Abstract
The product–service system (PSS) has great potential to promote the circular economy (CE) and sustainability. Recent studies have highlighted the importance of associating social values with sustainable PSS because social actors, including stakeholders, institutions, and communities, are the key to organizational innovation and behavior change. However, it is still not clear how companies can incorporate the social context into service strategies and co-create sustainable value with their stakeholders. Through overall discussions on related studies, this concept paper proposes theoretically based guidance for developing sustainable product–service offerings in the early planning phase. A case scenario of recycling is presented to demonstrate the operation of the proposed approach. The results suggest that companies should expand the scope of their understanding of customer problems beyond the product use. Engaging in social issues such as skill empowerment and job creation can generate long-term benefits and strengthen the brand image. In addition, working with communities and other enterprises via incentives or interactive activities can foster open innovation for CE. The proposed approach serves to assist designers in handling more comprehensive contexts of sustainability and allow better preparations for resource integration in the early PSS design phase.
Highlights
The Circular Economy (CE) has great potential to promote sustainability because it creates economic value with closed material loops that minimize waste generation and energy consumption from the production and product use [1,2]
The research questions of this paper include: (1) how companies broaden their visions of sustainability and build collaborative networks for value co-creation; and (2) how product–service system (PSS) design addresses mutual influence between different systems and improves the completeness of sustainable solutions
We took a recycling scenario as a starting point to illustrate how sustainability thinking relates product–service concepts to innovation. This scenario is based on the case study of waste pickers, and researchers have summarized comprehensive data via questionnaires, in-depth interviews, and field studies to present the structure of waste pickers and recycling mechanisms [61]
Summary
The Circular Economy (CE) has great potential to promote sustainability because it creates economic value with closed material loops that minimize waste generation and energy consumption from the production and product use [1,2]. As mentioned, CE should incorporate social actors into its system so that circular business models can be developed in an innovative and effective way In this context, PSS research is facing some challenges, including how a PSS considers clients and employees and communities for social sustainability [13] and how companies cooperate with their customers and stakeholders for value co-creation [14]. To deal with the above issues, we propose guiding principles for designing sustainable PSS in the early planning phase This concept paper is based on library research.
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