To What Extent Will Blockchain Drive the Machine Economy? Perspectives From a Prospective Study

【Author】 Schweizer, Andre; Knoll, Patricia; Urbach, Nils; von der Gracht, Heiko Andreas; Hardjono, Thomas

【Source】IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT

【影响因子】8.702

【Abstract】The advancements in the fields of IT and robotics are provoking the fourth industrial revolution and transforming our economy toward the machine economy. Billions of economically autonomous machines engaging in business relationships raise novel requirements regarding security, privacy, regulation, business models, trustful transaction processing, and interoperability. A technology that promises to provide solutions to these challenges is blockchain. Neither practice has spawned productive solutions nor has research been able to assess the phenomenon profoundly. First investigations focus on specific use cases, but existing work does not examine the overall impact and role of blockchain in the machine economy. However, this knowledge is of particular importance for various stakeholders. In this article, we address this research and knowledge gap by conducting a study with 50 blockchain and machine economy experts. We establish a sound research fundament by following a literature assessment, group discussion, interviews, and qualitative data analysis. As main research instrument, we chose a Delphi study, which has a long-proven record of application in prospective studies and has been applied to examine future premises, estimates, and challenges across nearly all disciplines. This allows us to derive six key findings leading to a transparent picture of blockchain's role in the machine economy.

【Keywords】Business; Robots; Artificial intelligence; Machine-to-machine communications; Peer-to-peer computing; Blockchain; Delphi study; distributed ledger technology; machine economy; prospective study

【发表时间】2020 NOV

【收录时间】2022-01-02

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