Blockchain Technologies: Business Innovation and Application
ONLINE SHORT COURSE
Gain an understanding of the economic capabilities of blockchain technology while learning to apply it to solving modern-day business challenges within your industry.
6 weeks, excluding 1 week orientation.
5–8 hours of self-paced learning per week, entirely online.
Email: mitsloan@getsmarter.com
Call: +1 617 997 4979
ABOUT THIS COURSE
This MIT Sloan School of Management program will equip you with the knowledge to understand the business applications of blockchain technology, and the confidence to discover opportunities for problem-solving and innovation.
The program draws on the work of leading MIT faculty and cryptoeconomics expert Professor Christian Catalini to examine blockchain technology from an economic perspective. You’ll be offered a foundational overview of how blockchain works, in order to demystify the technology and to understand its possibilities and limitations.
Over the course of six weeks, you’ll be guided to understand blockchain technology beyond the fundamentals and to appreciate its application and promise in the context of your own organization.
WHAT THIS PROGRAM COVERS
The program draws parallels between blockchain technology and other general purpose technologies, highlighting its capacity to enable widespread, transformational change.
You’ll examine how blockchain technology can, under certain conditions, cheaply verify the attributes of a transaction. You’ll gain a deeper understanding of the cost of networking, and learn how blockchain technology can bootstrap and facilitate a marketplace without traditional intermediaries. Using an engaging mix of resources, you’ll be guided to explore the effects of blockchain technology on market power in digital platforms, privacy, and trust.
The program looks toward the future of blockchain technology, exploring its longer-term implications for business and its relationship with other emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT). You’ll be offered the opportunity to apply your learnings to your own context, walking away with a proposal for a blockchain-based solution to a problem within your current or future organization.
A POWERFUL COLLABORATION
MIT Sloan Executive Education is collaborating with online education provider GetSmarter to create a new class of learning experience — one that is higher-touch, intimate, and personalized for the working professional.
ABOUT MIT SLOAN
The MIT Sloan School of Management is one of the world’s leading business schools, emphasizing innovation in practice and research, with a mission to develop principled, innovative leaders who improve the world, and to generate ideas that advance management practice. The school’s focus on action learning means that students are able to apply concepts learned in the classroom to real-world business settings. Through its collaborative spirit, MIT Sloan welcomes and celebrates diverse viewpoints, creating an environment where new ideas grow and thrive.
WHAT IS MIT SLOAN EXECUTIVE EDUCATION?
MIT Sloan Executive Education offers nondegree executive programs led by MIT Sloan faculty to provide business professionals from around the world with a targeted and flexible means to advance their career development goals and position their organizations for future growth. By collaborating with GetSmarter, a leader in online education, MIT Sloan Executive Education is able to deliver its executive programs through a dynamic, interactive, digital learning platform.
ABOUT GETSMARTER
GetSmarter, a 2U, Inc. brand, collaborates with the world’s leading universities and institutions to select, design, and deliver premium online short courses with a data-driven focus on learning gain.
Technology meets academic rigor in GetSmarter’s people-mediated model, which enables lifelong learners across the globe to obtain industry-relevant skills that are recognized by the world’s most reputable academic institutions.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN
You’ll be welcomed to the course and begin connecting with fellow participants, while exploring the navigation and tools of your Online Campus. Be alerted to key milestones in the learning path, and review how your results will be calculated and distributed.
You’ll be required to complete your participant profile and submit a digital copy of your passport/identity document.
Learn how to think about problems that may require a blockchain.
- Identify common misconceptions about blockchain technology
- Articulate the challenges of predicting technological evolution and its impact on the economy
- Compare the emergence of blockchain technology to that of other general purpose technologies
- Discern the role of entrepreneurial strategy in a time of technological uncertainty
- Evaluate a business application of blockchain through the lens of a strategic framework
Understand the technological breakthrough behind Bitcoin.
