See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/348019485

Surfing blockchain wave, or drowning? Shaping the future of distributed

ledgers and decentralized technologies

Article  in  Technological Forecasting and Social Change · April 2021

DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2020.120463

CITATION READS

1 77

4 authors:

Piera Centobelli Roberto Cerchione

University of Naples Federico II Parthenope University of Naples
56 PUBLICATIONS   871 CITATIONS    51 PUBLICATIONS   1,061 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Emilio Esposito Eugenio Oropallo

University of Naples Federico II University of Naples Federico II
79 PUBLICATIONS   1,661 CITATIONS    4 PUBLICATIONS   17 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Knowledge Management in Supply Chain: An Analysis of Structural Equations View project

Technological Evaluation of ICT View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Eugenio Oropallo on 06 January 2021.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Technological Forecasting & Social Change 165 (2021) 120463

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Technological Forecasting & Social Change

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/techfore

Surfing blockchain wave, or drowning? Shaping the future of distributed

ledgers and decentralized technologies
Piera Centobelli a, Roberto Cerchione b, *, Emilio Esposito a, Eugenio Oropallo a
a
Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Naples Federico II, P. le Tecchio 80, 80125, Naples (Italy)
b
Department of Engineering, University of Naples Parthenope, Centro Direzionale di Napoli Isola C4, 80143, Naples, (Italy)

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Blockchain is a promising technology whose four TRs (TRaceability, TRacking, TRansparency, TRrust) features
Bibliometric analysis are bound to revolutionize material, information, financial flows and transactions inside and outside organisa­
Block-chain tions. Many studies have been published showing the potential of this disruptive technology in many fields and
Decentralized technology
this number is growing exponentially in recent years. This enormous amount of papers calls for a more systematic
Distributed ledger
Literature review
approach to analyse the overall trend in this research field. A bibliometric approach based on performance
Network analysis analysis and network analysis techniques is used to examine the evolution of blockchain technology research.
Performance analysis Firstly, this paper contributes to the body of literature by discussing the most influential countries, authors,
Traceability subject areas and journals of the current blockchain research. Secondly, this paper identifies six main clusters of
Tracking blockchain-related research contributions and, based on the analysis on centrality and density measures, it
Transparency classifies research themes in motor themes, basic themes, emerging or disappearing themes, and specialised
trust themes. Despite the majority of contributions belong to the computer science subject area, many papers
belonging to the technology management subject area provide pivotal insights for practitioners and policy
makers. Specifically, they may exploit the results of this research to rethink many traditional processes in the
light of blockchain technology implementation, exploit the benefits of the four TRs to manage processes,
automate common tasks, generate actionable results, and improve daily operations.

1. Introduction necessity of distributed systems to guarantee transparency and security

With the advent of the fourth industrial revolution, an enormous
amount of data and knowledge sources about products’ life-cycles, in­
bound/outbound logistics, customer-supplier interactions, and market
needs are available real-time for companies (Ardito et al., 2019; Atzori
et al., 2010; Islam et al., 2020; Shashi et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2018). As
a result, business operations are moving towards more trustless, auto­
mated and coordinated multi-objective systems crossed by a variety of
data and knowledge flows favouring the integration of demand- and
supply-focused digital processes (Castagna et al., 2020; Goertzel et al.,
2017; Ranganathan et al., 2011; Roßmann et al., 2018; Schrauf and
Berttram, 2016). The crucial issue is ensuring that the data is used in an
efficient, synchronised, interoperable and transparent way, and adds
value in addressing real problems and issues (Kwon et al., 2015;
Amankwah-Amoah, 2016; Dubey et al., 2019). With regard to the way
data is created, collected, stored and made available on a platform, a
topic that is crucial for academicians and practitioners concerns the
for business transactions and information flows without the need for a
third trusted party (Goertzel et al., 2017; Marsal-Llacuna, 2018; Pereira
et al., 2019). Furthermore, these efforts should be coordinated within a
transparent and trusted mechanism, hence leading to decentralized
processes, managerial and organizational complexities (Chen et al.,
2012; Islam et al., 2020; Schoenherr and Speier-Pero, 2015; Vigna and
Casey, 2016; Wang et al., 2016; White et al., 2020).
In this context, the implementation of blockchain platforms allows
companies to deal with increasing transparency, disintermediation of
business processes, efficiency, and data quality issues, due to the un­
precedented volume, variety, and velocity of data that can be acquired
and the transfer of ownership that can be elaborated (Cecere, 2017;
Hazen et al., 2014; Mancilla and Sepúlveda, 2017; Raguseo and Vitari,
2018; Tan et al., 2015).
Nevertheless, although there is a vast literature highlighting that
blockchain is becoming a key strategic factor in the new industrial
environment, in the field of technology management the future of

