Achieving Transformation Through a Digital Economy

Transformation is a critical evolutionary journey that is borne of change, reflecting a strong need to be better and to improve the modus operandi of simple, complex, standardised and dynamic processes. This need to improve the modus operandi first carefully evaluates the possibility of achieving desired outcomes and results faster, cheaper and in more resource-efficient ways that characterise lean enterprises and systems. It is because time and resources are scarce but valuable assets that optimising these assets makes for a strong business case, which creates foundations for sustainability in businesses and organisations.

It is therefore business model innovation that unlocks this key to transformation. For instance, the world’s first taxi company was started in 1897 by an Entrepreneur from Stuttgart, Friedrich Greiner. But a lot had happened before this: Karl Benz created the world’s first gasoline engine car in 1879, and Gottlieb Daimler created the world’s first taxi in 1897. Clearly, the need to serve individuals who couldn’t afford cars created an entrepreneurial drive to start the first Taxi Company. This process of running Taxi companies evolved in 2009 when Garrett Kamp and Travis Kalanick founded Uber. Uber had, thus, redefined the taxi business through business model innovation that focused on lean resources and efficiently managing digital networks driven by peer-to-peer connectivity, information exchange and analytics. Like conventional taxi companies, they didn’t have to own the taxis, but they achieved the aim of serving individuals without cars by managing the digital platform on which drivers connect with passengers.

This is the foundation of a digital economy, a term coined by Don Tapscott in 1995. World economies are undergoing a rapid digital transformation. The “digital age” is an era that introduces business model innovation which transforms resource-based economies into knowledge-based economies with technology resources like big data and Internet of Things, and this transformation is what brings about digital economies. The focused and streamlined interactions of unique digital business and economic models make for a digital economy.

What Is A Digital Economy?

A digital economy is the economic output that is achieved from the numerous transactions, services, business relationships, rapid data exchanges and process evolution through online mediums. This economic output which would have otherwise been achieved through physical interactions and transactions is a product of hyper-connectivity through online platforms, which completely eradicates the need for physical meetings and locations. This saves time, reallocates precious resources to other productive and innovative areas and drastically reduces cost of operations.

The important distinguishing factor of the digital economy is that it changes the way consumer utility is created through novel delivery channels of goods and services by creating dynamic and rapid supply and value chains. It also changes the outlook of interconnectedness by leveraging on digital computing technologies to drive macroeconomic influences which affect conventional economic systems and models. In other words, the digital economy can, depending on the effectiveness of the technology employed, achieve economic output in seconds which would have been achieved in minutes or hours in conventional economic systems. This entire process is a transformation from conventional economic systems to digital economic systems and models, and it represents the effectiveness of business model innovation in creating lean businesses, processes and systems.

Pros and Cons of The Digital Economy

The digital economy embeds technologies like Internet of Things, mobile technologies, big data analytics, e-business and e-commerce to facilitate new products and services, generate new processes and create new channels of distribution. However, there are possible pros and cons that might arise from the Digital Economy.

Pros

1) Growth of digital platforms: Digital platforms make for an increasingly interconnected world. Social Media platforms(Facebook, Twitter, YouTube), e-business platforms(Uber, Netflix, AirBnB), e-payment platforms(Flutterwave, Paystack) and e-commerce platforms(Alibaba, Amazon) ensure rapid generation of e-transactions owing to expansive interconnectivity on platforms.

2) Transparency: The digital economy ensures transparency in a way that transactions are seamless and clear for the consumer to follow. Banking transactions are a strong example, as well as payments on e-finance platforms. This has also been aided by the reality that national governments push for demonetisation(use of online applications for payments).

3) Digitised Goods and Services: The digitisation of goods and services makes it easier to simplify transactions. Digitised music, for instance, makes it easier to checkmate piracy than it would be with CDs and DVDs. Online Banking Services makes it easier to monitor transactions compared to manual ledger entries; they are also faster than transactions on the counter. Crypto currencies are digitised forms of paper currencies that run on blockchains and enable decentralised peer-to-peer transactions.

Cons

1) Shortage of digital experts: Because a digital economy requires complex technologies to run, it a steady stream of skilled and technical experts to maintain. This is especially true for most Less Developed Countries which require skills in this area. The World Bank reports that Nigeria, despite being the biggest economy in Africa, needs to close the gap in five identified pillars of the Digital Economy for Africa Initiative: Digital skills, digital platforms, digital financial services, digital infrastructure and digital entrepreneurship.

