By Melissa Swift, John Petzold, Kevin Cashman, and Leslie Gordon; originally posted on Korn Ferry Institute on December 6, 2017.
A recent headline in Barron’s announced it quite plainly: “Bitcoin Storms Wall Street.” And, no kidding, the cryptocurrency has jumped in value more than 10 times since the start of the year, making this year’s stock market gain look boring. Last week, it joined the financial world’s mainstream when US regulators approved the trading of bitcoin futures. Two of the world’s biggest exchanges, the CBOE Futures Exchange and the CME, will offer investors bitcoin-related products later this month, with other exchanges around the world likely following suit next year.
At this kind of pace, experts say, both the currency and blockchain, the technology behind it, represent a clear threat to the way many businesses may operate in the future. And yet many corporate leaders may be still be clueless about it all. “Things are moving so fast that decisions are being made with incomplete information,” says John Petzold, senior client partner, global leader, CXO Optimization at Korn Ferry.
To some degree, however, CEOs and others can rely on various formulas from the past to deal with disruptions, even on this level. Here’s a brief roadmap […]