- Interpret bitcoin as a medium of exchange, store of value, and unit of account
- Explain the double-spending problem and how it is addressed by Bitcoin
- Review the technical details of the Bitcoin protocol
- Determine from a Bitcoin transaction how the PoW algorithm works
- Compare the algorithms used to establish consensus in a blockchain to ensure its integrity
- Investigate alternative cryptocurrencies and how they might address the challenges presented by bitcoin
- Investigate the role of mining in bootstrapping Bitcoin's infrastructure
- Evaluate current issues with scaling the Bitcoin blockchain and how they can be addressed
Discover why blockchain technology may lead to cheaper, more reliable verification.
- Identify situations where settlement and reconciliation are expensive today
- Demonstrate the cost of verifying the attributes of a transaction
- Determine how to build data integrity with costless verification
- Investigate (online and offline) complements to blockchain technology that may help to solve the last mile problem
- Compare applications of cheaper settlement and reconciliation across different industries
- Recommend feasible solutions to the last mile problem
Learn about how blockchain technology reduces the cost of networking and recognize the implications this has for market structure.
- Articulate the economic consequences of a reduction in the cost of networking
- Deduce how the nature of intermediation may change as a result of blockchain technology
- Analyze the risks associated with smart contracts
- Investigate the conditions under which relational contracts can be automated
- Discern the role of tokens in incentivizing the growth, operations, and security of a platform
- Assess the ability of case examples to capitalize on the reduction in the cost of networking
- Recommend a reward system for an incumbent adding a token to its ecosystem
Familiarize yourself with the ICO landscape and understand the opportunities that native tokens present to businesses.
- Analyze examples of tokens and decide which industry verticals are most promising
- Investigate the value that tokens may bring to a business's ecosystem
- Distinguish the role of tokens in funding blockchain innovations and platforms
- Deduce how challenges around securities regulation can affect the successful tokenization of an ecosystem
- Evaluate various tokens, ranking them in terms of capital raised and trading performance
Compile a primer for a blockchain-based solution and consider the role of broader digital platforms and digital privacy in the formulation of that solution.
- Articulate how blockchain technology may interact with broader changes in digital platforms, AI, and the IoT
- Distinguish the capacity of blockchain technology to increase competition and lower barriers to entry
- Debate the impact of blockchain technology and incentives on the consumer privacy paradox
- Produce a primer for a blockchain-based solution to a business problem within your own context
- Reflect on the key outcomes of this program
WHO SHOULD TAKE THIS COURSE
This program is designed for professionals seeking a deeper knowledge of the impact and applications of blockchain technologies in an economic environment.
Whether you’re an entrepreneur looking to integrate blockchain into your business plan, or you’re in an industry such as retail or finance and wanting to understand the current and future developments of this new technology, this program will be relevant to you.
If you’re working directly within the strategic, operational, or managerial function, this program will equip you with the knowledge necessary to discover opportunities for efficiency and innovation using blockchain technology.
THIS PROGRAM IS FOR YOU IF YOU WANT TO:
GROW YOUR KNOWLEDGE
Gain a deeper understanding of blockchain technology and its long-term implications for business.
LEARN NEW SKILLS
Unlock opportunities using blockchain technology, and discover its relationship to other emerging technologies, including AI and IoT.
VERIFY YOUR ABILITY
Validate your newfound understanding of blockchain technology and its economic applications with a digital certificate of completion from MIT Sloan.
Earn a certificate of completion from MIT Sloan
This program offers you the opportunity to earn a digital certificate of completion from one of the world’s leading business schools — the MIT Sloan School of Management. This program also counts toward an MIT Sloan Executive Certificate, which you can earn upon completion of four programs where at least three of the four come from your chosen certificate track and at least one is completed in person. Find full details here.
Completion is based on a series of practical online assignments. In order to be issued with a digital certificate you’ll need to meet the requirements outlined in the course handbook. The handbook will be made available to you as soon as you begin the program.
