Blog #2: What is the digital money game?

In my last blog I raised the question “Who will win the digital money game” and discussed why the question was relevant. Through this series of blogs we will develop an answer to that question. In order to do so, it is first necessary to put some building blocks in place.

  1. The first is a working definition of digital money.
  2. The next is a working understanding of the digital money game.

Each of these merit a blog in themselves. So here is a sneak preview of what is to come.

Blog #3: What is digital money? There are probably as many definitions of digital money as there are people defining it, but most definitions can be classified according to the perspective used by the person providing the definition. Our research in Shift Thought shows that there are four major perspectives, the interface perspective, the characteristics perspective, the operations perspective and the ecosystem perspective. Each of these are of course valid, but are neither consistent nor complete in themselves. We therefore take all of these into account  to develop a working definition for digital money.

Blog #4: Understanding the game. With a working definition of digital money at hand, we now need a framework to understand how the game is played. We will look at the conventional value chain framework and identify its limitations and then look at an alternative, virtual value chain approach that better describes the game. We will consider a few well known examples to illustrate the principles

Blog #5: Winning the game. Having understood digital money and how the game is played, we will then move on to discussing what is the prize and why is  it worth playing for. It will become apparent that the concept of “the winner” is ambiguous, unless one is first clear what “to win” means!

With a good working understanding of the game we can go on to make sense of the digital money space, in terms of its services and products, the innovators and disruptors and the changing regulatory landscape.

We will then move on to taking action, in terms of positioning and strategy.

Finally we will look at assessing the field for likely winners and losers.

I hope to see you again in the next blog!

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