Blockchain-Based Crowd-Sourcing Applications and Related Business Intelligence Possibilities

Digitalization drives constantly changes in organizations, whereby disruptive technologies can act as a catalyzer for such adaptions. Specifically, blockchain as an emerging technology establishes data-driven businesses by offering an open and decentralized ecosystem for any kind of transactions. Among others, such blockchain ecosystems can be used by companies for crowd-sourcing to achieve competitive advantages through new access to external knowledge. In addition, new possibilities to integrate business intelligence into public distributed ledgers arise, allowing the investigation and analyses of information created by crowd communities. In our paper, we discuss the foundations of blockchain-based crowd-sourcing by applying the theories of absorptive capacity and knowledge of the firm. We used design science research and derived four general design requirements based on selected literature. The proposed findings serve as a starting point for designing blockchain-based crowd-sourcing applications and resulting business intelligence possibilities, which represent novel ways to transform information into winning business decisions