Your certificate will be issued in your legal name and sent to you digitally upon successful completion of the program, as per the stipulated requirements.
WHO YOU’LL LEARN FROM
This subject matter expert from MIT Sloan guides the program design and appears in a number of course videos, along with a variety of industry professionals.
YOUR FACULTY DIRECTOR
Christian Catalini
Founder, MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab and Research Scientist, MIT Sloan School of Management
Catalini's main areas of interest are the economics of digitization, entrepreneurship, and science. His research focuses on blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, and the economics of equity crowdfunding and start-up growth. Catalini is one of the principal investigators of the MIT Digital Currencies Research Study, which gave MIT undergraduate students access to Bitcoin in the fall of 2014. He is also part of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy and the Digital Currency Initiative; and was previously the Theodore T. Miller Career Development Professor at MIT; and Associate Professor of Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management at the MIT Sloan School.
He holds a PhD from the University of Toronto (Rotman School of Management), and an MSc (summa cum laude) in economics and management of new technologies from Bocconi University, Milan. In 2009-10, he was a visiting student at Harvard University.
His work has been featured in Nature, Science, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, WIRED, NPR, Forbes, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, the Boston Globe, and the Washington Post among others. He has presented his research at a variety of institutions including Harvard University, Stanford University, MIT, the Wharton School, Yale University, London Business School, New York University, UC Berkeley, the Federal Reserve Bank, the SEC, the U.S. Treasury, the U.S. Department of Defense, the World Bank, and the White House OSTP.
MIT FACULTY
Catherine Tucker
Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management and Professor of Marketing, MIT Sloan
Silvio Micali
Ford Professor of Engineering, MIT CSAIL
Erik Brynjolfsson
Professor, MIT Sloan School of Management; Director, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy
Roberto Rigobon
Society of Sloan Fellows Professor of Management and Professor of Applied Economics, MIT Sloan
Neha Narula
Director of the Digital Currency Initiative, MIT Media Lab
HOW YOU’LL LEARN
Every course is broken down into manageable, weekly modules, designed to accelerate your learning process through diverse learning activities:
- Work through your downloadable and online instructional material
- Interact with your peers and learning facilitators through weekly class-wide forums and reviewed small group discussions
- Enjoy a wide range of interactive content, including video lectures, infographics, live polls, and more
- Investigate rich, real-world case studies
- Apply what you learn each week to quizzes and ongoing project submissions, culminating in the creation of your own blockchain-based solution to a real-world business problem
YOUR SUCCESS TEAM
GetSmarter, with whom MIT Sloan is collaborating to deliver this online program, provides a personalized approach to online education that ensures you’re supported throughout your learning journey.
HEAD LEARNING FACILITATOR
A subject expert from GetSmarter, approved by the University, will guide you through your learning journey.
SUCCESS ADVISER
Your one-on-one support at GetSmarter, available during University hours (9a.m.–5p.m. EST) to address technical or administrative questions.
GLOBAL SUCCESS TEAM
This team from GetSmarter is available 24/7 to solve your tech-related queries and concerns.
TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS
BASIC REQUIREMENTS
In order to complete this program, you’ll need a current email account and access to a computer and the internet, as well as a PDF Reader. You may need to view Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, and read and create documents in Microsoft Word or Excel.
BROWSER REQUIREMENTS
We recommend that you use Google Chrome as your internet browser when accessing the Online Campus. Although this is not a requirement, we have found that this browser performs best for ease of access to course material. This browser can be downloaded here.
ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS
Certain courses may require additional software and resources. These additional software and resource requirements will be communicated to you upon registration and/or at the beginning of the program. Please note that Google, Vimeo, and YouTube may be used in our course delivery, and if these services are blocked in your jurisdiction, you may have difficulty in accessing course content. Please check with an Enrollment Adviser before registering for this program if you have any concerns about this affecting your experience with the Online Campus.
