To What Extent Will Blockchain Drive the Machine Economy? Perspectives From a Prospective Study
André Schweizer, Patricia Knoll, Nils Urbach, Heiko A. von der Gracht, Thomas Hardjono
Abstract
The advancements in the fields of IT and robotics are provoking the fourth industrial revolution and transforming our economy toward the machine economy. Billions of economically autonomous machines engaging in business relationships raise novel requirements regarding security, privacy, regulation, business models, trustful transaction processing, and interoperability. A technology that promises to provide solutions to these challenges is blockchain. Neither practice has spawned productive solutions nor has research been able to assess the phenomenon profoundly. First investigations focus on specific use cases, but existing work does not examine the overall impact and role of blockchain in the machine economy. However, this knowledge is of particular importance for various stakeholders. In this article, we address this research and knowledge gap by conducting a study with 50 blockchain and machine economy experts. We establish a sound research fundament by following a literature assessment, group discussion, interviews, and qualitative data analysis. As main research instrument, we chose a Delphi study, which has a long-proven record of application in prospective studies and has been applied to examine future premises, estimates, and challenges across nearly all disciplines. This allows us to derive six key findings leading to a transparent picture of blockchain's role in the machine economy.