Social Welfare Computing is an emerging discipline that seeks to direct technology to cause minimum social disruption, and in particular seeks to minimize the harm caused directly by technology. This is markedly different from the better understood strategic use of technology to create value or to address existing social needs. Innovative technologies that are widely adopted created significant value for their users; otherwise they would not be widely adopted. Often the companies that create them obtain new sources of wealth and power, which inevitably lead to new abuses of power and new forms of societal disruption. Societal disruption in turn requires social adaptation, including new regulations to influence the behavior of firms and to define and to protect the rights of an individual in the changed society. Social Welfare Computing seeks to guide social adaptation, combining insights from disciplines as varied as anthropology, business strategy, economics, strategic planning, and law.

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Often research in information systems looks for reference disciplines, like information economics or game theory, that can inform and motivate our research. Here we reverse that paradigm and offer an area in which information system provides a reference discipline for the design of physical products. Design for the Circular Economy is a green initiative that goes beyond recycling and focuses on the design of products that can remain in use almost indefinitely, and thus are not replaced and are not recycled. This leads to products for which maintenance, repair, upgrades, and style enhancements are less wasteful. This usually requires breakthroughs in design and in manufacturing processes. There is a small set of design principles that enable Design for the Circular Economy, and that yield longterm benefits in the ownership and operation of products. Green design for the Circular Economy becomes relevant even for products with shorter lifetimes and lower costs.