* Corresponding author: University of Naples Parthenope, Centro Direzionale di Napoli, Isola, C4, 80143, Naples, Italy.
E-mail address: roberto.cerchione@uniparthenope.it (R. Cerchione).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2020.120463
Received 10 April 2020; Received in revised form 8 November 2020; Accepted 9 November 2020
Available online 22 December 2020
0040-1625/© 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
P. Centobelli et al.
distributed ledgers and decentralized technologies still seems to be
neglected. This latter point is also underlined by the two reviews dealing
with the analysis of the body of literature (Firdaus et al., 2019; Miau and
Yang, 2018). Miau and Yang (2018) reviewed papers published from
2008 to March 2017 and evaluated the author productivity using the
Lotka’s law and K-S test to verify reliability. The review analyses the
three main stages of blockchain research evolution. The review also
shows that more features and data can be added to evaluate the pathway
from multiple viewpoints, especially the changes of technologies and
related domains. Firdaus et al. (2019) reviewed mainly technical papers
published between 2013 and 2018. Authors mainly analysed the extent
to which consensus algorithms support the development of blockchain
solutions.
Both these reviews highlight an increasing interest in the develop­
ment of blockchain solutions. Nevertheless, they do not analyse the
literature highlighting the specificity of the diverse application fields
and do not even indicate the context-specific factors affecting block­
chain design in different industries and domains. However, these
analytical perspectives are crucial and could identify important addi­
tional issues to fill previous gaps through advanced network analysis
techniques.
In this context, the main aim of this paper is to conduct a bibliometric
review of blockchain literature that is complementary to the previous
reviews. Scholars widely acknowledged the imperative role of classi­
fying the research published on an exponentially growing research field
to facilitate researchers and practitioners in attaining a deeper under­
standing of the field (Blanco-Mesa et al., 2017; Merigó et al., 2016;
Nunen et al., 2018). The application of the bibliometric approach based
on performance analysis and network analysis techniques may enable to
achieve this objective.
To provide a structured and encompassing overview of the block­
chain research field, this paper proposes: (1) a review of the literature of
blockchain dating back to its appearance; (2) a robust insight into the
research field by using performance analysis and network analysis
applied to a total of 2233 publications to identify key contributing au­
thors, countries, institutions and journals in the field; (3) a comparison
of the most influential contributions according to the citations; and (4)
the identification of research clusters based on co-citation analysis and
co-occurrence analysis within the blockchain research domain. By
analysing the papers and citations received, we identified the impact of
the most influential contributions and authors which represent the
theoretical and empirical foundations of this field, the relationships
between papers and authors, the topics already covered, and, as a result,
new research streams for further investigations.
Therefore, this paper tends to bridge a research gap concerning the
lack of a comprehensive overview of blockchain using a robust analyt­
ical approach, by offering the broad qualitative and quantitative insights
of blockchain research through bibliometric analysis methods. The
outcomes of this analysis offer deep insights into contemporary discus­
sions, advancing the research field related to the contextual and multi-
level phenomenon of blockchain, and pointing out directions for
future research.
This review is expected to make considerable contributions to the
extant literature for the following reasons: 1) it offers a wide overview of
the blockchain literature; 2) it provides significant information for
future researchers summarizing the most significant contributions, the
most cited outlets (as represented by journals), the most prolific coun­
tries, the most cited authors in this field; and 3) it identifies research
scopes and empirical issues adopted by this stream of research. In
addition, this study identifies new research streams and perspectives for
further investigation.
The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. After the intro­
duction, Section 2 analyses the review methodology and data collection
process. Section 3 presents the results of performance analysis, whereas
the Section 4 deals with the network analysis. Future trajectories for
research on the topic are discussed in Section 5. Finally, Section 6
2
Technological Forecasting & Social Change 165 (2021) 120463
reports the conclusions and implications of this research.
2. Review methodology and data collection
Compared to other review approaches, the proposed literature re­
view approach allows authors to integrate previous studies and provide
qualitative and quantitative insights on the topic investigated. Despite
the growing interest in the field, there is a scarcity of contributions
analysing how the academic research on the topic has evolved over the
time. Thus, the aim of the proposed approach is to bridge this gap and
provide insights into the topic analysing the papers published in leading
academic journals and the evolving scenario of the contributions in the
scientific literature using bibliometric and network analysis.
In this paper, a bibliometric analysis based on performance analysis
and science mapping is adopted for two main reasons. Firstly, biblio­
metric analysis can deeply analyse, with mathematical and statistical
methods, relationships amongst different bibliometric objects (e.g., au­
thors, country, affiliation, keywords, citations) (Aria and Cuccurullo,
2017; De Bellis, 2009; Mora et al., 2019). Secondly, the mapping
approach helps readers to easily identify the different research themes in
the field (Yunting et al., 2017). Therefore, performance analysis was
conducted to offer a comprehensive overview of the large scientific
literature on the topic. Further, science mapping was used to map
research developments (Jia et al., 2014; Li and Hale, 2016) and find
most important topics and existing research gaps analysing the different
co-citations based clusters of cited references and authors (Cancino et al.
2017; Laengle et al. 2017; Zyoud and Fuchs-Hanusch, 2017).
Fig. 1 reports a conceptual scheme of the methodology adopted in
this paper which consists of three main steps:
1 Material collection phase. It includes a detailed discussion about
the academic database and keywords used to collect papers.
2 Material pre-processing. It includes all the pre-processing opera­
tions to clean data and remove spelling mistakes from the database.
3 Results analysis. It consists of two sub-phases:
a Performance analysis. This phase classifies papers by different
descriptive and citation perspectives:
i Papers by time. Chronological distribution of publications;
ii Papers by country. Papers distribution per country;
iii Papers by journal. Distribution of papers by journal;
iv Papers by subject area. Papers distribution by subject area;
v Keywords analysis. Distribution of most used author’s keywords;
vi Most relevant contributions. Analysis of most cited papers.
b Network analysis. In this phase statistical and mathematical
methods are used to examine different aspects of a research field
from an objective and quantitative perspective, and identify
different maps based on the research field structure (De Bellis,
2009; Ding et al., 2001; Godin, 2006; Mora et al., 2019). These
maps are complex networks in which two or more units can be
interconnected each other (Ding et al., 2001; Hashem et al., 2016;
Mora et al., 2019) and they make it possible to understand “how
specific research fields are conceptually, intellectually and socially
structured” (M.J. Cobo et al., 2011, p. 1382). Once defined the
aspect of the paper to analyse (e.g., authors, journals, documents,
cited references, institutions, and countries), it is possible to build
a graph where the nodes are the bibliographical elements
considered and the edges are the link between them (e.g.,
co-citation and co-occurrence). The similarity degree between
each node affects the network connection degree (Mora et al.,
2019) and according to the similarity criteria, connections in the
network can be different. The most common criteria used to
measure similarity are co-citation analysis, coupling analysis, and
co-occurrence analysis (He, 1999). According to M.J. Cobo et al.
(2011), network analysis can be classified into different
perspectives:
P. Centobelli et al.
Fig. 1. Methodology proposed.
i Intellectual structure. Intellectual structure is a scientific cogni­
tive network where edges represent co-citations. When two
different documents are cited by a third document, they are co-
cited (Small, 1973). It is possible to assume that co-citation
measures the similarity degree in terms of cognitive proximity
and contents (Gmur, 2003; Small, 1973; White and McCain,
1998). For co-citation analysis it is possible to take in account
different bibliometric objects such as authors, sources, and cited
references. In this paper, co-citation analysis of cited references
is performed to analyse the intellectual structure of blockchain
literature.
ii Conceptual structure. Co-occurrence analysis is a content analysis
technique that provides information about similarity between
two data by considering the references that they cite (Callon
et al., 1991; He, 1999). Co-occurrence analysis gives informa­
tion about data proximity and generates a cluster network
(Nianxin, 2016). This analysis can also provide thematic maps
about the scientific field. Thematic map is a very intuitive dia­
gram and allows to analyse themes according to two parame­
ters: centrality (i.e., how frequently a node/edge is visited, and
therefore a proportion of importance in the network) (Marsden,
2015) and density (i.e., proportion of connection amongst all
the nodes of a network than all the possible connections)
(Giuffre, 2015). A low network density indicates that network is
in the early/last stage and the number of connections between
papers is low, whereas high density indicates network vitality.
The combination of these two parameters defines four macro
thematic areas: motor themes (high centrality and high density),
basic themes (high centrality and low density), emerging or dis­
appearing themes (low centrality and low density), and special­
ized themes (low centrality and high density) (Callon et al., 1991;
M. Cobo et al., 2011; He, 1999; Valentín et al., 2018).
The details of each step will be discussed in the following sections.
2.1. Material collection phase
Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science (WoS) database was used to
collect data. The choice of WoS is motivated by the following reasons:
first, WoS is considered as one of the leading databases worldwide
including a broad range of publications; second, although other data­
bases index more sources, WoS is more selective in terms of quality of
sources indexed, including only journals indexed by the International
Scientific Indexing (ISI) (Yong-Hak, 2013) and with impact scores in the
3
Technological Forecasting & Social Change 165 (2021) 120463
Journal Citation Report; third, bibliometric researchers consider WoS
the most relevant database because it provides a set of metadata that is
essential for this type of analysis with complete and consistently
formatted citation information for its entries (Trujillo and Long, 2018).
This database represents a reliable and high-quality data source for
literature analysis (Johnsen et al., 2017; Rebs et al., 2019). The search
string used includes the words “blockchain*” AND “block chain*” to get
all the documents dealing explicitly with the topic investigated. The
asterisk was used to include a wide range of results (Chen and Jung,
2019). Data collection phase was conducted in October 2019. As for
exclusion criteria, only papers in English language published between
1989 (first year available in WoS database to collect data) and 2019
were considered in the final sample. Finally, to ensure the quality of
review analysis, as second exclusion criterion, conference proceedings
and book chapters were excluded, and only articles and reviews pub­
lished in peer-reviewed journals were included in the final sample
(David and Han, 2004; Newbert, 2007). In addition, we adopted
refinement and validation criteria to minimize the chances of missing
any article on the domain (inclusion criterion). Specifically, using the
functionalities provided by the academic database adopted we have
validated our strings by comparing our keywords with other keywords
used by the individual papers identified in the initial list. This validation
criterion allows us to identify and retrieve any important papers cited in
the literature, but not selected using the selected databases and key­
words. The total number of papers is 2233.
2.2. Material pre-processing
During this phase, the file including the database of papers was
submitted to a pre-processing process to avoid duplications for spelling
mistakes or contractions (e.g., blockchain and block-chain, IoT and
Internet of Things or Internet-of-Things).
3. Performance analysis
This section reports the descriptive analysis results which will be
discussed in detail in the following subsections.
Papers by time
The first analysis is an historical distribution of papers. The theo­
retical foundation of the blockchain concept dates back to Nakamoto
(2008). Fig. 2 highlights that there are 340 papers published between
1985 and 2007. However, between these years there are no papers
dealing with the present conceptualization of blockchain and, in addi­
tion, in the author’s keywords field the term blockchain is never
P. Centobelli et al. Technological Forecasting & Social Change 165 (2021) 120463

Fig. 2. Chronological distribution of publications.

mentioned. Between 2008 and 2016 the interest in the topic began to
grow slowly, in fact only the 26% of papers published in these years
focus on blockchain topic. From 2016 until 2019, the interest on this
topic - according to most popular conceptualisation available nowadays
- has grown and the number of papers published started to increase
significantly (Fig. 2), due to pivotal factors and events affecting the
blockchain domain (e.g., during the World Economic Forum there was a
session on the development of blockchain-based governance models,
IBM obtained from the Chamber of Digital Commerce the authorization
to open a research centre to investigate the impact of blockchain tech­
nology). Therefore, the following analysis includes the papers published
starting from 2008 to reduce the bias derived from the inclusion of no
relevant contributions.
Papers by country
After the analysis of the evolution of papers by year, it is essential to
investigate how the blockchain interest is spread amongst countries.
Considering the papers published on the topic, the top country is China
(417 papers - 20%), followed by USA (325 papers - 16%) and Germany
(129 papers - 6%). Fig. 3 presents the top 10 countries in terms of
publications. The results highlight a significant difference between the
first two countries (i.e., China and USA) and the remaining countries.
Defining the single country publication (SCP), multi country publication
(MCP), and single country publication ratio (SCP Ratio) as the ratio
between single country publications and total country publications (i.e.,
SCP + MCP), Fig. 4 shows a prevalence of SCP and in Fig. 5 the SCP ratio
was used to analyse the papers published by each country. The countries
with lowest SCP ratio values are Germany, Italy and France. The SCP
ratio of European countries is almost always around to 50% (filled in
yellow in Fig. 5), whereas Japan presents the maximum SCP ratio (80%).
In USA the SCP ratio is equal to 79%; this value is lower for Canada and

Fig. 3. Papers distribution per country (grey countries do not belong to the list).

4
P. Centobelli et al.
Fig. 4. Country distribution classified for SCP\MCP.
Fig. 5. Citation distribution per country (grey countries do not belong to the list).
Chile. Asian countries values are around the 75%. Finally, we found that
there are countries (e.g., Saudi Arabia and Morocco) which are more
inclined to conduct scientific research with other countries.
Papers by subject area
The analysis of papers by subject area (Fig. 6) reveals that blockchain
is a transversal topic for different subject areas. The transversal nature of
the topic investigated highlights that it is not possible to identify a
specific thematic area. The most productive area is represented by
Computer Science (39.87% of papers), followed by Engineering
(24.97%). This finding suggests that blockchain technology leverages on
computer science and engineering competences. Another significant
area is represented by Economics, Finance, Management and Account­
ing (13.63%) domains.
Keywords analysis
Fig. 7 depicts a word cloud of the top 100 keywords included in the
dataset. The dimension of each keyword in the word cloud depends on
5
Technological Forecasting & Social Change 165 (2021) 120463
its frequency. As expected, basic terms like blockchain, cryptocurrency,
internet of thing, and smart contract are the most frequent keywords. On
the contrary, there is a low frequency of the other keywords like supply
chain, data privacy, machine learning, big data, sustainability, and
business models.
Most relevant contributions
This analysis shows how papers are ranked according to the number
of total citations or the weighted citations on its timespan.
According to Strozzi et al. (2017), in order to find breakthrough
papers representing potentially impactful and promising scientific con­
tributions, papers have to be ranked according to the weighted citation
score (Table 1). The weighted citation score (TCS/Year) index gives
information about popularity along timespan. Except for the second
paper, all the papers reported in Table 1 deal with the integration of
blockchain with other Industry 4.0 (I4.0) enabling technologies in pro­
duction processes (papers ranked in positions 5, 6 and 9), supply chain
P. Centobelli et al. Technological Forecasting & Social Change 165 (2021) 120463

Fig. 6. Papers by subject area.

