GET SMART; HOW MULTINATIONALS CAN USE SMART CONTRACTS TO GAIN A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

Abstract

Innovation has become the primary driver of staying competitive in the modern economy. A company can do everything “right” and still end up losing their market leadership, or even fail and eventually disappear. This is due to disruptive innovations, which have the power to create new markets and thereby disrupt the current value models, products, and even leading firms. One technology that is perceived to be the next disruptive innovation is blockchain technology, a distributed database of records that is keeping track of events and records. The technology has great potential to increase trust, transparency and immutability in business, but is not being adopted by companies due to the lack of use cases and proof of concept. Both clients and organization can benefit from the advantages of blockchains, but it is still an underdeveloped area. The research in the area has so far been focused on financial applications, so the purpose of this thesis has therefore been to examine what value smart contracts can provide to collaborative activities in business development and innovation. The findings of the thesis indicate that applying smart contracts in collaborations can provide higher efficiency, trust and transparency, leading to three potential use cases for a multinational organization. Two of the use cases provides a potential competitive advantage in differentiation and one use case provides a potential competitive advantage in cost leadership. However, implementing smart contracts and blockchain technology is hindered by organizational barriers and a lacking understanding for the benefits and value added of the technology compared to existing solutions.