Tutorials

Blockchain for business: understanding blockchain and how it creates business value.

While most people may know about blockchain from cryptocurrencies, blockchain is a technology that increasingly permeates the way in which modern businesses operate. However, its dynamics and functioning remain obscure to many. The objective of this tutorial is to provide the tools to understand the full extent to which blockchain technology is or can be used in business. 

The first part of the tutorial focuses on the functioning of blockchain systems. Basic concepts, such as transactions, consensus mechanisms and smart contracts, are introduced initially at a conceptual level. The objective is to provide an implementation-agnostic model of blockchain that helps understanding existing solutions and future evolutions of blockchain. To maintain a solid grounding on real-world applications, we also discuss the instantiation of typical blockchain mechanisms into existing blockchain platforms, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Hyperledger Fabric.

The second part of the tutorial focuses on the business applications of blockchain. We discuss decision-making tools to understand and assess the suitability of blockchain in different business scenarios and techniques to create business models that exploit blockchain. Examples and case studies of blockchain business applications are discussed extensively. Particular attention is given to the outcome management business scenario. This is a novel way of doing business in which providers are remunerated, instead of for the sale of products or services, based on the ability of the provided solution to create value for the customers. We show how blockchain is a key enabler of such scenarios, providing the underlying trust-building mechanism for verifying the value co-created by providers and customers. 

Both parts of this tutorial include an interactive part, in which the opinion and expertise of the audience is sought to assess the potential of blockchain in different business scenarios. 

The content of this tutorial is drawn from a book recently published by the speakers.

Registration:

If you are registered participant in the conference, you are very welcome to attend the tutorial too as an activity included in the EDOC 2023 program.

For participation in the tutorial only, please use the tutorial-only option of our registration form.

Speakers

Marco Comuzzi is Associate Professor and Director of the Blockchain Research Center at the Department of Industrial Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Ulsan, Republic of Korea. In his career, he has been a visiting scholar at several universities, including The University of Texas at Austin and the University of New South Wales, and had held academic full-time positions at the Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands, and City, University of London, United Kingdom. Marco has taught blockchain to undergraduate and graduate students since 2018. He also actively conducts research on blockchain systems, specifically on methods and tools to assess and improve the quality of data in blockchain-based information systems. He has published more than 70 academic papers in peer-reviewed academic outlets on various topics, such as Web services, business process management, process mining, and blockchain systems.

Paul Grefen is a senior full professor at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and a principal architect at Eviden (formerly Atos) Digital Transformation Consulting. He was a visiting researcher at Stanford University and at IBM Almaden Research Center. He has been involved in many European and national research projects, mostly in collaboration with industry. He is an editor and author of the books on the European WIDE, CrossWork, HORSE and C-MobILE projects, and has authored books on workflow management, electronic business, service-dominant business engineering, information systems and blockchain. His current research covers digital transformation, architectural design of business systems, inter-organizational business process management and service-oriented business engineering. He is the research director of the European Supply Chain Forum. His company G.DBA advises organizations on digital transformation and digital business architecture.