2) Requires heavy infrastructure: The digital economy needs strong broadband internet services to run. This already puts regions in remote areas with no access to Internet at a disadvantage.

3) Potential loss of employment: There is the chance that resorting to digital technologies create a few redundancies in conventional economies. However, industry 5.0 looks at the possibility of fostering interactions with human and digital/smart technologies.

Markaccy’s Digital Economy Solution

Whilst centralised digital networks focus on convenience of transactions and generation of new forms of utilities for the consumer, decentralised networks ensure that the same outcome is achieved through transparent, trust-based and peer-to-peer platforms. This is where blockchain technology becomes useful in driving the model Digital Economy, a unique business model innovation that disrupts The digital economy run by centralised networks and platforms.

Markaccy is a blockchain technology company created off the Ethereum blochchain. It is a decentralised finance project that offers speedy peer-to-peer transactions and services on its platform. Markaccy’s long term project is the creation of a digital economy that runs on its blockchain, achieving decentralised interconnectedness with its Digital Health Systems, Digital/Decentralised Finance, Digital Music, Digital Energy and Smart Consulting platforms. As per Markaccy’s Ferris Wheel Project, the aim is to run the digital components independently before interconnecting these digital components in a unified interface on the blockchain. The addition of more than a targeted 30 million users from Africa, South-East Asia and Central America will enforce the digital economy as a functional transparent system where trust, elimination of centralised authorities, unified currency for medium of exchange(Markaccy digital tokens) and eradication of language barriers are achieved.

Markaccy’s Digital Economy Operating Framework

Markaccy’s Digital Economy Framework above shows how the Digital Economy will function. Smart contracts link the digital components together by creating verifiable transactions, services and relationships on all fronts, and Internet of Things(IoT) ensure interconnectivity with all digital components on the interface, both linking back to the Markaccy Mainnet. Data Privacy remains the key and crucial element in Markaccy’s Digital Economy, which is what promotes trust in the economic model, and feedback is constantly looped back to the Mainnet for improvements, which Markaccy’s developers utilise. Stakeholders will also contribute to driving economic activity and championing regulation where appropriate, and more importantly, the Digital Economy will drive relationships between smart technologies and human workforces which will help prevent redundancies in an expansive digital model.

This has a strong appeal compared to the digital economy run by centralised authorities. Placing transactional power in the hands of end-users, as well as strengthening data privacy, are concepts that are strong amongst Markaccy’s operating philosophies which promotes a digital economy of trust.

Markaccy will optimise strengths of the digital economy in the following ways:

1) Strengthening Consumer Experience: By utilising the speed and hyper-connectivity that blockchain brings, Markaccy can revolutionise consumer experience by promoting digital communities where transactions are interactive, feedback-driven and friendly to exchange of ideas and data. This will promote healthy competition and ensure quality and more accountability with service providers on the blockchain.

2) Creating New Work Environments: Decentralised Enterprise Systems will ensure that relevant stakeholders are part of organisations on the Markaccy blockchain, which will improve accountability and performance standards. Moreover, the blockchain network will be organised in such a way that digital organisations will evolve, eliminating the need for physical offices and locations and creating lean enterprises.

3) Enhancing Value Chain: Markaccy’s decentralised Digital Economy will be programmed to help organisations flag non-value adding activities, therefore creating a transparent and efficient value chain and boosting effectiveness and output.

4) Incorporation of Internet of Things: This is will be the underlying technology of Markaccy’s Digital Economy. It will ensure the linkage of essential technologies that will keep the digital economy afloat: Smart Contracts, Data Privacy and Digital Business Enterprise Platforms. Internet of Things will connect platforms, people, language translations thus eradicating language barriers and even resources.

While the Digital Economy requires complex technologies to pull off, Markaccy is aware of the potential of the business model innovation to transform the digital economy. This transformational process will be for the end-users, for Markaccy, for partners and for stakeholders, which is what makes it a crucial long-term project. Through the invention of the digital economy, Markaccy can solve complex problems in simple ways, and it can also address problem gaps of target operating areas of Africa, South-East Asia and Central America.