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IT WILL TAKE YEARS TO TRANSFORM
BUSINESS, BUT THE JOURNEY BEGINS NOW.
BY MARCO IANSITI
AND KARIM R. LAKHANI
ILLUSTRATION BY GUEDDA HASSAN MOHAMED
FEATURE THE TRUTH ABOUT BLOCKCHAIN
THE TRUTH ABOUT BLOCKCHAIN
Contracts, transactions, and the records of
them are among the defining structures in
our economic, legal, and political systems.
They protect assets and set organizational
boundaries. They establish and verify
identities and chronicle events. They govern
interactions among nations, organizations,
JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2017 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW 2701
communities, and individuals. They guide managerial
and social action. And yet these critical tools and the
bureaucracies formed to manage them have not kept
up with the economy’s digital transformation. They’re
like a rush-hour gridlock trapping a Formula 1 race car.
In a digital world, the way we regulate and maintain
administrative control has to change.
Blockchain promises to solve this problem. The
technology at the heart of bitcoin and other virtual cur-
rencies, blockchain is an open, distributed ledger that
can record transactions between two parties eciently
and in a veriable and permanent way. The ledger itself
can also be programmed to trigger transactions auto-
matically. (See the sidebar “How Blockchain Works.”)
With blockchain, we can imagine a world in which
contracts are embedded in digital code and stored in
transparent, shared databases, where they are pro-
tected from deletion, tampering, and revision. In this
world every agreement, every process, every task, and
every payment would have a digital record and signa-
ture that could be identiied, validated, stored, and
shared. Intermediaries like lawyers, brokers, and bank-
ers might no longer be necessary. Individuals, organi-
zations, machines, and algorithms would freely trans-
act and interact with one another with little friction.
This is the immense potential of blockchain.
Indeed, virtually everyone has heard the claim that
blockchain will revolutionize business and redene
companies and economies. Although we share the en-
thusiasm for its potential, we worry about the hype.
It’s not just security issues (such as the 2014 collapse
of one bitcoin exchange and the more recent hacks
of others) that concern us. Our experience studying
technological innovation tells us that if there’s to be a
blockchain revolution, many barriers—technological,
governance, organizational, and even societal—will
have to fall. It would be a mistake to rush headlong
into blockchain innovation without understanding
how it is likely to take hold.
True blockchain-led transformation of business
and government, we believe, is still many years away.
That’s because blockchain is not a “disruptive” tech-
nology, which can attack a traditional business model
with a lower-cost solution and overtake incumbent
rms quickly. Blockchain is a foundational technology:
It has the potential to create new foundations for our
economic and social systems. But while the impact will
be enormous, it will take decades for blockchain to seep
into our economic and social infrastructure. The pro-
cess of adoption will be gradual and steady, not sudden,
as waves of technological and institutional change gain
momentum. That insight and its strategic implications
are what we’ll explore in this article.
PATTERNS OF TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION
Before jumping into blockchain strategy and invest-
ment, let’s reect on what we know about technology
adoption and, in particular, the transformation process
typical of other foundational technologies. One of the
most relevant examples is distributed computer net-
working technology, seen in the adoption of TCP/IP
(transmission control protocol/internet protocol), which
laid the groundwork for the development of the internet.
Introduced in 1972, TCP/IP irst gained traction
in a single-use case: as the basis for e-mail among
the researchers on ARPAnet, the U.S. Department of
Defense precursor to the commercial internet. Before
TCP/IP, telecommunications architecture was based
on “circuit switching,” in which connections between
two parties or machines had to be pre-established and
sustained throughout an exchange. To ensure that
any two nodes could communicate, telecom service
providers and equipment manufacturers had invested
billions in building dedicated lines.
TCP/IP turned that model on its head. The new
protocol transmitted information by digitizing it and
breaking it up into very small packets, each including
address information. Once released into the network,
the packets could take any route to the recipient.
Smart sending and receiving nodes at the network’s
edges could disassemble and reassemble the packets
and interpret the encoded data. There was no need
for dedicated private lines or massive infrastructure.
TCP/IP created an open, shared public network with-
out any central authority or party responsible for its
maintenance and improvement.
