Abstract
Blockchain is predicted to disrupt industries, economies, and societies. The properties of distributed ledgers allow the creation of immutable data structures that facilitate shared access in real time and enable a plethora of innovative applications. However, blockchain is not a uniform technology but rather a bundle of evolving components whose implications are notoriously hard to predict. At present, it is not clear how current trends will evolve, with technical evolution, legislation, and public policy being three contingency factors that make ongoing disruptive transformations particularly hard to predict. In light of blockchain’s potential disruptive impact, it is surprising that scenario analysis has hitherto been largely ignored in academic research. Therefore, in this paper, we introduce the technique, clarify several misconceptions, and provide examples illustrating how this method can help to overcome the limitations of existing technology impact research. We conclude that if applied correctly, scenario analysis represents the ideal tool to rigorously explore uncertain future developments and to create a comprehensive foundation for future research.
Highlights
Blockchain has a short but rather turbulent history
This can be considered as a preliminary research stage, but in light of the numerous misconceptions surrounding blockchain [44] and a lack of research that identifies contingency factors for successful implementation, a comprehensive descriptive research design constitutes an important academic achievement by itself
Assessing the probability of a certain event is an important feature of scenario analysis, and it might be the presumed inaccuracy and arbitrariness of this step that causes a certain amount of suspicion among die-hard quantitative researchers who prefer to rely on the outcomes of Classical Test Theory (CTT) or mathematical frameworks
Summary
Blockchain has a short but rather turbulent history. Its fundamental building blocks date back decades and include groundbreaking work related to linked timestamping, digital cash, proof of work, Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT), public keys as identities, and smart contracts [1]. As is frequently the case with hype cycles, the downturn eventually bottomed out, and several practitioners and academics have identified interesting legitimate use cases for the technology, leading to soaring adoption rates and market-ready solutions [6,7] In spite of this ongoing disruptive transformation and the proposition of viable business models, it is still unclear in which direction the technology will evolve, which potential. Recent comprehensive literature reviews illustrate that blockchain research has emerged as an important topic in numerous academic communities including information systems, finance, supply chain management, production research, and marketing These studies reveal that the current methodological repository is predominately focused on detailing specific case studies as well as applying qualitative and quantitative methods that focus on ongoing developments and test models based on averaged responses [10,11,12].
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