Fig. 7. Keyword word cloud.

management (papers ranked in positions 3, 8 and 10), and information Internet of Things” (Christidis and Devetsikiotis, 2016), “Blockchain
management (papers ranked in positions 1, 4, and 7). meets IoT: an architecture for scalable access management in IoT”
The same analysis has been conducted for the cited references and (Novo, 2018), “Blockchain Thinking: the Brain as a Decentralized
Table 2 reports the related top 10 most cited references. All the refer­ Autonomous Corporation” (Swan, 2015), and “A Software defined fog
ences aim to apply blockchain in different industrial contexts, some­ node based distributed blockchain cloud architecture for IoT” (Sharma
times with the integration of other Industry 4.0 enabling technologies. et al., 2018).
Comparing the top 10 of the most cited papers based on the classi­
fication reported in Table 1 and the most cited references (Table 2), it is
possible to assume that there is a thematic coherence between the top
cited papers and the top cited references. There are four papers that are
present in both the lists: “Blockchains and Smart Contracts for the

6
P. Centobelli et al. Technological Forecasting & Social Change 165 (2021) 120463

Table 1
Top ten ranking of most cited papers per year.
Ranking Title Authors Journal TCS TCS/ Pub.
Year Year

1 BLOCKCHAIN AND SMART CONTRACT FOR CHRISTIDIS, K; DEVETSIKIOTIS, M IEEE ACCESS 395 131.67 2016
THE INTERNET OF THING
2 COOPERATIVE INSERTION OF CO2 IN MCDONALD, TM;MASON, JA;KONG, XQ;BLOCH, NATURE 461 115.25 2015
DIAMINE-APPENDED METAL-ORGANIC ED;GYGI, D;DANI, A;CROCELLA, V;GIORDANINO,
FRAMEWORKS F;ODOH, SO;DRISDELL, WS;VLAISAVLJEVICH, B;
DZUBAK, AL;POLONI, R;SCHNELL, SK;PLANAS, N;
LEE, K;PASCAL, T;WAN, LWF;PRENDERGAST, D;
NEATON, JB;SMIT, B;KORTRIGHT, JB;
GAGLIARDI, L;BORDIGA, S;REIMER, JA;LONG, JR
3 DESIGNING MICROGRID ENERGY MARKETS MENGELKAMP, E; GARTTNER, J; ROCK, K; APPLIED ENERGY 113 113.00 2018
A CASE STUDY: THE BROOKLYN KESSLER, S; ORSINI, L; WEINHARDT, C
MICROGRID
4 SECURITY AND PRIVACY IN AITZHAN, NZ; SVETINOVIC, D IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON 105 105.00 2018
DECENTRALIZED ENERGY TRADING DEPENDABLE AND SECURE
THROUGH MULTI-SIGNATURES, COMPUTING
BLOCKCHAIN AND ANONYMOUS
MESSAGING STREAMS
5 INTERNET OF THING SECURITY: REVIEW, KHAN, MA; SALAH, K FUTURE GENERATION 100 100.00 2018
BLOCKCHAIN SOLUTIONS, AND OPEN COMPUTER SYSTEMS-THE
CHALLENGES INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF
ESCIENCE
6 INDUSTRY 4.0: STATE OF THE ART AND XU, LD; XU, EL; LI, L INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF 87 87.00 2018
FUTURE TRENDS PRODUCTION RESEARCH
7 A SOFTWARE DEFINED FOG NODE BASED SHARMA, PK; CHEN, MY; PARK, JH IEEE ACCESS 63 63.00 2018
DISTRIBUTED BLOCKCHAIN CLOUD
ARCHITECTURE FOR INTERNET OF THINGS
8 CONSORTIUM BLOCKCHAIN FOR SECURE LI, Z; KANG, J; YU, R; YE, D; DENG, Q; ZHANG, Y IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON 62 62.00 2018
ENERGY TRADING IN INDUSTRIAL INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS
INTERNET OF THINGS
9 BLOCKCHAIN MEETS INTERNET OF THING: NOVO, O IEEE IOT JOURNAL 61 61.00 2018
AN ARCHITECTURE FOR SCALABLE ACCESS
MANAGEMENT IN INTERNET OF THINGS
10 A BLOCKCHAIN-BASED SMART GRID: MENGELKAMP, EB; BEER, C; DAUER, D; COMPUTER SCIENCE- 61 61.00 2018
TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE LOCAL ENERGY WEINHARDT, C RESEARCH AND
MARKETS DEVELOPMENT

Table 2
Top ten of most cited references.
Authors Title Year Source TCS TCS/
Year

1 NURZHAN, ZA; DAVOR S SECURITY AND PRIVACY IN DECENTRALIZED ENERGY 2018 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON 66 66.00
TRADING THROUGH MULTI-SIGNATURES, BLOCKCHAIN AND DEPENDABLE AND SECURE
ANONYMOUS MESSAGING STREAMS COMPUTING
2 CHRISTIDIS K. DEVETSIKIOTIS M BLOCKCHAINS AND SMART CONTRACTS FOR THE INTERNET 2016 IEEE ACCESS 197 65.67
OF THINGS
3 KHALED, S; MINHAJ, AK IOT SECURITY: REVIEW, BLOCKCHAIN SOLUTIONS, AND OPEN 2018 FUTURE GENERATION 54 54.00
CHALLENGES COMPUTER SYSTEMS
4 NAKAMOTO S BITCOIN: A PEER-TO-PEER ELECTRONIC CASH SYSTEM 2008 WWW.BITCOIN.ORG 587 53.36
5 ZHETAO, L; JIAWEN, K; RONG, Y; CONSORTIUM BLOCKCHAIN FOR SECURE ENERGY TRADING IN 2018 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON 52 52.00
DONGDONG, Y; QINGYONG, D; INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS
YAN, Z
6 NOVO, O BLOCKCHAIN MEETS IOT: AN ARCHITECTURE FOR SCALABLE 2018 IEEE IOT JOURNAL 46 46.00
ACCESS MANAGEMENT IN IOT
7 SWAN M BLOCKCHAIN THINKING: THE BRAIN AS A DECENTRALIZED 2015 IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY 174 43.50
AUTONOMOUS CORPORATION MAGAZINE
8 ZHENG Z. XIE S. DAI H. CHEN X. AN OVERVIEW OF BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY: 2017 IEEE 6TH INTERNATIONAL 80 40.00
WANG H ARCHITECTURE. CONSENSUS. AND FUTURE TRENDS CONGRESS ON BIG DATA
9 SHARMA PK; CHEN MY; PARK JH A SOFTWARE DEFINED FOG NODE BASED DISTRIBUTED 2018 IEEE ACCESS 39 39.00
BLOCKCHAIN CLOUD ARCHITECTURE FOR IOT
10 ZIBIN, Z; SHAOAN, X; HONG-NING, BLOCKCHAIN CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES: A SURVEY 2018 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF 39 39.00
D; XIANGPING, C; HUAIMIN, W WEB AND GRID SERVICES

4. Network analysis
4.1. Intellectual structure: Co-citation analysis of cited references
The co-citation analysis of cited reference aims to identify not only
the papers that were mostly discussed in past years, but also the papers
considered as a reference in a specific topic area. In Fig. 8 the co-citation
network is obtained considering papers with a minimum number of co-
citations equal to 12 (this value has been chosen considering that the
average citations per documents of the database is 11.66). As a result,
287 papers are included in the network.
The main cluster is the red one with 89 elements whose main article
is “BITCOIN: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system” (Nakamoto, 2008)
with 587 citations. Analysing the papers included in this cluster the

