ABSTRACT
Sustainable innovation focuses beyond economic benefits, on social and environmental aspects. Innovative services are now gaining attention as a strategy to stay competitive. Information sharing is a key component of establishing cooperation, as well as being the main element in new services. However, quality of information sharing is often the main challenge. Although third-party services can reduce information asymmetry, the reliability of the shared information remains a challenge. Blockchain is a digital distributed computing network where no member of the network can falsify or control the information within it. The data-storage structure of blockchain makes tampering evident, and has caught the attention of researchers. This has sparked an interest in how blockchain can play a role in the horizontal and vertical level of information sharing in different industries. Two case studies of different nature, relating to healthcare and smart building, are examined in this chapter. From case study 2, we identified that blockchain can enable a new form of data-information sharing, vertically, between the service provider and the building owner. From case study 1, it is seen that horizontal information sharing with patients in the healthcare sector has benefits such as reducing preventable medication error through collaborative care decisions, and preventing clinicians from burning out. It is vital to study the nature of the domain, the technical requirements, and the boundary conditions like privacy to design a feasible solution using this blockchain technology. Some future work such as implementing those solutions in a real-world scenario to generate actual performances are needed to gain support from top leaders to incorporate this technology for information sharing.
