is the data controller in a Blockchain?

In the case of a private and/or permissioned Blockchain network, it seems obvious that the Authority controlling the access should be considered as the data controller.

In the case of public Blockchain however, it seems a bit more tricky. The answer to the question is (drum roll): We don’t know yet! Indeed, In a public permissionless Blockchain, there are still some debates about this question.

While almost everyone agrees that developers of the Blockchain network (Ethereum for example), the nodes (including miners) and the users (the ones requesting transactions) cannot be considered as data controllers. There is still a debate about the smart contract publishers. Indeed, behind smart contracts, there are usually entities and startups proposing a service for which they might need to collect personal data.

Blockchain and Personal data

Should companies store their unanonymised customers name, address, phone and credit card numbers in a public Blockchain? The answer is clearly “NO! Don’t even think about it!”. It would be the equivalent of Facebook cancelling all their data privacy settings and allowing everyone to see everyone’s data.

But Personal Data, according to GDPR, are not only data that are obviously linked to the identity of a user. Its definition is much wider than this and concerns “any information relating to an identifed or identifable natural person”. If we really want to strictly apply this definiton, even wallet address, encrypted and hashed data can be considered as personal data if the techniques used are not strong enough to prevent hacking or pattern analysis.

Blockchain and data subject rights

As seen before, one of the main issue with GDPR application in a public Blockchain Network is how to identify the data controller. If this entity is not clearly defined it seems difficult for data subjects to execute their GDPR rights. For example, Who are they giving their consent to? Who should they contact to request their right to access or right for data erasure (if there is any way to erase data from the Blockchain)?

In addition to this, the fact that many Blockchain projects are developed by open source communities, nothing (and no one) can guarantee that the solution will be “data protection per design”.

Blockchain and GDPR: The impossible love?

Indeed, it seems impossible to comply to GDPR when using Blockchain. But as said above, there is no GDPR compliant technology. It all depends on how the technology is used.

One needs to keep in mind that the technology is not mature yet. There are and will be a lot of non-GDPR compliant implementations out there. But many actors are deploying huge efforts to standardize the usage of Blockchain. We also think that there should be more effort to be done on the regulatory side to adapt GDPR to Blockchain specifities. For example, adding alternatives when data controller identification is not possible (or not easy). Or describing “Blockchain-compatible” ways to delete data (encryptions and key destruction for example)

In the meantime, the previously mentioned report is providing some great principles that Blockchain solution entrepreneurs and designers should try to follow to avoid any GDPR breach.

Principle 1: Start with the big picture: how is user value created, how is data used, and do you really need blockchain?

Principle 2: Avoid storing personal data on a blockchain. Make full use of data obfuscation, encryption and aggregation techniques in order to anonymise data.

Principle 3: Collect personal data off-chain or, if the blockchain can’t be avoided, on private, permissioned blockchain networks. Consider personal data carefully when connecting private blockchains with public ones.

Principle 4: Continue to innovate, and be as clear and transparent as possible with users.

To these principles we would add:

Principle 5: Integrate with secured Digitial Identity solutions where users OWN their personal data. Use and process the data they provide you access to only when needed and in all transparency.

Conclusion

As a conclusion, all is a matter of finding the good balance between these 2 statements

• Regulators shouldn’t stop innovation
• Innovators shouldn’t ignore the data privacy of their customers.

One of Blockchain’s first purposes was to give back power to the people. It gave them financial alternatives where they didn’t need middlemen (banks) anymore to exchange value. The entrepreneurs and designers using Blockchain should keep this in mind. They should design a solution where customers will have full control of their personal data.

Blockchain Blockchain applications Data privacy Europe GDPR Privacy Report

Originally published at scrypt.media on November 19, 2018.

Blockchain and GDPR — Are they compatible? was originally published in Scrypt.Media on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

At the same time, there are more and more owners, agencies and middle men coming up in the space — including us. Isn’t a service provider just another middle man? We cannot start in this space without recognizing that contradiction and dealing with it somehow.

Isn’t this just… centralization?

The blockchain space has rapidly evolved, and while many of these developments are great steps forward, there are also some things that seem to be counterintuitive in a space that wants to decentralize the world. Some examples:

Companies emerge in traditional structures

Being a CEO and sole decision maker in a blockchain startup is a bit counterintuitive. Building a business model with optimized continuous revenue streams is contradictory to the vision of distributed control. Still, known structures are needed in order to bring innovations to life. Where will this lead us?

Service providers are just like the middlemen everyone wants to cut out

You have a service agency in the blockchain space? You organize events for participation fees? You provide blockchain-based services to large organizations? Congratulations, you are a new version of one of those middlemen everyone wants to cut out. Yes we know, we’re in the same boat here. So how do we deal with this?

The highest bids for exposure and influence

Event organizers, service providers, and “influencers” charge maximum rates for their offers. Some well-hyped parties misuse their status for maximum profit. Isn’t this exactly the type of thing that should be prevented with blockchain?

So where does this take us?

What do we conclude from these observations? Working in the blockchain space has a few implications that project teams and anyone else working in the space need to be comfortable with to some extent:

Blockchain as a protocol vs blockchain as a philosophy

Blockchain has many potential use cases, and is of equal interest to startups and large organizations. The difference in interest lies in using it as a technology solution, or using it as a philisophy to change existing systems and structures. It is important to understand where your interests are.

The traditional company structure might not work in the long run

Talking to many startups in this space, we see that the ones that truly share the decentralized vision of blockchain can imagine a scenario where they no longer own their company or the platforms and applications they built. Of course, no one wants to just give ideas for free to the world, and no one should have to do that. And blockchain does have a lot of applications that suggest a perfect fit into corporate backend processes. However, innovation should not be hindered by enforcing that fit, and there are other ways to hone your achievements than holding company ownership. Creating a long-term vision on where you want to go with your idea is a great start.

The community is your extended team

In traditional startups, the team is doing the work, and the customers give feedback. Of course, blockchain is not the only or first area where these lines become blurry, and there are great examples of companies working with and sourcing from their community long before blockchain was a thing. But in the blockchain space, this topic holds a lot of importance. It goes so far as the community being in the driving seat about where your product will go next. Can you take the challenge?

Letting go of full control

Setting a great idea free can be quite a difficult thing. You feel ownership, attachment, and have a clear vision of where you want to take this. But the users and the community might think differently about this. This is a topic in any startup, but it is even more pronounced in the blockchain space. You really have to be able to let go of your plans. Real decentralization requires a loss of ownership to some extent.

Reconsider your business model

Does your business model properly reflect your blockchain vision? If you really want to cut out the middle men, you can’t take maximum shares and maximum profit. If the vision of decentralization is not ingrained in every step, chances are the successful blockchain startups of today will just become the next big moguls with too much power tomorrow.

Originally published at scrypt.media on July 11, 2018.

Centralized decentralization was originally published in Scrypt.Media on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.