7
P. Centobelli et al.
Fig. 8. Co-citation of cited references.
main topic of this cluster is cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency was the first
application of the blockchain technology that highlights how digital
currency may decrease the cost associated with physical currency and
improve the security of financial transactions (Kosba et al., 2016;
Tschorsch and Scheuermann, 2016; Xu et al., 2019).
The yellow cluster (with 45 elements) contains different contribu­
tions related to the evolution of business models for blockchain appli­
cations in governance (e.g., e-voting, public services), blockchain
applications in healthcare domain (e.g. electronic health records), the
impact of blockchain on culture and arts (e.g., music industry and
museum network) (Baym et al., 2019; Yue et al., 2016). The 2015 was a
crucial year for the development of blockchain research. In fact, there
are two pivotal contributions published in this year belonging to two
additional clusters: “Decentralizing Privacy: Using Blockchain to Protect
Personal Data” (Zyskind et al., 2015) and “Blockchain Thinking: the
Brain as a Decentralized Autonomous Corporation” (Swam, 2015).
The first paper belongs to the blue cluster (66 papers) and focuses on
data privacy in the information management domain. This cluster in­
cludes papers focusing on security, privacy, access control and data
integrity (Christidis and Devetsikiotis, 2015; Zyskind et al., 2015).
Together with the paper “Blockchains and Smart Contracts for the
Internet of Things” (Christidis and Devetsikiotis, 2015), these contri­
butions formalize the role of the Internet of Things in blockchain ap­
plications and lay the scientific foundation for a blockchain conceptual
evolution out of financial domain.
The second paper belongs to the green cluster (82 papers) and shows
how blockchain has evolved over time defining three main blockchain
evolution stages. Blockchain 1.0 represents the early stage of blockchain
technology where only the financial application has been analysed. After
this phase, there is the blockchain 2.0 in which the cryptocurrency field
has evolved and other applications and concepts started to emerge (e.g.,
the smart contracts and the distributed ledger). In particular, the
blockchain 2.0 includes contributions not dealing exclusively on the
second generation of cryptocurrencies, but also on smart contract, smart
8
Technological Forecasting & Social Change 165 (2021) 120463
property, data privacy, supply chain finance, distributed ledger, and
business models (Mainelli and Smith, 2015; Xu et al., 2019). Blockchain
2.0 changes completely the traditional concept of supply chain in both
operations and finance domains innovating purchasing and supply
management processes. This evolution stage paves the way for the
development of the blockchain 3.0 phase in which also the social aspects
of technology are considered (Swam, 2015).
Summarizing, it is possible to assume that the clusters of the network
reported in Fig. 8 are strictly related to these three stages. The red cluster
includes contributions linked to the blockchain 1.0 phase. The yellow
cluster reports elements of the blockchain 3.0. Finally, papers related to
the blockchain 2.0 phase are divided between the blue cluster (mainly
including information technology topics) and the green cluster
(including papers dealing with cryptocurrency of second generation and
industrial applications).
4.2. Conceptual structure: Co-occurrence analysis
In this section the co-occurrence analysis with author’s keywords is
performed (Fig. 9). Ignoring isolated nodes, author’s keywords plotted
are 269.
Six different macro clusters emerge in Fig. 9:
- Cluster 1: Basic applications (red cluster with 101 keywords)
- Cluster 2: Industry 4.0 applications (green cluster with 46 keywords)
- Cluster 3: Security & privacy applications (dark blue cluster with 35
keywords)
- Cluster 4: Supply chain applications (yellow cluster with 35 keywords)
- Cluster 5: Financial applications (purple cluster with 30 keywords)
- Cluster 6: Energy applications (light blue cluster with 22 keywords)
Cluster 1: Basic applications
This cluster includes the blockchain 1.0 and 2.0 concepts (Casino
et al., 2019; Swan, 2015; Zhao et al., 2016; Zheng et al., 2018; Zyskind
P. Centobelli et al.
Fig. 9. Keyword co-occurrences.
et al., 2015) that can be adopted to design advanced blockchain appli­
cations like cryptocurrency, smart contracts, and distributed ledgers.
The papers belonging to this cluster also describe the features of the
blockchain technology. Cryptocurrency relies on blockchain technology
to create a distributed system of certification and integrity on the web
whenever monetary transactions occur. In the case of fiat money, a
central trusted party (e.g. the central bank) guarantees the value of
money and national currencies. On the contrary, when a cryptocurrency
transaction is recorded, a new block is generated upgrading the account
positions of the involved parties on the distributed ledger, with no need
to be certificated from a third entity (e.g., a bank or a payment agent).
The settlement is obtained through a consensus protocol applied by
other network participants; the protocol can be enforced by all the
agents of the network. The interest of the economic world in blockchain
and distributed ledger technology arose for its ability to decentralize
9
Technological Forecasting & Social Change 165 (2021) 120463
information storage and management across thousands of different
memories spread throughout the world and without a central trusted
party which guarantees the system’s validity (Yuan and Wang, 2016).
Other advantages of the blockchain technology are related to fault
tolerance, attack resistance and collusion resistance. However, it does
not exist any global or local regulation for cryptocurrency as equivalent
monetary currency (Regulation of Cryptocurrency Around the World,
2019). A smart contract is a computer protocol intended to digitally
facilitate, verify and enforce the negotiation or the performance of a
contract. Smart contracts allow to perform transactions without third
parties acting as guarantor but ensuring the process traceability and
irreversibility. Proponents of smart contracts claim that many contrac­
tual clauses might be partially or fully self-executed. The aim of smart
contracts is to reduce transaction costs associated with contracting and
to provide higher levels of security than traditional contracts. Superior
P. Centobelli et al.
levels of security are guaranteed by the use of the Byzantine
fault-tolerant algorithms that allow digital security through a distrib­
uted ledger (Zheng et al., 2018). The proof of work related to each
transaction requires a digital signature that will remain the same.
Therefore, the Byzantine algorithm will be able to distinguish a trust
block from a corrupt one comparing the different existing distributed
ledgers.
Cluster 2: Industry 4.0 applications
This cluster includes the different applications of blockchain tech­
nology in the Industry 4.0 domain, as well as the integration of block­
chain and I4.0 enabling technologies.
The integration of blockchain and IoT technologies leads to a sig­
nificant increase of potential applications. For instance, the distributed
wireless sensor networks demonstrate that blockchain architecture will
fortify IoT by reducing its deficiencies and maximising its potential
(Kshetri, 2017; Liao et al., 2017; Özyilmaz and Yurdakul, 2017). The
increasing attention and investments for implementing decentralised
IoT platforms are mainly driven by the blockchain technology and its
inherent capabilities (Christidis and Devetsikiotis, 2016; Novo, 2018;
Samaniego and Deters, 2016; Zhang and Wen, 2017). The main idea is to
provide secure and auditable data exchange in heterogeneous
context-aware scenarios (Casino et al., 2017). Blockchain interopera­
bility enables independent and secure real-time payment services,
enhancing traditional commerce, e-commerce or public and private
transportation systems (Christidis and Devetsikiotis, 2016). In the
future, IoT devices may communicate directly with their
cryptocurrency-based bank account so that microtransactions could be
performed in exchange for services (Christidis and Devetsikiotis, 2016;
Huckle et al., 2016; Hwang et al., 2017), whereas similar technologies
may also be applied to the smart-grid domain (Rutkin, 2016; Li et al.,
2017). In field of supply chain management, distributed networks of
RFID sensors enable the automated processing of products in multiple
contexts, such as in operations management, transportation services or
inventory management (Liu et al., 2017; Shafagh et al., 2017). Using
blockchain, data are stored with high integrity and resiliency and cannot
be improperly modified. When smart contracts are used for machine
learning algorithms to make decisions and perform analytics, the output
of these decisions are trusted and undisputed. The consolidation of
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and blockchain can create secure, immutable,
decentralized system for the highly sensitive information that AI-driven
systems collect, store, and utilize. AI can benefit from the availability of
many blockchain platforms for executing machine learning algorithms
and tracing data that are stored on decentralized P2P storage systems.
These data are typically originated by smart connected products that
include variety of sources such as IoT devices, swarm robots, smart
cities, buildings, vehicles and cyber-physical systems (Dinh and Thai,
2018; Lv et al., 2018; Peng et al., 2018). Automating the process of
machine learning from raw data acquisition to knowledge, reducing
manual work, accelerating application development, and combining
different machine learning models to reach better informed decisions,
are the main trends in the cooperation between blockchain and AI (Lv
et al., 2018). As a result, it emerges the need to enable the learning
transfer process amongst different AI applications as well as enhance
trust and traceability of big data belonging to complex physical systems
(Dinh and Thai, 2018; Peng et al., 2018; Salah et al., 2018). According to
Novo (2018), another challenge is represented by the possibility to
manage an increasing number of devices deployed worldwide simulta­
