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Source: Journal Citation ReportsTM from ClarivateTM 2022

Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues Open access
Journal Impact FactorTM (2022) 1.7
Journal Citation IndicatorTM (2022) 0.42
Received: 2023-08-12  |  Accepted: 2023-10-18  |  Published: 2023-12-30

Title

NFT-enriched smart contracts for smart circular economy models


Abstract

A smart contract is an electronic transaction protocol intended to digitally facilitate, verify, or enforce the execution of the terms of underlying legal agreements. Thus, by following the traditional perception, smart contracts target reducing transaction costs, including arbitration and enforcement costs, by realizing trackable and irreversible transactions using blockchain technology for distributed databases. However, the potential of smart contracts goes far beyond cost reductions by facilitating the entrepreneurial collaboration of cross-organizational business processes. Industry 4.0 aims to create smart supply chains. Smart contracts and Non-Fungible Token (NFT) solutions can realize new smart business models in the circular economy. The recent case study from the automobile industry demonstrates how using NFT technology in the form of a digital certificate can become an integral part of smart product lifecycle management in the frame of a circular economy integrating innovative business models with smart service design concepts. By doing so, the use of NFT paves the way for dynamic and adaptable supply chains, evolving needs of stakeholders towards a sustainable and circular economy. The authors participated in research projects related to smart supply chains and circular economy. Thus, the paper discusses the question of how and to what extent smart contracting, blockchain technology, NFT solutions, and Service Design can facilitate the implementation of smart business models in the context of the circular economy. The research is based on expert interviews, surveys, and case studies from EU projects focusing on the Baltic Sea Region.


Keywords

smart contracts, Non-Fungible Token (NFT), smart supply chains, service design, business models, circular economy


JEL classifications

O33 , L86 , Q55 , L23 , M15 , L62


URI

http://jssidoi.org/jesi/article/1129


DOI


Pages

93-110


Funding


This is an open access issue and all published articles are licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Authors

Gerasimova, Vera
Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn, Estonia http://ttu.ee
Articles by this author in: CrossRef |  Google Scholar

Prause, Gunnar
Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn, Estonia http://ttu.ee
University of Applied Sciences, Technology, Business and Design, Wismar, Germany https://www.hs-wismar.de
Articles by this author in: CrossRef |  Google Scholar

Hoffmann, Thomas
Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn, Estonia http://ttu.ee
Articles by this author in: CrossRef |  Google Scholar

Journal title

Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues

Volume

11


Number

2


Issue date

December 2023


Issue DOI


ISSN

ISSN 2345-0282 (online)


Publisher

VšĮ Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Center, Vilnius, Lithuania

Cited

Google Scholar

Article views & downloads

HTML views: 471  |  PDF downloads: 273

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