• Understand the underlying principles, main application areas and main formats and sectoral utilizations of Blockchain.
• Be able to identify situations where Blockchain could be a useful solution, and situations where it is not useful.
• Be able to demonstrate their understanding of the challenges and opportunities for business, particularly in designing domain-specific sustainable digital infrastructures that are interoperable with existing infrastructures, and that allow for the further development of applications by a broad range of actors.
• Be able to understand and communicate the complexities of building a Blockchain infrastructure that is constantly in the making and does not have a final state, and the implications of these complexities on business opportunities and challenges.
• Identify viable Blockchain solutions, taking into account the importance of community and ecosystem development (e.g. consortia and collaborations) and the use of the right incentive structures both within and outside the chosen Blockchain protocol.

A decade ago, an anonymous person or group under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto unleashed the Bitcoin protocol on the Internet, which allows for peer-to-peer exchange of digital cash without the need for a trusted third party. This was the first implementation of what today is broadly referred to as Blockchain technology, alluding to one of the attributes of Bitcoin, namely its shared replicated transaction ledger that is structured as blocks of transactions chained together through cryptographic hashes. While the specific technical components of Blockchain have been known for a long time, i.e. distributed databases, cryptography, and consensus protocols, it is their specific combination that has proven innovative. It is therefore today often claimed that Blockchain can be seen as an emerging open protocol layer on the internet on which a whole range of innovative solutions can be created ranging from supply chain, trade finance, sustainability reporting, and crowdfunding, to distributed energy production, digital carbon markets, and local exchange platforms. This being said, Blockchain technology is complicated to wrap one’s mind around, and the envisioned future, in terms of propagation into established industries, which is advocated by its proponents has so far been slow to materialize. 

This summer course will allow future business leaders to demystify the technology, and get a nuanced understanding of the opportunities as well as challenges associated with Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies for the private sector in general, and for sustainability impact in particular. The course places itself at the intersection of technology and business, and while being theoretically framed draws on specific empirical sustainability cases that will be explored in depth in term of understanding the specific industries as well as the related implementation challenges. This is not an exclusive class where software developers get to work on new Blockchain applications. Instead, this is a strategically designed business class for professionals looking to demystify what Blockchain technology is and how it can be applied to various types of firms, industries and business cases. 

Preliminary assignment: Students will be given an assignment on select topics related to the implementation of Blockchain in specific sustainability cases. Tentatively these topics will relate to (i) traceability of various commodities, and (ii) emergence of blockchain enabled climate markets. Students will be expected to perform in-depth data collection (qualitative and quantitative), develop an analytical framework for the topic in question, hereunder a relevant research question, and synthesize their research in a structured 15-page report.  

Class 1: Introduction to Blockchain
Class 2: Blockchain beyond cryptocurrency
Class 3: Transparency vs certification
Class 4: Technocratic definitions of innovation
Class 5: Blockchain for energy – huge potential or huge constraint?
Class 6: Blockchain for climate
Class 7&8: Student work on cases
Class 9&10: Student work on cases
Class 11: Final class

Preliminary Assignment: To help students get maximum value from ISUP courses, instructors provide a reading or a small number of readings or video clips to be read or viewed before the start of classes with a related task scheduled for class 1 in order to 'jump-start' the learning process.

Course timetable and Exam schedules are available on https://www.cbs.dk/uddannelse/international-summer-university-programme-isup/courses-and-exams

We reserve the right to cancel the course if we do not get enough applications. This will be communicated on https://www.cbs.dk/uddannelse/international-summer-university-programme-isup/courses-and-exams end February 2019 at the latest.

Mandatory readings:

- Aviv Zohar. 2015. Bitcoin under the Hood. Communications of the ACM, September 2015, Vol 58, No 9, 104-113

- Karim Jabbar, and Pernille Bjørn. 2017. Growing the Blockchain Information Infrastructure, Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

- Elizabeth Churchill. 2015. Why should we care about Bitcoin? Interactions.acm.org, September-October 2015

- Karim Jabbar, and Pernille Bjørn. 2018. Infrastructural Grind: Introducing Blockchain Technology in the Shipping Domain. GROUP '18, January 7–10, 2018, Sanibel Island, FL, USA  

- Karim Jabbar, Deanna MacDonald, Simon Ousager. 2017. Token Gesture? FutureNautics, Issue 15, Q2 2017, Quaterly

- Karim Jabbar, Deanna MacDonald. 2017. Men in Block FutureNautics, Issue 16, Q3 2017, Quaterly

- Faisal M. Mohd Noor, et. al. 2017. Beyond sustainability criteria and principles in palm oil production: addressing consumer concerns through insetting. Ecology and Society - 22(2):5.

- Kristoffer Francisco and David Swanson. 2018. The Supply Chain Has No Clothes: Technology Adoption of Blockchain for Supply Chain Transparency. Logistics 2018, 2, 2; doi:10.3390/​logistics2010002

- David Livingston, Varun Sivaram, Madison Freeman, and Maximilian Fiege. 2018. Applying Blockchain Technology to Electric Power Systems. Council on Foreign Relations, Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies.

- World Bank Group. 2018. Blockchain and Emereging Digital Technologies for Enhancing Post-2020 Climate Markets.

Additional relevant readings:

- Tim Swanson. 2015. Consensus-as-a-service: a brief report on the mergence of permissioned, distributed ledger systems

- Richard Muirhead, Ari Banerjee, et. al. 2018. The State of the Token Market – A year in review & an outlook for 2018. Fabric Ventures, 2018

- Viswanath Venkatesh and Fred D. Davis. 2000. A Theoretical Extension of the Technology Acceptance Model: Four Longitudinal Field Studies. Management Science, Vol. 46, No. 2 (Feb., 2000), pp. 186-204

- Linus Opara. 2003. Traceability in agriculture and food supply chain: A review of basic concepts, technological implications, and future prospects. Food, Agriculture & Environment Vol.1(1): 101-106. 2003