Traditional telecommunications and computing
sectors looked on TCP/IP with skepticism. Few imag-
ined that robust data, messaging, voice, and video
connections could be established on the new archi-
tecture or that the associated system could be secure
and scale up. But during the late 1980s and 1990s, a
growing number of rms, such as Sun, NeXT, Hewlett-
Packard, and Silicon Graphics, used TCP/IP, in part to
create localized private networks within organizations.
To do so, they developed building blocks and tools that
broadened its use beyond e-mail, gradually replacing
more-traditional local network technologies and stan-
dards. As organizations adopted these building blocks
and tools, they saw dramatic gains in productivity.
TCP/IP burst into broad public use with the advent of
the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s. New technology
companies quickly emerged to provide the “plumb-
ing”—the hardware, software, and services needed to
connect to the now-public network and exchange in-
formation. Netscape commercialized browsers, web
servers, and other tools and components that aided
the development and adoption of internet services and
applications. Sun drove the development of Java, the
application-programming language. As information on
the web grew exponentially, Infoseek, Excite, AltaVista,
and Yahoo were born to guide users around it.
Once this basic infrastructure gained critical mass,
a new generation of companies took advantage of low-
cost connectivity by creating internet services that were
THE HYPE
We’ve all heard that
blockchain will
revolutionize business,
but it’s going to take
a lot longer than many
people claim.
THE REASON
Like TCP/IP (on which
the internet was built),
blockchain is a
foundational technology
that will require broad
coordination. The level of
complexity—technological,
regulatory, and social—
will be unprecedented.
THE TRUTH
The adoption of TCP/IP
suggests blockchain will
follow a fairly predictable
path. While the journey
will take years, it’s not
too early for businesses
to start planning.
IN BRIEF
2702 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2017
FEATURE THE TRUTH ABOUT BLOCKCHAIN
compelling substitutes for existing businesses. CNET
moved news online. Amazon oered more books for
sale than any bookshop. Priceline and Expedia made it
easier to buy airline tickets and brought unprecedented
transparency to the process. The ability of these new-
comers to get extensive reach at relatively low cost
put signicant pressure on traditional businesses like
newspapers and brick-and-mortar retailers.
Relying on broad internet connectivity, the next
wave of companies created novel, transformative ap-
plications that fundamentally changed the way busi-
nesses created and captured value. These companies
were built on a new peer-to-peer architecture and
generated value by coordinating distributed networks
of users. Think of how eBay changed online retail
through auctions, Napster changed the music indus-
try, Skype changed telecommunications, and Google,
which exploited user-generated links to provide more
relevant results, changed web search.
Ultimately, it took more than 30 years for TCP/IP
to move through all the phases—single use, localized
use, substitution, and transformation—and reshape
the economy. Today more than half the world’s most
valuable public companies have internet-driven, plat-
form-based business models. The very foundations
of our economy have changed. Physical scale and
unique intellectual property no longer confer unbeat-
able advantages; increasingly, the economic leaders
are enterprises that act as “keystones,” proactively
organizing, inuencing, and coordinating widespread
networks of communities, users, and organizations.
THE NEW ARCHITECTURE
Blockchain—a peer-to-peer network that sits on top of
the internet—was introduced in October 2008 as part
of a proposal for bitcoin, a virtual currency system
that eschewed a central authority for issuing currency,
transferring ownership, and conrming transactions.
Bitcoin is the rst application of blockchain technology.
The parallels between blockchain and TCP/IP are
clear. Just as e-mail enabled bilateral messaging, bit-
coin enables bilateral nancial transactions. The de-
velopment and maintenance of blockchain is open,
distributed, and shared—just like TCP/IP’s. A team of
volunteers around the world maintains the core soft-
ware. And just like e-mail, bitcoin rst caught on with
an enthusiastic but relatively small community.
TCP/IP unlocked new economic value by dramat-
ically lowering the cost of connections. Similarly,
block chain could dramatically reduce the cost of trans-
actions. It has the potential to become the system of
rec ord for all transactions. If that happens, the economy
will once again undergo a radical shift, as new, block-
chain-based sources of inuence and control emerge.
