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As a foundational and disruptive technology with unique features, blockchains can provide distinct technology pushes for novel business models, strategies, processes, and applications. Revised or new business models can be iteratively refined and transformed to increasingly more detailed design and implementation models to be realized by applications supported by blockchains. Governance concerns with how decisions are made, implemented, and controlled. It is an important focal point of any model and process. Blockchain enables new governance opportunities that are trusted, decentralized, automated, accountable, secured, and privacy-protected. These opportunities can be used to analyze governance issues in constructing models, processes, and blockchain applications. Based on our prototyping experience in two permissioned blockchain platforms, we propose a framework of six governance attributes for constructing consortium blockchain applications: decision process, accountability and verifiability, trust, incentive, security and privacy, and effectiveness. The framework aids in exploring blockchain-created governance opportunities and driving future research.
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How blockchain can simplify partnerships
Collaborations that require information sharing and mutual trust between companies, suppliers, and clients can be tough, particularly in the remote era. But blockchain’s distributed ledger — and its use of smart contracts — can simplify the process, creating a common, reliable record of transactions and avoiding costly disputes. In doing so, blockchain changes how deals are made: Partner selection is made simpler, as establishing trust is less important; agreement formation is more important, because protocols are hard to alter once put in place; and execution is made easier, because outcomes can be automated. Blockchain isn’t a magic bullet — it works much better in some situations than others — but it can fundamentally change how collaborations work.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1943688
- PAR ID:
- 10249261
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Harvard business review
- ISSN:
- 0017-8012
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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