neously. Although access management technologies exist, they are still
based on centralized architectures which implicate several technical
limitations to manage them simultaneously. A solution can be repre­
sented by the connection of the blockchain network using specific nodes
called management hub nodes. They bring the versatility of having
different hub nodes distributed around the network and connected in
different ways with high flexibility.
Cluster 3: Security & privacy applications
In a distributed data storage where information is shared daily with
10
Technological Forecasting & Social Change 165 (2021) 120463
several actors, data security and privacy have raised as crucial topics in
the debate on blockchain technology. According to Meng et al. (2018),
cyber-attacks have become even more frequent and complex. To help in
detecting intrusions timely, intrusion detection systems are being widely
implemented in different contexts (e.g., education and financial orga­
nizations). Blockchains can complement and improve the performance
of an intrusion detecting system in terms of data sharing and trust
computation. However, blockchain technology is a solution which still
suffers from some limitations as high energy consumption and compu­
tational power. Cong and He (2019) identified the lack of security and
privacy in blockchain applications. It is also an attractive target for
cyber-criminals, and thus it is subjected to various attacks like distrib­
uted denial of service attacks and high latency in transaction conclusion
that would create much uncertainty for transaction participants. The
blockchain technology supplies decentralized consensus and enlarges
the contracting space through smart contracts. From this scenario, it
emerges the necessity to ensure both security and privacy in smart
contracts access, as well as a certification of trust information genera­
tion. According to Casino et al. (2019), many countries are trying to
avoid corruption and make government services more efficient through
public service delocalization, such as registration or legal documents,
attestation, identification, marriage contracts, taxes, institutional
voting, scholar and medical records. Both electronic voting and elec­
tronic medical records put the attention on a crucial issue: the trans­
actional privacy. Transactional privacy is one of the most challenging
problems for the blockchain technologies. Several methods have been
proposed to improve anonymity of blockchains, such as mixing services
or zero-knowledge proofs.
Cluster 4: Supply chain applications
Modern supply chains are changing radically with the introduction
of I4.0 enabling technologies. According to Saberi et al. (2019), supply
chains are becoming very complex systems, managing new partners and
the evolution of old ones, geographically scattered and with the aim
strictly orientated to satisfy even more demanding customers. At the
same time, in a globalized supply chain, traceability and transparency
have become crucial requirements. Blockchain technology can help in
building supply chains not only with strong traceability and trans­
parency characteristics (e.g. through the use of advanced RFID and GPS
technologies), but also dealing with environmental, financial and social
sustainability issues. Pazaitis et al. (2017) explored how economic re­
wards for certificated good practices push individuals and enterprises to
keep these good practices, whereas Varsei et al. (2014) and demon­
strated how blockchain-based environmental metrics are easy to use and
trustful. The evaluation of the social impact of blockchain technology is
still challenging. According to Seuring (2013) and Fahimnia et al.
(2015a), although blockchain technology may bring great transparency
improvement in equity, labour practices, human rights, and other social
metrics, companies hide and tend to not share critical or personal in­
formation. The definition of social sustainability has not been
well-defined in the literature and is less mature also in sustainable
supply chain research. Tijan et al. (2019) stated that blockchain can
represent a technological revolution in logistics and supply chain man­
agement fields for several reasons. Blockchain technology can effec­
tively contribute not only to track each asset flowing through the supply
chain nodes, but also to share information about their different process
(e.g., production, delivery, maintenance). The challenges of logistics
operations, such as delays in delivery, loss of documentation, unknown
source of products, and errors can be minimized and even avoided by
blockchain implementation. Other benefits of integrating blockchain in
the supply chain are the following: increased sustainability, reduced
errors and delays, minimized transport costs, faster issue identification,
increased trust (customer and supplier trust), improved product trans­
port and inventory management (Saberi et al., 2019). It looks clear the
key-role of trust and transparency in blockchain for information sharing
in the supply chain design for the possible partners hesitation in
revealing information. Blockchain technology has got potential to
P. Centobelli et al.
increase transparency and accountability in supply chain networks, thus
enabling more flexible value chains (Casino et al., 2019; Kshetri, 2018).
In particular, blockchain-based applications have the potential to
generate breakthroughs in three areas of supply chain: visibility, opti­
mization and demand. Blockchain technology has the potential to
improve efficiency through the use of smart contracts and artificial in­
telligence (Ivanov et al., 2018). This innovative application helps to save
time and reduce risk in supply chains (Fahimnia et al., 2015b). On the
other hand, the right mix of resilient network structures, situational
proactive control, proactive planning and network redundancy optimi­
zation of supply chain is required to avoid ripple effect (Ivanov et al.,
2019).
Cluster 5: Financial applications
Blockchain technology is applied to several economic and financial
fields (e.g., business services, settlement of financial assets, prediction
markets and economic transactions) and gets the potential to play a
pivotal role in a sustainable global economy development, bringing
benefits to consumers, the current banking system and the society in
general (Haferkorn, and Diaz, 2015; Nguyen, 2016). New ways of using
blockchain enabled applications for financial assets may lead to massive
changes into capital markets and a more efficient way for performing
operations like securities and derivatives transactions (Cocco et al.,
2017; Paech, 2017), digital payments (Gao et al., 2018; Min et al., 2016;
Papadopoulos, 2015), loan management schemes (Gazali et al., 2017),
general banking services (Cocco et al., 2017), financial auditing (Dai and
Vasarhelyi, 2017), cryptocurrency payment and exchange (i.e., e-wal­
lets) (Rizzo, 2014). Example of bank cooperation is the Global Payments
Steering Group (GPSG) (Ripple, 2016), whose members include,
amongst others, Santander, Bank of America and UniCredit.
Cluster 6: Energy applications
Blockchain applications in the energy sector may have an enormous
impact on process and platform innovations (Casino et al., 2019). Smart
grid systems introduction has improved how companies interact with
their customers with regard to energy use. Gao et al. (2018) introduced a
blockchain technology application, which guarantees transparency and
provenance. The new smart devices and applications allow consumers to
monitor and manage the amount of energy consumed as well as identify
the appliances that consume most, enhancing transparency, sustain­
ability and security. Recent studies highlight that blockchain has also
helped in establishing energy management refuelling schemes for
Fig. 10. Thematic map (2018–2019).
11
Technological Forecasting & Social Change 165 (2021) 120463
electric vehicles (Huang et al., 2018; Knirsch et al., 2018).
4.3. Conceptual structure: Thematic map
A thematic map was developed to further analyse the clusters pre­
sented above. Clusters of topics were obtained and plotted according to
centrality and density indices (Callon et al., 1991; He, 1999; Valentín
et al., 2018) (Fig. 10). The centrality index measures how intense is the
link of a cluster with others. The density characterises the tie strength
between clusters (Mahlmann Kipper et al., 2020). This analysis allows us
to identify eight clusters and classify them into four main categories: 1)
Motor themes, 2) Basic themes, 3) Emerging/Disappearing themes, and
4) Specialized themes.
The following points provide the final list of keywords included in
each cluster, the related frequency in round brackets and the related
thematic area:
• Motor themes (high centrality and high density)
○ Cluster 4 includes the following topics: big data (18), artificial
intelligence (17), cloud computing (15), machine learning (12),
deep learning (8), forecasting (3);
• Basic themes (high centrality and low density)
○ Cluster 1 includes the following topics: blockchain (532), smart
contract (105), cryptocurrency (102), internet of thing (99), se­
curity (49), distributed ledger (47), privacy (24), decentralization
(20), privacy preserving (19), edge computing (19);
○ Cluster 2 includes the following topics: supply chain management
(12), traceability (11), industry 4.0 (8), sustainability (7), trans­
parency (3);
○ Cluster 3 includes the following topics: smart grid (17), game
theory (12), consortium blockchain (12), proof of work (10), peer-
to-peer (8), microgrid (6), energy (6), transactive energy (5),
prosumer (4), peer-to-peer energy trading (4), application (4);
○ Cluster 5 including the following topics: governance (7), mobile
health (6), cybersecurity (6), IPFS - InterPlanetary File System (5),
5G network (5), identity (4);
• Emerging/Disappearing themes (low centrality and low density)
○ Cluster 8 includes the following topics: social media (3), digital
transformation (3);
• Specialized themes (low centrality and high density)
P. Centobelli et al.
○ Cluster 6 includes the following topics: cryptography (7), data
privacy (5), spectrum sensing (4), provenance (4), distributed
database (3);
○ Cluster 7 includes the following topics: supply chain (13), crowd­
sourcing (4), collaborative network (3).
Starting from motor themes, the papers included in cluster 4 mainly