Consider how business works now. Keeping on-
going records of transactions is a core function of
any business. Those records track past actions and
performance and guide planning for the future. They
provide a view not only of how the organization works
internally but also of the organization’s outside rela-
tionships. Every organization keeps its own records,
and they’re private. Many organizations have no mas-
ter ledger of all their activities; instead records are dis-
tributed across internal units and functions. The prob-
lem is, reconciling transactions across individual and
private ledgers takes a lot of time and is prone to error.
For example, a typical stock transaction can be ex-
ecuted within microseconds, often without human
intervention. However, the settlement—the owner-
ship transfer of the stock—can take as long as a week.
That’s because the parties have no access to each oth-
er’s ledgers and can’t automatically verify that the as-
sets are in fact owned and can be transferred. Instead
a series of intermediaries act as guarantors of assets as
the record of the transaction traverses organizations
and the ledgers are individually updated.
In a blockchain system, the ledger is replicated in a
large number of identical databases, each hosted and
maintained by an interested party. When changes are
BLOCKCHAIN COULD
DRAMATICALLY
REDUCE THE COST
OF TRANSACTIONS
AND, IF ADOPTED
WIDELY, RESHAPE
THE ECONOMY.
JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2017 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW 2703
2704 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2017
FEATURE THE TRUTH ABOUT BLOCKCHAIN
entered in one copy, all the other copies are simultane-
ously updated. So as transactions occur, records of the
value and assets exchanged are permanently entered
in all ledgers. There is no need for third-party inter-
mediaries to verify or transfer ownership. If a stock
transaction took place on a blockchain-based system,
it would be settled within seconds, securely and ver-
iably. (The infamous hacks that have hit bitcoin ex-
changes exposed weaknesses not in the blockchain
itself but in separate systems linked to parties using
the blockchain.)
A FRAMEWORK FOR BLOCKCHAIN ADOPTION
If bitcoin is like early e-mail, is blockchain decades
from reaching its full potential? In our view the an-
swer is a qualied yes. We can’t predict exactly how
many years the transformation will take, but we can
guess which kinds of applications will gain traction
irst and how blockchain’s broad acceptance will
eventually come about.
In our analysis, history suggests that two dimen-
sions affect how a foundational technology and its
business use cases evolve. The irst is novelty—the
degree to which an application is new to the world.
The more novel it is, the more eort will be required to
ensure that users understand what problems it solves.
The second dimension is complexity, represented by
the level of ecosystem coordination involved—the
number and diversity of parties that need to work to-
gether to produce value with the technology. For exam-
ple, a social network with just one member is of little
use; a social network is worthwhile only when many of
your own connections have signed on to it. Other users
of the application must be brought on board to gener-
ate value for all participants. The same will be true for
many blockchain applications. And, as the scale and
impact of those applications increase, their adoption
will require signicant institutional change.
We’ve developed a framework that maps innova-
tions against these two contextual dimensions, di-
viding them into quadrants. (See the exhibit “How
Foundational Technologies Take Hold.”) Each quad-
rant represents a stage of technology development.
Identifying which one a blockchain innovation falls
into will help executives understand the types of chal-
lenges it presents, the level of collaboration and con-
sensus it needs, and the legislative and regulatory ef-
forts it will require. The map will also suggest what kind
of processes and infrastructure must be established to
facilitate the innovation’s adoption. Managers can use
it to assess the state of blockchain development in any
industry, as well as to evaluate strategic investments in
their own blockchain capabilities.
Single use. In the irst quadrant are low-novelty
and low-coordination applications that create better,
less costly, highly focused solutions. E-mail, a cheap
alternative to phone calls, faxes, and snail mail, was a
single-use application for TCP/IP (even though its value
rose with the number of users). Bitcoin, too, falls into
this quadrant. Even in its early days, bitcoin oered im-
mediate value to the few people who used it simply as
an alternative payment method. (You can think of it as
a complex e-mail that transfers not just information but
also actual value.) At the end of 2016 the value of bit-
coin transactions was expected to hit $92 billion. That’s
still a rounding error compared with the $411 trillion in
total global payments, but bitcoin is growing fast and
increasingly important in contexts such as instant pay-
ments and foreign currency and asset trading, where
the present nancial system has limitations.
Localization. The second quadrant comprises inno-
vations that are relatively high in novelty but need only
a limited number of users to create immediate value,
so it’s still relatively easy to promote their adoption.
