Making Sense of Blockchain: How Firms Can Chart a Strategic Path Forward ^Top Note that in acquisitions, human knowledge and capabilities are often more valuable than prod- ucts.35 Acquisitions can solve the problem of talent scarcity for incumbents. For instance, Japanese e-commerce player Rakuten acquired a bitcoin payments startup to launch its own blockchain lab, while Airbnb acquired just the team of engineers from the startup ChangeCoin.36 Since each of these strategies presents its own merits and con- straints, incumbents that succeed in technologically advancing markets will typically take a multi-pronged approach toward exploring new technologies.37 Qiwi offers an ex- ample of such an approach. The 35 Saikat Chaudhuri and Behnam Tabrizi, “Capturing the Real Value in High-Tech Acquisi- tions,” Harvard Business Review, September-Oc- tober, 1999, https://hbr.org/1999/09/captur- ing-the-real-value-in-high-tech-acquisitions. 36 Biz Carson, “Airbnb just brought on a team of bitcoin experts from a tiny startup,” Business Insider, April 12, 2016, http://www.businessin- sider.com/airbnb-buys-bitcoin-startup-change- coin-2016-4. 37 Capron and Mitchell, “Developing Your Enterprise Selection Capability: The Balance Imperative,” in Build, Borrow, or Buy, chap. 7. Six Banks in Canada Are Investing in an Inter-bank Blockchain Solution Royal Bank of Canada, TD Bank, Scotia- bank, Canadian Imperial Bank of Com- merce, Bank of Montreal, and Desjar- dins are investing in a digital ID service that allows secure transmission of data. The centralized SecureKey system uses blockchain to create a public ledger of verified Know-Your-Customer data and shares the information with all banks in the network. For other banks wishing to join this net- work, a KYC-documentation use case will be highly important: as major com- petitors adopt the solution, their service quality will rise. Probability of customer adoption will also be high given the relatively small size of the Canadian economy. However, a use case of digitizing bank-vendor transactions on this block- chain will be less important. Even though the probability of competitor adoption is high, existing technologies can serve vendor transactions well enough that relationships will not be adversely af- fected. Moreover, competitor adoption might not necessarily impact firm-ven- dor relationships in any significant way.