Inclusive Deployment of Blockchain for Supply Chains: Part 1 – Introduction

Blockchain and distributed ledger technology in supply chain and trade flows emerged as a top area of exploration – and a topic of much debate – in recent World Economic Forum events, including the 2018 and 2019 Annual Meetings in Davos-Klosters. Building on vital insights from these and other Forum meetings and research, the World Economic Forum’s Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution formally launched a project focused on blockchain governance within supply chains in 2018. Blockchain has the lasting potential to alter global supply chains, but it must also overcome several challenges standing in the way of widespread uptake. Because it is a nascent technology, supplychain decision-makers do not yet have clear guidelines to ensure that blockchain deployment carefully considers unintended consequences and minimizes risks. To answer this need, the project focuses on the co-creation of new tools and frameworks to shape the deployment of blockchain technology in supply-chain systems towards interoperability, integrity and inclusivity. Without such guidance, unscalable, fragmented solutions that risk integrity could dominate the marketplace. It further aims to harmonize the application of blockchain technology across different industries, such as between manufacturers and transportation providers or asset-based operators and fourth-party logistics providers. The project methodology reflects the mission of the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution: to provide an international platform of expertise, knowledge-sharing and public-private collaboration to co-design and pilot innovative new approaches to policy and governance in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The project community draws upon the Forum’s robust supply chain, logistics and digitaltrade communities and consists of 60-plus supply-chain and blockchain experts spanning 40-plus countries, representing governments, companies, start-ups, academic institutions and civil society. After co-designing and piloting the framework, the community will scale international adoption using the World Economic Forum’s platform. Collectively resolving problems and unlocking opportunities will guarantee deployment that considers the needs of all players in the ecosystem. This introductory white paper introduces the project, summarizes the main findings from the project’s design-and-research phase and acts as a primer on blockchain (explaining the main concepts). It is designed to be accessible to those with varying degrees of blockchain knowledge, including those who are just getting started with the technology. The subsequent white papers – to be published over the next eight months – will cover important and specific governance considerations for decisionmakers deploying blockchain solutions throughout international trade and supply-chain systems. The main deliverable and eventual outcome of the project (at the end of 2019) will be a concise, easyto- use framework guiding decision-makers towards interoperability, integrity and inclusiveness with blockchain deployment in supply chains