Preface:

Blockchain technology often elicits both fascination and confusion from leaders within organizations. Within the supply chain industry, the technology has now moved beyond the early proof of concept provided by bitcoin. At the same time, the technical complexity of blockchain can be a barrier to entry for newcomers.

This report attempts to break one of those barriers as it pertains to global supply chains. Specifically, the report addresses important criteria to make sense of public versus private blockchains and looks at how each affects the eventual supply chain solution.

It is important that industry decision‑makers can sort through the marketing hype to pick the best solution for their particular requirements. For instance, some blockchain technology providers in the industry have made claims such as “We’re the first ever truly neutral system” or “We’re the only public solution” or “Our private blockchain is best positioned to protect your data”. Supply chain professionals understandably need help sorting through such claims, some of which are inevitably misleading or inaccurate.  

While the focus of this white paper is on demystifying elements of the public‑versus‑private debate, it is important to remember that the blockchain structure is only one aspect of the technical solution. Although we outline some typical criteria in this white paper, decision‑makers must look at the context of their selected use case and distinct requirements.

This paper is the third in a series covering the co‑creation of new tools for the responsible deployment of distributed ledger technology (DLT) in supply chains. To produce this series, the World Economic Forum’s Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution is working with a multistakeholder group to create a project that includes:

–A series of papers published in 2019. Collectively and individually, these papers will offer insights and thorough explorations of the specific considerations for decision‑makers in harnessing blockchain technology effectively.
–A concise, easy to use toolkit to be released in 2020 covering important topics for supply chain decision‑makers to consider for responsible blockchain deployment.

Dec 05 2019 16:00 language