Guest editorialCircular economy and entrepreneurial ecosystems: a missing link?

Sustainable energy transition and circular economy: The heterogeneity of potential investors in rural community renewable energy projects

“…More future research dealing with the association between CE and RE would be welcome. Moving beyond the analysis of the WTI of potential investors in CRE, the analysis of the entrepreneurial ecosystems that should support CRE initiatives under a circular economy approach (i.e., integral management of biomass resources) would be particularly interesting (Ferreira and Dabic, 2022). The sharing economy concept could also be a relevant one in this context (Dabbous & Tarhini, 2021).…”

Start-ups and entrepreneurial ecosystems in the circular economy: A multi-level approach for safe and just planetary boundaries

“…A circular EE relies on multi-stakeholder collaborations across supply chains and promoting the circulation of products and materials (Farooque et al, 2019; Govindan and Hasanagic, 2018), fostering entrepreneurial activities that can lead to sustainability outcomes (Bischoff and Volkmann, 2018; Castro Oliveira et al, 2021; Fernandes and Ferreira, 2022; Raposo et al, 2021). At the micro-level, circular start-ups are driven by environmental and economic values (Henry et al, 2023) and even socially sustainable values (Suchek et al, 2022); they adopt the rationale of a circular business model from inception (Ferasso et al, 2020; Geissdoerfer et al, 2020) and advance transitioning towards a CE system by closing product or material loops (Ferreira and Dabic, 2022; Henry et al, 2020). CE business models include processes and strategies by which firms create, deliver and capture sustainable values (Centobelli et al, 2020; Urbinati et al, 2017), experiments with circularity (Bocken et al, 2017), enact bioeconomy innovations (Donner and de Vries, 2021) and adopt contextual approaches (Daňo et al, 2020).…”

“…Despite the rapid increase in research on (circular) start-ups, (circular) EE and public policies in the CE’s context, the single level of focus in CE research limits a broader understanding of the mechanisms fostering the transition towards CE. Studies on CE focus on, for example, either the business model (Centobelli et al, 2020; Geissdoerfer et al, 2020), or the supply chain (Govindan and Hasanagic, 2018), or technology as a driver of CE (Patyal et al, 2022), or innovations (Suchek et al, 2021), or circular entrepreneurship (Suchek et al, 2022), or sustainable performance (Ferreira and Dabic, 2022). Recent calls encourage research on the inter-relations between EE and sustainable entrepreneurial activities (Theodoraki et al, 2022; Volkmann et al, 2021), specifically CE’s macro–meso–micro interconnections for exploring the role of businesses in a transition to CE.…”