CREATING VALUE THROUGH BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY: A DELPHI STUDY

The blockchain technology has gained increasing attention and awareness in both corporate practice and academia. Both sides expect the technology’s impact on business and society to be fundamental. However, more in-depth insights into how blockchain will disrupt the way businesses create and capture value are limited. In response to the prevalent uncertainty about the future developments caused by blockchain, this study aims at identifying the prospective value creation potentials for organizations. This forecasting study builds on a Delphi approach to derive reliable predictions about blockchain’s future developments by 2030 in the business model context. We specifically discuss how blockchain is likely to influence value creation in the business model context. Based on expert interviews, workshop insights, and prior literature, we developed a meaningful set of 36 projections on the implications of the blockchain’s future developments. Our findings predict that blockchain will mainly create value by massively increasing efficiency gains, which forms the basis for making entirely new business models feasible. We complement this finding by revealing that blockchain technology will create the most value, not in isolation, but in combination with other technologies. Our research reduces some of the environmental uncertainty managers face and identify relevant avenues for future research