focus on big data and machine learning techniques. For instance,
Esposito et al. (2018) highlight how blockchain technology is going to
manage not only linear and transactional data, but also cyclic data
containing image files and data with a limited privacy. Machine learning
techniques are also used as protection from cyber-attacks in IoT-based
devices (Kumar et al., 2019; Meng et al., 2018). In this context, new
hashes are going to be developed to avoid fake digital signals and con­
tents (Hasan and Salah, 2019). Despite cluster 4 presents a high value of
centrality and density, it has not the highest value of frequency. This
may be justified by the fact that many cluster themes represent new
research avenues in the blockchain domain.
Basic themes are characterized by high centrality and low-density
measures representing the main theoretical contributions in the field
(Callon et al., 1991). More in detail, almost all the keywords of cluster 1
belong to the domain of blockchain 1.0 and 2.0 technologies. Cluster 2,
cluster 3 and cluster 5 deal with more transversal topics developed in the
last years. In fact, even though the papers included in these three clusters
mainly leverage on the theoretical contributions included in cluster 1,
they represent research topics that may become full motor themes in next
years. For instance, the increasing importance of blockchain applica­
tions in energy domain may transform cluster 3 in a future motor theme.
It is possible to assume the same for the cluster 5 dealing with gover­
nance issues.
As for the area focusing on specialized themes, it includes topics
focused on two main different subject areas: 1) data privacy and security
of distributed databases and 2) new approaches for managing supply
chain partnerships. In future years, these topics may migrate in the area
of motor themes by exploring practical applications in various domains
and, therefore, increasing their centrality.
5. Discussion of future research trajectories
The results of the analysis of the literature have allowed us to obtain
a comprehensive overview on blockchain technology. As a result, we
have identified research trajectories which offer interesting insights
about the future research agenda on blockchain. Firstly, the analysis
conducted shows that researchers have exploited the benefits of infor­
mation technologies (e.g., smart contract, Internet of Things and
distributed ledger technology) in several domains (e.g., supply chain
management, security and privacy, edge computing, artificial intelli­
gence and consortium blockchain). Secondly, papers analysis highlights
that technology implementation changes its integration stage depending
on the specific business sector (Grover et al., 2019). This depends on the
different nature of the sector and the level of adoption of these tech­
nologies in each sector. As suggested by Davis et al. (2012) and Strozzi
et al. (2017), the effort in changes drives the research and development
process.
Blockchain applications in supply chain, data privacy, and deep
learning are theoretically still under development and their imple­
mentation may carry out a radical change in the ordinary conditions.
Other technologies (e.g., smart contract, cryptocurrency, distributed
ledger, big data, artificial intelligence) are already developed and well
consolidated, even though further development may be implemented
incrementally to improve them.
Blockchain implementation will bring a new way to manage the
supply chain, with the introduction of new actors and different tasks for
those already present. High traceability and transparency, errors and
delays reduced, issue identification speeded, consumer and partner trust
increased, transport costs minimised, and product transportation
12
Technological Forecasting & Social Change 165 (2021) 120463
improved are just some examples of the benefits of blockchain tech­
nology (Casino et al., 2019; Fahimnia et al., 2015b; Ivanov et al., 2018;
Kshetri, 2018). Despite previous studies have shown how economic and
environmental sustainability can be improved with blockchain tech­
nology (Pazaitis et al., 2017; Varsei et al., 2014), the social return is not
yet proved, and further empirical studies are required. The second
critical issue is linked to data privacy and security. Blockchain is a secure
system to store data, since after the hashing no alteration or deletion can
be done. However, in several domains where data availability is time
limited or under the protection of privacy laws, new blockchain tech­
nologies have to be developed with novel privacy policies and hash al­
gorithms. Therefore, there is the necessity of more tolerant blockchain
systems, but with the same security levels for cyberattacks (Cong and
He, 2019; Meng et al., 2018). Security and data privacy need to be
investigated further for the development of different blockchain algo­
rithms. In addition, it emerges the necessity to develop novel algorithms
detecting deep fake that can be generated in the digital environment.
6. Conclusions and implications
This research aimed to provide a comprehensive overview of the
blockchain technology through bibliometric analysis of the literature.
Performance analysis and network analysis techniques were used to
outline the complex knowledge patterns of this research field - by means
of statistical and mathematical methods - and monitor the field
evolution.
The outcomes of this two-step analysis offer an overview of
contemporary debate about the blockchain technology, pointing out the
most developed research applications and the directions for future
research. As for the theoretical implications, this study contributes to the
current body of knowledge on the blockchain by analysing the evolution
of this research field, trends and emerging topics that are under-
represented and require additional investigation.
The main findings highlight that blockchain, cryptocurrency,
distributed ledger and IoT technologies represent the main building
blocks for the development of the research domain and the design of
integrated technologies and applications in financial, energy and IT
fields, and for the development of new ones arising in supply chain,
government and security domains. In the next future, blockchain ap­
plications will be interested by a great transformation. In this context, a
pivotal role concerns the time-limited privacy in blockchain and the
transactional privacy. In the public sector, the results show that elec­
tronic voting and digital health records are the main applications dis­
cussed and they have the potential to significantly impact
environmental, financial and social sustainability issues. New security
and privacy protocols must be developed for new distributed databases
where data privacy and security are guaranteed by regulations. With
regard to the supply chain domain, it is necessary to design new business
models involving all the supply network partners. The next step in
blockchain technology evolution will be able to open new research
frontiers and lay the foundation of a new blockchain paradigm, namely a
blockchain 4.0, characterised by high transactional privacy and a minor
amount of energy consumption. As for the managerial implications of
this study, maintaining records distributed in a shared ledger allows the
flow of information about products and processes without an exclusive
centralized authority. Therefore, this aspect will improve the opera­
tional efficiency of business processes in terms of cost reduction, time
efficiency and system automation. Stakeholders act as nodes partici­
pating in the distributed network to improve the scalability of the sys­
tem. In this context, it emerges the necessity that companies focus on
developing intelligent contract systems that operate with or without
traditional systems. However, a simplified process that meets the
various needs requires greater verification in practical operations.
Companies are encouraged to determine what information should be
included in the blockchain, as well as to manage the individual firm’s
permissions to approve and visualise transactions. In addition, the
P. Centobelli et al.
application of blockchain and smart contract technology could trans­
form current supply chain models and operations. A smarter, faster and
more diversified functionality has become the focus of designing new
architectures. Future studies should focus on the current supply pro­
cesses, which are often inaccessible and difficult to redesign.
Finally, the tendency of business applications to adopt blockchain
and smart contract technology has emerged in various sectors. In the
future, blockchain applications in different sectors could be integrated
to facilitate an automated community or ecosystem. For instance,
blockchain management could be incorporated into other systems (e.g.,
finance, insurance, social domains) to design an integrated digital
ecosystem. Smart contracts can be used to track demand, supply,
manufacturing and logistics status, as well as sales, transaction records
and partnerships, in a distributed blockchain-based environment. As for
the limitations, only the WoS database has been used for this analysis
and further contributions may be developed by integrating the results of
other academic databases.
Author statement
Authors are listed in alphabetical order.
References
Amankwah-Amoah, J., 2016. Emerging economies, emerging challenges: mobilising and
capturing value from big data. Technol Forecast Soc Change 110, 167–174.
Ardito, L., Garavelli, A.C., Messeni Petruzzelli, A., Panniello, U., 2019. Towards Industry
4.0: mapping digital technologies for supply chain management-marketing
integration. Business Process Management J 25 (2), 323–346.
Aria, M., Cuccurullo, C., 2017. Bibliometrix: an R-tool for comprehensive science
mapping analysis. J Informetr 11, 959–975.
Atzori, L., Iera, A., Morabito, G., 2010. The Internet of Things: a Survey. Computer
Networks 54 (15), 2787–2805.
Baym, N., Swartz, L., Alarcon, A., 2019. Convening technologies: blockchain and the
music industry. Int J Communication 13, 402–421.
Blanco-Mesa, F., Merigó, J.M., Gil-Lafuente, A.M., 2017. Fuzzy decision making: a
bibliometric-based review. J Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems 32, 2033–2050.
