Track 7.4 - Blockchain for business: Expectations and potential

Alberto NUCCIARELLI, Dr. (Associate Professor), Department of Economics and Management, University of Trento, 
 

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Track's Contacts : 

alberto.nucciarelli[AT]unitn.it

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This track aims to host qualitative and quantitative research on how blockchain technology influences business practices. After being long conceived as "the next thing" and the technology enabling cryptocurrencies, blockchain is now being addressed for its potential to change the basis of firms' competitive advantage and the relationships focal firms have with their business partners along international supply chains. Moreover, blockchain modifies the governance of online transactions and imposes to re-think policy frameworks in various industries.

More specifically, in a zero marginal cost society, replicating and circulating information is easy and costless. Concerns exist about the governance of information because of its centralization. Intermediaries relying on platform-based business models hold, control, and manage people’s and transactions data. Blockchain, however, as a distributed ledger technology has the potential to disrupt the status quo. The ledger is held in a network across a series of nodes where no middleman is needed to guarantee the access to records and no single centralized location for information is necessary. Research has so far neglected the potential and implications of blockchain. In fact, we cannot grasp to what extent the change will impact on firms’ competitiveness, customers’ rights, and policy settings. The challenge is to understand the potential and the implications of blockchain adoption on the creation of new ecosystems in different industries by taking into account changes in business processes and business models, the transformation of industries, and the definition of new regulatory frameworks.

This track warmly welcomes theoretical and practitioner-oriented research on blockchain. Areas of research include (but are not limited to):

- Business modelling and Business model innovation
- Supply chain management
- Governance of online transactions
- Policy and Regulation
- Organizational implications of blockchain technology
- Innovation ecosystems
- Technology adoption

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References

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