HOW FOUNDATIONAL
TECHNOLOGIES TAKE HOLD
The adoption of foundational technologies typically
happens in four phases. Each phase is defined by the
novelty of the applications and the complexity of the
coordination efforts needed to make them workable.
Applications low in novelty and complexity gain
acceptance first. Applications high in novelty and
complexity take decades to evolve but can transform the
economy. TCP/IP technology, introduced on ARPAnet in
1972, has already reached the transformation phase, but
blockchain applications (in red) are in their early days.
DEGREE OF NOVELTY
AMOUNT OF COMPLEXITY AND COORDINATION
SUBSTITUTION
RETAILER GIFT CARDS
BASED ON BITCOIN
AMAZON ONLINE
BOOKSTORE
TRANSFORMATION
SELF-EXECUTING
SMART CONTRACTS
SKYPE
SINGLE USE
BITCOIN PAYMENTS
E-MAIL ON ARPANET
LOCALIZATION
PRIVATE ONLINE
LEDGERS FOR
PROCESSING FINANCIAL
TRANSACTIONS
INTERNAL CORPORATE
E-MAIL NETWORKS
LOW HIGH
HIGH
JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2017 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW 2705
2706 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2017
FEATURE THE TRUTH ABOUT BLOCKCHAIN
If blockchain follows the path network technologies
took in business, we can expect blockchain innova-
tions to build on single-use applications to create local
private networks on which multiple organizations are
connected through a distributed ledger.
Much of the initial private blockchain-based devel-
opment is taking place in the nancial services sector,
often within small networks of rms, so the coordi-
nation requirements are relatively modest. Nasdaq
is working with Chain.com, one of many blockchain
infrastructure providers, to oer technology for pro-
cessing and validating nancial transactions. Bank of
America, JPMorgan, the New York Stock Exchange,
Fidelity Investments, and Standard Chartered are test-
ing blockchain technology as a replacement for paper-
based and manual transaction processing in such
areas as trade nance, foreign exchange, cross-border
settlement, and securities settlement. The Bank of
Canada is testing a digital currency called CAD-coin
for interbank transfers. We anticipate a proliferation
of private blockchains that serve specic purposes for
various industries.
Substitution. The third quadrant contains ap-
plications that are relatively low in novelty because
they build on existing single-use and localized appli-
cations, but are high in coordination needs because
they involve broader and increasingly public uses.
These innovations aim to replace entire ways of doing
business. They face high barriers to adoption, how-
ever; not only do they require more coordination but
the processes they hope to replace may be full-blown
and deeply embedded within organizations and in-
stitutions. Examples of substitutes include crypto-
currencies—new, fully formed currency systems that
have grown out of the simple bitcoin payment tech-
nology. The critical dierence is that a cryptocurrency
requires every party that does monetary transactions
to adopt it, challenging governments and institutions
that have long handled and overseen such transac-
tions. Consumers also have to change their behavior
and understand how to implement the new functional
capability of the cryptocurrency.
A recent experiment at MIT highlights the chal-
lenges ahead for digital currency systems. In 2014 the
MIT Bitcoin Club provided each of MIT’s 4,494 under-
graduates with $100 in bitcoin. Interestingly, 30% of
the students did not even sign up for the free money,
and 20% of the sign-ups converted the bitcoin to cash
within a few weeks. Even the technically savvy had a
tough time understanding how or where to use bitcoin.
One of the most ambitious substitute blockchain
applications is Stellar, a nonprot that aims to bring
aordable nancial services, including banking, mi-
cropayments, and remittances, to people who’ve
never had access to them. Stellar oers its own virtual
currency, lumens, and also allows users to retain on its
system a range of assets, including other currencies,
telephone minutes, and data credits. Stellar initially
To learn more about
technology adoption, go to
these articles on HBR.org:
“Digital Ubiquity: How
Connections, Sensors,
and Data Are
Revolutionizing Business”
Marco Iansiti and
Karim R. Lakhani
“Strategy as Ecology”
Marco Iansiti and Roy Levien
“Right Tech, Wrong Time”
Ron Adner and Rahul Kapoor
FURTHER READING
1 DISTRIBUTED DATABASE
Each party on a blockchain has access
to the entire database and its complete
history. No single party controls the
data or the information. Every party can
verify the records of its transaction partners
directly, without an intermediary.
