World of Business Ideas: ‘How Ideas For Tomorrow Will Impact Your Business Today’

The 2014 World of Business Ideas on innovation forum wrapped on June 5 inside the AXA Equitable Center in New York.

With the technological advances steamrolling across today’s digital age igniting change in every industry, small business owners will likely be facing similar problems in the very near future. They can either Sink or Swim.

The 2014 WOBI on Innovation forum aims to teach executives and business owners how, “to embrace disruption and learn to thrive in the chaos.”

It pushes the notion that for those willing to embrace it, disruption can be a powerful propellant of positive change.

Black Enterprise spoke to some panelists at the forum. One of them, Vivek Wadhwa is a tech entrepreneur and serial business owner. He’s also an accomplished academic and widely published writer. Wadhwa “brings unparalleled insights into the emerging technologies that will transform our world, disrupt entire industries and create new ones.”

Let’s start with the evolution of digital currency.

Wadhwa says, “Bitcoin is being used for questionable transactions. No one knows who controls it. I’m not sure if it will be the digital currency that succeeds. It goes up and down in value every month. It’s just not trustworthy because we do not know who is manipulating it. However, the Canadian government has their digital currency, MintChip. Other governments and respectable organizations are creating their own digital currency and doing it credibly, It’s definitely the future.”

For small business owners trading in other countries or inclined to do so, it couldn’t hurt to begin looking into the advantages of trading digitally and getting up-to-speed on the basics.

Wadhwa cites Kenya as a country that has bought into digital currency.

He says, “In Kenya, about a third of their GDP is now being processed by M-Pesa. It is a bio-metric identity which makes a lot of sense. Though, I don’t think America will truly embrace it because we don’t have the need that other countries do.”

The question is what effect will these emerging digital currencies have on the almighty dollar? It is the currency of the world. More importantly how will it affect our economy and the small businesses that drive it?

Wadhwa says he expects these emerging digital currencies will be pegged to the dollar. “Let’s face it, there is no second to the US Dollar. I’m not worried about China taking over the world, I’m more worried about what will happen in that country when the economy becomes stagnant and the bubbles pop and manufacturing leaves the country.”