**4. Blockchain for open innovation**

materials). Thus, the way in which economic, social, and environmental resources

Recently, the EU has progressed significantly toward sustainability through the

• Corporate social responsibility (CSR)/responsible business conduct (RBC) and

• Sustainability and the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable

The definition of CSR and RBC is related with ethical behavior and particularly with the relationship between a corporation and its stakeholders within a societal context, integrating social, environmental, and economic concerns into its business processes [14]. CSR/RBC can also be seen as actions under SDG 8 (decent work and

In 2011, the UN Human Rights Council endorsed 31 Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) [14]. This approach came up as a sort of response to the perceived failure of CSR/RBC in terms of law binding and state

UNGPs, and the SDGs), the EC has adopted a holistic and practical approach toward sustainability irrespective of its name (i.e., CSR, RBC, business and human rights, SDG) while at the same time recognizing the target goal between the differ-

Recently, given the clear relationship between the three approaches (CSR/RBC,

Within this context, blockchain is able to bring advantages toward sustainability in four main aspects: cybersecurity, accountability, transparency, and traceability:

• *Cybersecurity*. Applications for sustainability should be enabled by a robust digital infrastructure resilient to cyberattacks [15]. Cybersecurity should be implemented by design in the underlying technologies (e.g., IoT, AR, AI).

• *Accountability*. It is related to an organization (e.g., corporation or individual) acknowledgment of the impact of its actions, assuming responsibility for them. It implies to quantify the internal and external effects of the actions and report them to all the stakeholders. Such a reporting needs to be understandable, relevant, reliable, and comparable between different organizations and over

• *Transparency*. It implies that the external impact can be obtained from

laws [18]. Therefore, it is a key organizational capability to foster

logistics systems and processes among a number of organizations).

• *Traceability*. It is the ability to identify and trace assets (e.g., products, parts, processes, events, data, and materials) from their origins to production and distribution processes and, ultimately, until the end of their life cycle [17, 18]. Regarding Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM), it also relates to human rights (e.g., fair trade, safety in labor, and privacy) and anti-corruption

sustainability. Two main categories can be considered within traceability [19]: internal (i.e., tracking and tracing assets within an organization) and external (i.e., it seeks to know the flow of information and assets between different

reporting by all the external stakeholders [16].

• Business and human rights and the protection of human rights in general

are efficiently managed is a key issue for long-term sustainability.

three main approaches [14]:

*Computer Security Threats*

new business models

Development

economic growth).

oversight.

ent agendas.

time.

**102**

Open innovation, where innovative knowledge and ideas flow freely internally and externally to an organization, has become an important factor to enable sustainability [20]. To address SDGs, the EU recognizes the need for strengthening the impact of research and innovation and the use of coordinated approaches to ensure knowledge exchanges at an EU level [15]. These coordinated approaches will involve stakeholders with inter- and transdisciplinary points of view and the ability to manage jointly these development processes (SDG 17, partnerships for the goals) [21]. Although the current literature in open innovation details theoretical frameworks to guide solution development [20, 22], this development implies novel governance models that create thriving and diverse ecosystems where solutions are conceived, designed, experimented, implemented, supplied to the market, scaled up, and adopted. In that sense, one of the latest paradigms is called Open Innovation 2.0 (OI2) [23], a quadruple helix model where science, policy, industry, and society collaborate to achieve greater aims than a single entity.

Open innovation is uncertain and involves a high risk [20]. However, the lack of trust is today a major concern that withholds the cooperation and involvement of stakeholders in open innovation processes [24], especially for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This need for orchestrating multiple stakeholders in a trusted and reliable way matches perfectly with the distributed nature of blockchain [20], which also provides the following main benefits:

