Technological insights on blockchain adoption: the electric vehicle supply chain use case

Purpose: Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies are increasingly prominent, yet their adoption remains complex. This paper addresses the common misalignment between blockchain technology and actual needs, often leading to project failure. It introduces a decision-making framework focused on the technological aspects of blockchain adoption. Design/methodology/approach: We designed the framework by analyzing key decision drivers from existing literature and applied it to a real-world use case in the electric vehicle supply chain. The blockchain solution was tested with live production data. Findings: Blockchain is beneficial for use cases requiring decentralized governance, but it often needs to be supplemented with additional technologies in industrial applications. Originality/value: The framework provides a set of managerial-level questions that simplify the decision-making process for those without deep technical expertise, helping determine when blockchain is appropriate, valuable and superior to other technologies.