Of course the popularity of smart contracts has grown with popularity around the technology of blockchain, has risen on the hype)))
In general, the term smart contract actually appeared more than twenty years ago. Nick Szabo, a computer scientist and cryptographer, wrote an article about smart contracts in the distant 1995. The concept proposed by Szabo is exactly what the smart contracts offer today, including the idea of implementing and storing smart contracts in a distributed ledger.
Is it will go on advantage to business? Mighty businessmen are not too clever and educated people who are used to count success in money !!!