Read the original Bitcoin paper, it should take no more than two hours even if you're not technical; http://genius.com/Satoshi-nakamoto-bitcoin-a-peer-to-peer-el..., once you understand what a blockchain does you'll probably want to know more about smart contracts http://about.smartcontract.com/#defining-a-smart-contract, since their decentralized data/transaction storage capabilities enable the decentralized computation which has the capacity to replace 90%+ of computable contracts (http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GAC15_Technological_Tipping...) which are currently in silos, much like what we had with various data before the internet