2 PEER-TO-PEER TRANSMISSION
Communication occurs directly
between peers instead of through a
central node. Each node stores and
forwards information to all other nodes.
3 TRANSPARENCY WITH PSEUDONYMITY
Every transaction and its associated
value are visible to anyone with
access to the system. Each node,
or user, on a blockchain has a unique
30-plus-character alphanumeric address
that identifies it. Users can choose to
remain anonymous or provide proof of
their identity to others. Transactions occur
between blockchain addresses.
4 IRREVERSIBILITY OF RECORDS
Once a transaction is entered in
the database and the accounts are
updated, the records cannot be
altered, because they’re linked to every
transaction record that came before
them (hence the term “chain”). Various
computational algorithms and approaches
are deployed to ensure that the recording on
the database is permanent, chronologically
ordered, and available to all others on the
network.
5 COMPUTATIONAL LOGIC
The digital nature of the ledger means
that blockchain transactions can be
tied to computational logic and in
essence programmed. So users can set
up algorithms and rules that automatically
trigger transactions between nodes.
HOW BLOCKCHAIN WORKS
Here are five basic principles
underlying the technology.
JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2017 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW 2707
focused on Africa, particularly Nigeria, the larg-
est economy there. It has seen signiicant adoption
among its target population and proved its cost-ef-
fectiveness. But its future is by no means certain, be-
cause the ecosystem coordination challenges are high.
Although grassroots adoption has demonstrated the
viability of Stellar, to become a banking standard, it
will need to influence government policy and per-
suade central banks and large organizations to use it.
That could take years of concerted eort.
Transformation. Into the last quadrant fall com-
pletely novel applications that, if successful, could
change the very nature of economic, social, and po-
litical systems. They involve coordinating the activity
of many actors and gaining institutional agreement on
standards and processes. Their adoption will require
major social, legal, and political change.
“Smart contracts” may be the most transformative
blockchain application at the moment. These auto-
mate payments and the transfer of currency or other
assets as negotiated conditions are met. For example,
a smart contract might send a payment to a supplier
as soon as a shipment is delivered. A rm could sig-
nal via blockchain that a particular good has been re-
ceived—or the product could have GPS functionality,
which would automatically log a location update that,
in turn, triggered a payment. We’ve already seen a few
early experiments with such self-executing contracts
in the areas of venture funding, banking, and digital
rights management.
The implications are fascinating. Firms are built on
contracts, from incorporation to buyer-supplier rela-
tionships to employee relations. If contracts are auto-
mated, then what will happen to traditional rm struc-
tures, processes, and intermediaries like lawyers and
accountants? And what about managers? Their roles
would all radically change. Before we get too excited
here, though, let’s remember that we are decades away
from the widespread adoption of smart contracts. They
cannot be eective, for instance, without institutional
buy-in. A tremendous degree of coordination and clar-
ity on how smart contracts are designed, veried, im-
plemented, and enforced will be required. We believe
the institutions responsible for those daunting tasks
will take a long time to evolve. And the technology
challenges—especially security—are daunting.
GUIDING YOUR APPROACH TO
BLOCKCHAIN INVESTMENT
How should executives think about blockchain for
their own organizations? Our framework can help
companies identify the right opportunities.
For most, the easiest place to start is single-use
applications, which minimize risk because they aren’t
new and involve little coordination with third parties.
One strategy is to add bitcoin as a payment mechanism.
The infrastructure and market for bitcoin are already
well developed, and adopting the virtual currency
will force a variety of functions, including IT, nance,
accounting, sales, and marketing, to build blockchain
capabilities. Another low-risk approach is to use block-
chain internally as a database for applications like
managing physical and digital assets, recording inter-
nal transactions, and verifying identities. This may be
an especially useful solution for companies struggling
to reconcile multiple internal databases. Testing out
single-use applications will help organizations develop
the skills they need for more-advanced applications.
And thanks to the emergence of cloud-based block-
chain services from both start-ups and large platforms
like Amazon and Microsoft, experimentation is getting
easier all the time.
