Diego Espinosa: Why Blockchain?
As a blockchain entrepreneur, I have launched two companies, been through two healthcare start-up accelerators and one blockchain incubator. Along the way I came across dozens of start-ups and thought a lot about the following questions: why would a project need a blockchain, and how can a venture succeed in finally driving innovation in the scientific research space?
The answer, in both cases, is that new forms of cooperation can create significant value. This happens to be what Knowbella Tech is designed to bring about, and it’s why I became an Adviser to the project.
Blockchain is a shared ledger that enables individuals, groups and institutions to share information freely. Information sharing is the basis for cooperation, along with having the right incentives (i.e. the right token design). The value that sharing creates is often amplified by a “water behind a dam” effect. What I mean by that is central authorities often stymie information sharing as they pursue their own agendas. When a company like Knowbella uses blockchain as part of a platform which suppresses or eliminates their influence, it can create a “value release” effect as pent-up sharing spreads quickly through a community.
For instance, academic publishers limit the number of scientists that can access peer-review of their research. The high subscription prices of their journals also cap the audience for what research does get through. Those same scientists do not have access to underutilized intellectual property (IP) — patents that could support further discovery — that is trapped in universities and enterprises.
Knowbella’s platform solves both problems at the same time: using incentives to broaden scientific participation and access to peer review, and also to get those same scientists to collaborate with each other. At the same time, it creates a vehicle for technology transfer offices to open up IP to those scientists, so they can build on it and unlock its promise.
The dam metaphor is a great way to describe this. Breaking it down could unleash a wave of cooperation by thousands of bright, even brilliant, scientists globally, the institutions that hold IP, and new forms of research publishing. It’s not hard to see how the of this effect could be large, noticeable, and definitely welcome by a world in search of growth opportunities.
In short, Knowbella needs and uses a blockchain because it is building an infrastructure for scientific research collaboration, one that brings a whole ecosystem to the table. It applies well to the scientific/medical research space because that space suffers from central authorities that block information flows. Both of those aspects make it a great example of what blockchain should be used for.