Callon, M., Courtial, J.P., Laville, F., 1991. Co-word analysis as a tool for describing the
network of interactions between basic and technological research: the case of
polymer chemistry. Scientometrics 22, 155–205.
Casino, F., Azpilicueta, L., Lopez-Iturri, P., Aguirre, E., Falcone, F., Solanas, A., 2017.
Optimized wireless channel characterization in large complex environments by
Hybrid Ray Launching-Collaborative Filtering Approach. IEEE Antennas Wirel
Propag Lett 16, 780–783.
Casino, F., Dasaklis, T.K., Patsakis, C., 2019. A systematic literature review of
blockchain-based applications: current status, classification and open issues.
Telematics and Informatics 36, 55–81.
Castagna, F., Centobelli, P., Cerchione, R., Esposito, E., Oropallo, E., Passaro, R., 2020.
Customer knowledge management in SMEs facing digital transformation.
Sustainability 12 (9) article 3899.
Cecere, L., 2017. Moving blockchain forward: seven use cases for hyperledger in supply
chain. Retrieved from: http://www.supplychainquarterly.com/columns/2017042
6-time-for-change-in-direction-seven-use-cases-for-hyperledger-in-the-supply-chai
n/, Accessed date: 1 March 2018.
Chen, H., Chiang, R.H.L., Storvey, V., 2012. Business intelligence and analytics: from big
data to big impact. MIS Quarterly 36, 1165–1188.
Christidis, K., Devetsikiotis, M., 2016. Blockchains and Smart Contracts for the Internet
of Things. IEEE Access 4, 2292–2303.
Cobo, M.J., López-Herrera, A.G., Herrera-Viedma, E., Herrera, F., 2011a. An approach
for detecting, quantifying, and visualizing the evolution of a research field: a
practical application to the Fuzzy Sets Theory field. J Informetr 5 (1), 146–166.
Cobo, M., López-Herrera, A., Herrera-Viedma, E., Herrera, F., 2011b. Science Mapping
Software Tools: review, Analysis, and Cooperative Study Among Tools. J American
Society for Information Science and Technology 62, 1382–1402.
Cocco, L., Pinna, A., Marchesi, M., 2017. Banking on blockchain: costs savings thanks to
the blockchain technology. Future Internet 9. Article 25.
Cong, L.W., He, Z., 2019. Blockchain disruption and smart contracts. Rev Financ Stud 32
(5), 1754–1797.
Dai, J., Vasarhelyi, M.A., 2017. Toward blockchain-based accounting and assurance.
J Information Systems 31 (3), 5–21.
David, R.J., Han, S.K., 2004. A systematic assessment of the empirical support for
transaction cost economics. Strategic Management J 25 (1), 39–58.
Davis, J., Edgar, T., Porter, J., Bernaden, J., Sarli, M., 2012. Smart manufacturing,
manufacturing intelligence and demand-dynamic performance. Comput Chem Eng
47, 145–156.
De Bellis, N., 2009. Bibliometrics and Citation Analysis: From the Science Citation Index
to Cybermetrics. The Scarecrow Press, Lanham, MD.
Ding, Y., Chowdhury, G.G., Foo, S., 2001. Bibliometric cartography of information
retrieval research by using co-word analysis. Inf Process Manag 37 (6), 817–842.
13
Technological Forecasting & Social Change 165 (2021) 120463
Dinh, T.N., Thai, M.T., 2018. Ai and blockchain: a disruptive integration. Computer
(Long Beach Calif) 51 (9), 48–53.
Dubey, R., Gunasekaran, A., Childe, S.J., Papadopoulos, T., Luo, Z., Wamba, S.F.,
Roubaud, D., 2019. Can big data and predictive analytics improve social and
environmental sustainability? Technol Forecast Soc Change 144, 534–545.
Esposito, C., De Santis, A., Tortora, G., Chang, H., Choo, K.K.R., 2018. Blockchain: a
panacea for healthcare cloud-based data security and privacy? IEEE Cloud
computing 5, 31–37.
Fahimnia, B., Sarkis, J., Davarzani, H., 2015a. Green Supply Chain Management: a
Review and Bibliometric Analysis. Int J Production Economics 162, 101–114.
Fahimnia, B., Tang, C.S., Davarzani, H., Sarkis, J., 2015b. Quantitative Models for
Managing Supply Chain Risks: a Review. Eur J Oper Res 247 (1), 1–15.
Gao, F., Zhu, L., Shen, M., Sharif, K., Wan, Z., Ren, K., 2018a. A Blockchain-based
privacy-preserving payment mechanism for Vehicle-to-Grid networks. IEEE Netw 32
(6), 184–192.
Gao, J., Asamoah, K.O., Sifah, E.B., Smahi, A., Xia, Q., Xia, H., Zhang, X., Dong, G., 2018.
Grid Monitoring: secured Sovereign Blockchain Based Monitoring on Smart Grid,
IEEE Access 6, 9917 - 9925.
Gazali, H.M., Hassan, R., Nor, R.M., Rahman, H.M.M., 2017. Re-inventing PTPTN study
loan with blockchain and smart contracts. 8th International Conference on
Information Technology (ICIT) 751–754.
Giuffre, K., 2015. International Encyclopedia of the social and behavioural sciences
(second edition).
Gmur, M., 2003. Co-citation analysis and the search for invisible colleges: a
methodological evaluation. Scientometrics 57 (1), 27–57.
Godin, B., 2006. On the origins of bibliometrics. Scientometrics 68 (1), 109–133.
Goertzel, B., Goertzel, T., Goertzel, Z., 2017. The global brain and the emerging economy
of abundance: mutualism, open collaboration, exchange networks and the
automated commons. Technol Forecast Soc Change 114, 65–73.
Grover, P., Kar, A., Janssen, M., 2019. Diffusion of blockchain technology: insights from
academic literature and social media analytics. J Enterprise Information
Management 32 (5), 735–757.
Haferkorn, M., Quintana Diaz, J.M., 2015. Seasonality and interconnectivity Within
Cryptocurrencies - An analysis on the basis of Bitcoin, Litecoin and Namecoin,
Springer International Publishing. Cham 106–120.
Hashem, I.A.T., Anuar, N.B., Gani, A., Yaqoob, I., Xia, F., Khan, S.U., 2016. MapReduce:
review and open challenges. Scientometrics 109 (1), 389–422.
Hazen, B.T., Boone, C.A., Ezell, J.D., Jones-Farmer, L.A., 2014. Data quality for data
science, predictive analytics, and big data in supply chain management: an
introduction to the problem and suggestions for research and applications. Int J
Production Economics 154, 72–80.
He, Q., 1999. Knowledge discovery through co-word analysis. Libr Trends 48 (1),
133–159.
Huang, X., Xu, C., Wang, P., Liu, H., 2018. LNSC: a security model for electric vehicle and
charging pile management based on blockchain ecosystem. IEEE Access 6,
13565–13574.
Huckle, S., Bhattacharya, R., White, M., Beloff, N., 2016. Internet of Things, Blockchain
and Shared Economy Applications. Procedia Comput Sci 58, 461–466.
Hwang, J., Choi, M.I., Lee, T., Jeon, S., Kim, S., Park, S., 2017. Energy Prosumer Business
Model Using Blockchain System to Ensure Transparency and Safety. Energy Procedia
141, 194–198.
Islam, N., Marinakis, Y., Majadillas, M.A., Fink, M., Walsh, S.T., 2020. Here there be
dragons, a pre-roadmap construct for IoT service infrastructure. Technol Forecast
Soc Change 155. Article 119073.
Ivanov, D., Dolgui, A., Sokolov, B., 2018. The impact of digital technology and Industry
4.0 on the ripple effect and supply chain risk analytics. Int J Production Research 57
(3), 829–846.
Johnsen, T.E., Miemczyk, J., Howard, M., 2017. A systematic literature review of
sustainable purchasing and supply research: theoretical perspectives and
opportunities for IMP-based research. Industrial Marketing Management 61,
130–143.
Knirsch, F., Unterweger, A., Eibl, G., Engel, D., 2018. Privacy-preserving smart grid tariff
decisions with blockchain-based smart contracts. Sustainable Cloud and Energy
Services 85–116.
Kosba, A., Miller, A., Shi, E., Wen, Z., Papamanthou, C., 2016. Hawk: the blockchain
model of cryptography and privacy-preserving smart contracts. IEEE symposium on
security and privacy 839–858.
Kshetri, N., 2017. Can blockchain strengthen the Internet of Things? IT Prof 19 (4),
68–72.
Kshetri, N., 2018. Blockchain’s roles in meeting key supply chain management
objectives. Int J Inf Manage 39, 80–89.
Kumar, R., Zhang, X., Wang, W., Khan, R.U., Kumar, J., Sharif, A., 2019. A multimodal
malware detection technique for android IoT devices using various features. IEEE
access 7, 64411–64430.
Kwon, T.H., Kwak, J.H., Kim, K., 2015. A study on the establishment of policies for the
activation of a big data industry and prioritization of policies: lessons from Korea.
Technol Forecast Soc Change 96, 144–152.
Li, Z., Kang, J., Yu, R., Ye, D., Deng, Q., Zhang, Y., 2017. Consortium Blockchain for
Secure Energy Trading in Industrial Internet of Things. IEEE Transactions on
Industrial Informatics 14 (8), 3690–3700.
Liao, C.F., Bao, S.W., Cheng, C.J., Chen, K., 2017. On design issues and architectural
styles for blockchain-driven IoT services. IEEE International Conference on
Consumer Electronics 351–352.
Liu, B., Yu, X.L., Chen, S., Xu, X., Zhu, L., 2017. Blockchain Based Data Integrity Service
Framework for IoT Data. IEEE 24th International Conference on Web Services
468–475.
P. Centobelli et al.
Lv, C., Xing, Y., Lu, C., Liu, Y., Guo, Y., Gao, H., Cao, D., 2018. Hybrid learning-based
classification and quantitative inference of driver braking intensity of an electrified
vehicle. IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology 67 (7), 5718–5729.
Mahlmann Kipper, L.M., Bertolin Furstenau, L., Hoppe, D., Frozza, R., Iespen, S., 2020.
Scopus scientific mapping production in Industry 4.0 (2011-2018): a bibliometric
analysis. Int J Production Research 58 (6), 1605–1627.
Mainelli, M., Smith, M., 2015. Sharing Ledgers for Sharing Economies: an Exploration of
Mutual Distributed Ledgers (Aka Blockchain Technology). J Financial Perspectives 3
(3), 1–44.
Mancilla, N.O., Sepúlveda, W.S., 2017. Upstream information distortion in the agro-food
supply chain. Supply Chain Management: An Int J 22 (5), 411–423.
Marsal-Llacuna, M.-.L., 2018. Future living framework: is blockchain the next enabling
network? Technol Forecast Soc Change 128, 226–234.
Marsden, P.V., 2015. International Encyclopedia of the social and behavioural sciences
(second edition).
Meng, W., Tischhauser, E.W., Wang, Q., Wang, Y., Han, J., 2018. When Intrusion
Detection Meets Blockchain Technology: a Review. IEEE Access 6, 10179–10188.
Merigó, J.M., Cancino, C.A., Coronado, F., Urbano, D., 2016. Academic research in
innovation: a country analysis. Scientometrics 108, 559–593.
Min, X., Li, Q., Liu, L., Cui, L., 2016. A permissioned blockchain framework for
supporting instant transaction and dynamic block size. IEEE Trustcom/BigDataSE/
ISPA 90–96.
Mora, L., Deakin, M., Reid, A., 2019. Combining co-citation clustering and text-based
analysis to reveal the main development paths of smart cities. Technol Forecast Soc
Change 142, 56–69.
Nakamoto, S., 2008. Bitcoin: a Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. Retrieved from:
www.bitcoin.org.
Newbert, L.S., 2007. Empirical research on the resource-based view of the firm: an
