Exploring the opportunities of blockchain-enabled coopetition: learnings from the wind turbine industry

The paradoxical nature of competitors collaborating, known as coopetition, is a phenomenon of increasing importance in a world that is becoming progressively integrated through digitalisation. This paper is among the first to explore the potential opportunities and limitations of blockchain as an enabler of coopetition. The distributed nature and cryptographic capabilities of the blockchain challenges the dichotomous view of coopetition - collaborate or do not collaborate - through its technological flexibility regarding information-accessibility. This paper focuses on the empirical setting of the wind turbine industry, in which a multilateral instance of coopetition is taking place with five turbine manufacturers and 11 first tier suppliers being involved in developing new standards for the industry. Limiting factors for coopetition and blockchain are found to be based in social contexts such as competence- and integrity-based trust, and in legal context with competition laws hindering the extent to which coopetition can occur.