‘Block-Change’: Exploring Change Management Principles to Overcome Challenges in Blockchain Adoption

Abstract

Blockchain technology has attracted significant interest and investment over the past decade across multiple industries. While the research and development has been robust and there has been no shortage of attempts at implementation, successful implementations at scale have been somewhat limited. Evaluations of this limited success have often focused solely on the technology or isolated economic assessment of the business use cases. Individual users and the networks they create are another critical component of a successful blockchain implementation at scale. Change management is the approach of preparing, supporting, and guiding a group of people towards an organisational or network goal. This paper looks at change management as a critical component of successfully building a network for scaled adoption and implementation of blockchain use across industries. We explore what makes individuals resistant to change, offer solutions from the established fields of change strategy and change management, and consider how these can be applied to increase success in blockchain adoption and implementation. Crucial elements include identifying principal stakeholder groups and users, asking key questions and gathering input and feedback from these stakeholders, incorporating this information into the governance structure and consensus mechanisms of the blockchain use, demonstrating and describing value of use to the stakeholders, and aligning these components for successful adoption. We end with impactful recommendations for developers, business leaders, administrators, subject matter experts, advisors, and end users to consider to better incorporate successful change management principles into their blockchain projects.