assessment and suggestions for future research. Strategic Management J 28,
121–146.
Nguyen, Q.K., 2016. Blockchain-A Financial Technology for Future Sustainable
Development, in: proceedings - 3rd International Conference on Green Technology
and Sustainable Development. GTSD 2016 51–54.
Novo, O., 2018. Blockchain Meets IoT: an Architecture for Scalable Access Management
in IoT. IEEE Internet of Things J 5 (2), 1184–1195.
Nunen, K., Li, J., Reniers, G., Ponnet, K., 2018. Bibliometric analysis of safety culture
research. Saf Sci 108, 248–258.
Paech, P., 2017. The governance of blockchain financial networks. Modern Law Review
80 (6), 1073–1110.
Papadopoulos, G., 2015. Blockchain and Digital Payments: an Institutionalist Analysis of
Cryptocurrencies. Handbook of Digital Currency, Bitcoin, Innovation, Financial
Instruments, and Big Data 153–172.
Pazaitis, A., De Filippi, P., Kostakis, V., 2017. Blockchain and Value Systems in the
Sharing Economy: the Illustrative Case of Backfeed. Technol Forecast Soc Change
125, 105–115.
Peng, P., Tian, Y., Xiang, T., Wang, Y., Pontil, M., Huang, T., 2018. Joint semantic and
latent attribute modelling for cross-class transfer learning. IEEE Trans Pattern Anal
Mach Intell 40 (7), 1625–1638.
Pereira, J., Tavalaei, M.M., Ozalp, H., 2019. Blockchain-based platforms: decentralized
infrastructures and its boundary conditions. Technol Forecast Soc Change 146,
94–102.
Raguseo, E., Vitari, C., 2018. Investments in big data analytics and firm performance: an
empirical investigation of direct and mediating effects. Int J Production Research 56
(15), 5206–5221.
Ranganathan, C., Teo, T.S.H., Dhaliwal, J., 2011. Web-enabled supply chain
management: key antecedents and performance impacts. Int J Inf Manage 31,
533–545.
Rebs, T., Brandenburg, M., Seuring, S., 2019. System dynamics modelling for sustainable
supply chain management: a literature review and systems thinking approach.
J Clean Prod 208, 1265–1280.
Regulation of Cryptocurrency Around the World, 2019. Retrieved from: https://www.
loc.gov/law/help/cryptocurrency/world-survey.php.
Ripple, 2016. Global Payments Steering Group. Retrieved from: https://ripple.com/ins
ights/announcing-ripples-global-payments-steeringgroup.
Rizzo, P., 2014. How Kipochi Is Taking Bitcoin into Africa. Retrieved from: http://www.
coindesk.com/kipochi-taking-bitcoin-africa.
Roßmann, B., Canzaniello, A., von der Gracht, H., Hartmann, E., 2018. The future and
social impact of Big Data Analytics in Supply Chain Management: results from a
Delphi study. Technol Forecast Soc Change 130, 135–149.
Rutkin, A., 2016. Blockchain-based microgrid gives power to consumers in New York.
New Scientist. Retreived from: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2079334-blo
ckchain-based-microgrid-gives-power-to-consumers-in-new-york/.
Saberi, S., Kouhizadeh, M., Sarkis, J., Shen, L., 2019. Blockchain technology and its
relationships to sustainable supply chain management. Int J Production Research 57
(7), 2117–2135.
Samaniego, M., Deters, R., 2016. Blockchain as a Service for IoT. IEEE International
Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and
Communications (GreenCom)and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing
(CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData) 433–436.
Schoenherr, T., Speier-Pero, C., 2015. Data science, predictive analytics, and big data in
supply chain management: current state and future potential. J Business Logistics 36
(1), 120–132.
Schrauf, S., Berttram, P., 2016. Industry 4.0: how digitization makes the supply chain
more efficient, agile, and customer-focused. Retrieved form: http://www.strategyan
d.pwc.com/reports/industry4.0.
14
Technological Forecasting & Social Change 165 (2021) 120463
Shafagh, H., Burkhalter, L., Hithnawi, A., Duquennoy, S., 2017. Towards blockchain-
based auditable storage and sharing of IoT data. Cloud Computing Security
Workshop 45–50.
Shashi, Centobelli, P., Cerchione, R., Ertz, M., 2020. Agile supply chain management:
where did it come from and where will it go in the era of digital transformation?
Industrial Marketing Management 90, 324–345.
Small, H., 1973. Co-citation in the scientific literature: a new measure of the relationship
between two documents. J American Society for Information Science 24, 265–269.
Strozzi, F., Colicchia, C., Creazza, A., 2017. Literature review on the “Smart Factory”
concept using bibliometric tools. Int J Production Research 55 (22), 6572–6591.
Tan, K.H., Zhan, Y., Ji, G., Ye, F., Chang, C., 2015. Harvesting big data to enhance supply
chain innovation capabilities: an analytic infrastructure based on deduction graph.
Int J Production Economics 165, 223–233.
Tijan, E., Aksentijevic ́, S., Ivanic ́, K., Jardas, M., 2019. Blockchain Technology
Implementation in Logistics. Sustainability 11. Article 1185.
Tschorsch, F., Scheuermann, B., 2016. Bitcoin and Beyond: a Technical Survey on
Decentralized Digital Currencies. IEEE communications surveys and tutorials 18 (3),
2084–2123.
Varsei, M., Soosay, C., Fahimnia, B., Sarkis, J., 2014. Framing Sustainability Performance
of Supply Chains with Multidimensional Indicators. Supply Chain Management: An
Int J 19 (3), 242–257.
Vigna, P., Casey, M.J., 2016. The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and the Blockchain
Are Challenging the Global Economic Order. Macmillan Publishers, New York.
Wang, Y., Kung, L., Byrd, T.A., 2018. Big data analytics: understanding its capabilities
and potential benefits for healthcare organizations. Technol Forecast Soc Change
126, 3–13.
White, D., McCain, K., 1998. Visualizing a discipline: an author co-citation analysis of
information science, 1972–1995. J American Society for Information Science 49 (4),
327–355.
White, R., Marinakis, Y., Islam, N., Walsh, S., 2020. Is Bitcoin a currency, a technology-
based product, or something else? Technol Forecast Soc Change 151. Article 119877.
Yuan, Y., Wang, F.Y., 2016. Blockchain: the state of the art and future trends. Acta
Automatica Sinica 42 (4), 481–494.
Yue, X., Wang, H., Jin, D., 2016. Healthcare Data Gateways: found Healthcare
Intelligence on Blockchain with Novel Privacy Risk Control. J Medicine System 40
(10), 218.
Zhang, Y., Wen, J., 2017. The IoT electric business model: using blockchain technology
for the internet of things. Peer-to-Peer Networking and Applications 10 (4),
983–994.
Zhao, J.L., Fan, S., Yan, J., 2016. Overview of business innovations and research
opportunities in blockchain and introduction to the special issue. Financial
Innovation 2. Article 28.
Zheng, Z., Xie, S., Dai, H.N., Chen, X., Wang, H., 2018. Blockchain challenges and
opportunities: a survey. Int J Web and Grid Services 14 (4), 352–375.
Zyskind, G., Nathan, O., Pentland, A., 2015. Decentralizing Privacy: using Blockchain to
Protect Personal Data. IEEE security and privacy workshops 180–184.
Piera Centobelli is Asst. Professor of Business Economics and Organization at the
Department of Industrial Engineering of the University of Naples Federico II. From 2013
until 2016 she joined the Fraunhofer Joint Laboratory of Excellence on Advanced Pro­
duction Technology (J-LEAPT) in partnership with Fh-IWU of Chemnitz. She published
more than forty papers in top journals and conference proceedings. She acts as guest editor
and reviewer for several peer-reviewed journals. Her research interests focus on knowl­
edge and technology management, operations management, logistics and supply chain
management, decision support systems, Industry 4.0, digital transformation, digital fac­
tory, circular economy, triple bottom line, environmental, economic and social
sustainability.
Roberto Cerchione is Delegate of Engineering Management Committee, Director of Startup
Grind University (SGu), and Professor of ‘Business Management’ at the University of
Naples Parthenope, Literature Review and Bibliometric Methods in the PhD Doctoral
Course in “Technology, Innovation and Management” at the University of Bergamo and
the University of Naples Federico II, and ‘Advanced Logistics Systems and Sustainable
Supply Chain Management’ at the Aerotech Academy, joint project between Leonardo and
the University of Naples Federico II to offer advanced training courses on leading engi­
neering issues. He serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the “Journal of Entrepreneurship Edu­
cation”, and acts as guest editor and editorial board member for several journals. He is
widely recognised for his research projects in the field of knowledge management, tech­
nology management, supply chain management, environmental sustainability manage­
ment, entrepreneurship and technology transfer, digital transformation, Industry 4.0,
blockchain, big data and business analytics. He has co-authored more than 70 publications
including articles published in leading peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, conference
proceedings, research reports. He has won an “Emerald Literati Award” and a research
award from the European Conference on Knowledge Management (ECKM) Committee for
the year 2019, two research awards from the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
for the year 2018, a Project Award from the Italian Association of Engineering Manage­
ment (AiIG), and several outstanding reviewer recognitions from peer-reviewed journals.
Emilio Esposito is Full Professor of Engineering Management at the Department of In­
dustrial Engineering of the University of Naples Federico II. He held a PhD in Economics of
Technological Change by the University of Naples Federico II. He has been Chair of the
Logistics and Manufacturing Management Engineering Degree Council of the University of
Naples Federico II. His-current scientific interests include knowledge management in
SMEs, technology management, supply chain management, environmental sustainability,
industrial organization in high tech industries.
P. Centobelli et al. Technological Forecasting & Social Change 165 (2021) 120463

Dr. Eugenio Oropallo is PhD Candidate at the Department of Industrial Engineering - technologies, blockchain, big data and business analytics in supply chain management
University of Naples Federico II (Italy). He received the M.Sc. degree in Engineering domain.
Management. His-current scientific interests concern the role of Industry 4.0 enabling

15

View publication stats