Luxembourg serial entrepreneur Gerard Lopez shared his experiences of technology resistance, saying that innovation always wins, during a keynote speech for Luxembourg Blockchain Week.
The second edition, which opened on Monday at the Coque in Luxembourg-Kirchberg, welcomed the founder of Mangrove Capital Partners, who was the first investor in Skype, to consider whether it was the right time to invest in blockchain technology.
His 15-minute response to the question could be summarised as an emphatic “yes”.
Lopez founded his first venture, a web services company, while still a student of management and technology at the University of Miami Ohio.
He recalled that at the time, the dot com internet bubble of 1995 had diminished the internet in the public eye. Lopez recalled talking to one senior tech advisor in a financial institution who insisted that the fax would always remain and that the internet was a fad.
It was a similar story when, in 2002, he outlined the advantages of Skype’s voice-over-internet protocol to the then chairman of board of directors for his former university. The man, who also happened to be the head of innovation for the American telecommunications company AT&T, questioned who would use a computer to make a phone call.
“I realised innovation will rarely come out of companies and institutions that exist in the marketplace.”
Gerard Lopez
Lopez said: “I realised innovation will rarely come out of companies and institutions that exist in the marketplace. That is because they tend to be extremely defensive of their position and they also tend to not see reality as it happens.”
Despite their conviction and lobbying power, Lopez said that innovation will always overtake the naysayers. He summarised innovation in five stages: new technological development; early adopters; speculative investments; market correction and the establishment of a strong foundation in an industry.
“When that starts to happen, that’s when things start to become ugly for the incumbents,” Lopez said, adding: “Because that’s when they cannot stop it anymore and that’s what we’re going to see.”
The entrepreneur believes we are in the final stages of blockchain adoption. And he was convinced by blockchain’s transparency and the trustworthiness that comes with the blockchain timestamp. “The fact that you cannot go back in time and correct things is a pretty strong statement. Because we live in a world where people try to fraud, to change things and say “I didn’t say that!”
Luxembourg’s economy minister added his support to Luxembourg Blockchain Week via a televised video statement.
“The Luxembourg government is looking with keen interest at blockchain technology. It has very early on embraced this disruptive technology. And since the beginning is working on building an active blockchain ecosystem,” he said, adding: “From financial services to logistics, to agriculture, health space, blockchain has become central to many research projects and applications its potential for socio-economic impact is significant.”
The five-day event runs until 7 October, with a variety of speakers, master classes and panel discussions. View the full schedule here.
