Topic : Blockchain Business Applications

Speaker: Dr. Hubert Pun 

Date: 1^st June 2019 (SAT)

Time: 18:30-20:30

Language: English

Location: M106, Business School

Seminar introduction：

Blockchain is a new and disruptive technology. On the one hand, the potential strengths of blockchain are: visibility (a firm can have visibility to higher-tiers suppliers), information aggregation, validation, automation and resiliency. On the other hand, the potential weaknesses are: privacy, lack of standardization, garbage-in-garbage-out problem, black box effect and inefficiency. Blockchain is first used in the finance industry (e.g., cryptocurrency, bitcoin and initial coin offerings). Recently, blockchain is adopted to other industries as well. For example, it is now used in the diamond industry (e.g., blockchain developer Everledger working with diamond manufacturers Chow Tai Fook and De Beers) and food industry (e.g., parternship between Walmart and IBM). Luxury firm LVMH has also started using blockchain. The objective of this talk is to introduce blockchain (the nature of distributed/permissioned/immutable, Byzantine fault tolerance, and differentiating blockchain from other legacy technologies) and to explain how it is used in difference industries.

Speaker:

Dr. Hubert Pun is an Associate Professor and the Ph.D. Program Coordinator of the Management Science area group at the Ivey Business School (Western University). Hubert grew up in Hong Kong. After earning his undergraduate and master degree in engineering and working in Vancouver for a few years, he became part of an expansion team of a Venezuelan start-up company that grew the business to Centralrth America (e.g., Colombia, Mexico, Panama, and USA) during 2002-2005. His work at that time was helping firms to deploy secure computer network. He graduated from the Kelley School of Business (Indiana University) in 2010, where he completed his PhD in Operations Management and Decision Sciences. He joined the Ivey Business School in 2010 and has taught in the undergraduate, MSc, MBA and Ph.D. programs. In the last couple of years, he was awarded with Ivey Dean’s Teaching Commendation Letters (top 10% Ivey faculty) and the University Students’ Council Teaching Honor Roll. His research interests include co-opetition, counterfeiting product, and how blockchain can be an enterprise solution. He has published in Manufacturing & Service Operations Management (M&SOM), Production and Operations Management (POM), Journal of Operations Management (JOM), etc. Currently, he is serving as an Associate Editor at the International Journal of Production Research (IJPR).

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