Planning organisational futures in Blockchain environments - a systems theory perspective and possible solutions to enhance trust

Very few, if any, commentators and academics anticipated the exponential and transformative outcomes of the internet and personal devices when they first emerged late in the 20th century. The results of these technologies for businesses and their futures were unimaginable just two decades ago. Not only was the way organisations and nations communicate irrevocably changed in 20 years, but even more dramatically, the very nature of doing business was transformed beyond any expectations. What has become a fact is that the number and frequency of technologies that have the potential to change the business landscape have increased dramatically. The Smithsonian Institute’s Future is Here Festival, 2016 concluded that 'we are in the first seconds of the first minutes of the first hours of the internet revolution' [1]. This suggests that we have not even begun to recognise and realise the extent to which the ‘internet revolution’ will change the current accepted order of things. One of the most significant emerging disruptive internet-based technologies is the blockchain. The blockchain must be differentiated from its first significant application, namely cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. While cryptocurrencies illustrate the disruptive nature of blockchain, its potential disruptive impact is far broader and more dramatic than we currently imagine. This is especially pressing when seen as converging with the internet of things (IoT) which will have more than 200 billion (from the current 15 billion) connected and communicating devices by 2020. As with most previous emerging technologies that have the potential to disrupt embedded traditional systems (digital and non-digital), blockchain technologies have sparked enormous interest and anticipation. The blockchain journey has not been without confusion, frustration and volatility; fuelled by blockchain sceptics and idealists pulling at opposite ends of a metaphorical tug-of-war. This article seeks to describe what the blockchain is and isn’t, and then proceeds to take a fresh look at blockchain technologies in order to provide guidance around planning organisations’ futures in blockchain environments