Tokenization: A Foundation for Digitized Inter-organizational Relationships

The public World Wide Web is over 30 years old and has facilitated a whirlwind of innovation. Whereas the first phase (Web1) democratized access to information in publicly controlled infrastructures, and the second phase (Web2) democratized peer-to-peer interaction, this has also led to the dominance of global digital platforms that have privatized access to and orchestrated in digital infrastructures. Thus, while digital platforms enable consumer engagement at a truly global scale, they also hinder innovation in flexible inter-organizational collaboration. The Web3 vision, however, represents the hope of the “Goldilocks” balancing of the public and the private by facilitating inter-organizational collaboration through blockchain-based tokenization. The development of this digital infrastructure arguably inherits the best from the open and private arrangements by rendering each participant a governing member in inter-organizational arrangements. This chapter outlines the foundational assumptions behind the Web3 vision for inter-organizational collaboration through blockchain-based tokenization, provides examples of such tokenization, and outlines a research agenda for further work.