Knowledge Transfer for Circular Business Ecosystems

The focus of the project is on how to accelerate resource efficiency between industries. Current research points out to the need to achieve a resource efficiency of 80-90% against today's standard to meet the critical sustainability challenges we are facing at present and in the near future.

The participating industries, textiles, furniture and vehicles, have been challenging the linear business model in different ways and with different experiences.

The purpose of the project is to build on the different practices that companies in the industries have gathered so that they can learn from each other. This will consist on identifying business opportunities, bridging or anticipating barriers and identifying new business ecosystems that are necessary to bring about the transition.

The framework that will be utilised to initiate the work with the participating companies is called Future Adaptive Design, which - from previous research - has identified the need for collaboration between business solution and product design to reduce the risk to adopt circular business models. Thus, the companies will increase their knowledge and ability regarding design for circularity while testing the framework. The participation of the industry organisations will provide opportunities for wide dissemination of the project experiences and results, which is expected to contribute to stronger competitiveness and increased innovation capacity in the region's key areas of strength.

The project has three target groups:

1. Circular change agents in the manufacturing industry in the textile, furniture and automotive industries. These are individuals who work with business development, design, innovation, change management and environmental issues in the organisations who are tasked with working to produce circular business offers and conceptual design proposals.

2. Decision-makers: The result will have a great impact on decision-makers in manufacturing companies in relation to decisions about financing and implementation of circular business models.

3. Growing companies in the region: Dissemination through good examples, experiences and lessons learned is expected to help growing companies to challenge their existing business models and start testing circular solutions to a greater extent than today.