Innovation for a Circular Economy

How Companies Innovate Business Models and Supply Chains for a Circular Economy: A Multiple-Case Study and Framework

“…The literature stream of CBM points out that companies that want to innovate their business model according to CE principles need to adopt particular managerial practices within their internal boundaries Urbinati et al, 2017), such as product design for circularity, design out waste, or the shift from product selling to product-service systems (PSSs). In the CE domain, these practices touch upon three main units of change: processes, products, and/or services (e.g., Bocken et al, 2016;Jakobsen et al, 2021) This categorisation is aligned also with the main types of ecoinnovation (Triguero et al 2013). First, when the change is focused on the process, companies can pursue circularity in their business model through innovating their processes to favour the closing, slowing, and narrowing of materials and energy according to CE principles (Engez et al, 2021).…”

“…Due to the particularly systemic nature of CE, it is not enough for companies to settle with innovating their business models (micro-perspective), i.e., at the level of internal operations and processes: instead, they need to develop and innovate also their supply chains and related collaborations with external partners (meso-perspective) . Accordingly, although innovation is recognized as a key for developing circular business (e.g., de Jesus & Mendonça, 2018;Jakobsen et al, 2021), there is a knowledge gap on how companies innovate business models and supply chains for a CE transition. This gap is of great importance, given the interplay that exists between the concepts of a business model and a supply chain in the CE domain.…”