Localized applications are a natural next step for
companies. We’re seeing a lot of investment in pri-
vate blockchain networks right now, and the projects
involved seem poised for real short-term impact.
Financial services companies, for example, are nd-
ing that the private blockchain networks they’ve set
up with a limited number of trusted counterparties
can signicantly reduce transaction costs.
Organizations can also tackle specic problems in
transactions across boundaries with localized applica-
tions. Companies are already using blockchain to track
items through complex supply chains, for instance.
This is happening in the diamond industry, where
gems are being traced from mines to consumers. The
technology for such experiments is now available
o-the-shelf.
Developing substitute applications requires careful
planning, since existing solutions may be dicult to
dislodge. One way to go may be to focus on replace-
ments that won’t require end users to change their
behavior much but present alternatives to expensive
or unattractive solutions. To get traction, substitutes
must deliver functionality as good as a traditional solu-
tion’s and must be easy for the ecosystem to absorb
and adopt. First Data’s foray into blockchain-based
gift cards is a good example of a well-considered sub-
stitute. Retailers that offer them to consumers can
dramatically lower costs per transaction and enhance
security by using blockchain to track the ows of cur-
rency within accounts—without relying on external
payment processors. These new gift cards even al-
low transfers of balances and transaction capability
between merchants via the common ledger.
Transformative applications are still far away. But
it makes sense to evaluate their possibilities now and
invest in developing technology that can enable them.
They will be most powerful when tied to a new busi-
ness model in which the logic of value creation and
capture departs from existing approaches. Such busi-
ness models are hard to adopt but can unlock future
growth for companies.
Consider how law rms will have to change to make
smart contracts viable. They’ll need to develop new
2708 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2017
FEATURE THE TRUTH ABOUT BLOCKCHAIN
expertise in software and blockchain programming.
They’ll probably also have to rethink their hourly pay-
ment model and entertain the idea of charging trans-
action or hosting fees for contracts, to name just two
possible approaches. Whatever tack they take, execu-
tives must be sure they understand and have tested the
business model implications before making any switch.
Transformative scenarios will take o last, but they
will also deliver enormous value. Two areas where they
could have a profound impact: large-scale public iden-
tity systems for such functions as passport control, and
algorithm-driven decision making in the prevention of
money laundering and in complex nancial transac-
tions that involve many parties. We expect these appli-
cations won’t reach broad adoption and critical mass
for at least another decade and probably more.
Transformative applications will also give rise to
new platform-level players that will coordinate and
govern the new ecosystems. These will be the Googles
and Facebooks of the next generation. It will require
patience to realize such opportunities. Though it may
be premature to start making signicant investments
in them now, developing the required foundations for
them—tools and standards—is still worthwhile.
IN ADDITION TO PROVIDING a good template for block-
chain’s adoption, TCP/IP has most likely smoothed the
way for it. TCP/IP has become ubiquitous, and block-
chain applications are being built on top of the digital
data, communication, and computation infrastruc-
ture, which lowers the cost of experimentation and
will allow new use cases to emerge rapidly.
With our framework, executives can igure out
where to start building their organizational capabilities
for blockchain today. They need to ensure that their
staffs learn about blockchain, to develop company-
specic applications across the quadrants we’ve iden-
tied, and to invest in blockchain infrastructure.
But given the time horizons, barriers to adoption,
and sheer complexity involved in getting to TCP/IP
levels of acceptance, executives should think carefully
about the risks involved in experimenting with block-
chain. Clearly, starting small is a good way to develop
the know-how to think bigger. But the level of invest-
ment should depend on the context of the company
and the industry. Financial services companies are
already well down the road to blockchain adoption.
Manufacturing is not.
No matter what the context, there’s a strong pos-
sibility that blockchain will aect your business. The
very big question is when.
HBR Reprint R1701J
MARCO IANSITI is the David Sarnoff Professor of Business
Administration at Harvard Business School. KARIM R.
LAKHANI is a professor of business administration at Harvard
Business School and the principal investigator of the
Crowd Innovation Laboratory at the Harvard Institute for
Quantitative Social Science.
COMPANIES
ARE ALREADY
USING BLOCKCHAIN
TO TRACK
ITEMS THROUGH
COMPLEX
SUPPLY CHAINS.
JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2017 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW 2709
