Abstract
Pursuing sustainability implies setting a multitude of open-ended goals to address environmental and socioeconomic issues today as well as those for future generations. The circular economy (CE) paradigm appears more focused regarding goals and agency to address environmental issues by using the economic system. However, companies and governments aiming to operationalize CE in practice, it has been claimed, will face six key challenges limiting the CE “net sustainability impact” potential. This work focuses on the challenges for manufacturers to adopt and operationalize CE for their business. The two key levers for manufacturers to navigate on their path from the linear (take-make-dispose) to a sustainable CE are innovating and designing of the business model and of their products. To date, however, understanding the role of product design in developing circular business models has received little attention in research. This review article builds upon the CE literature foundation, including definitions, challenges, and business modeling frameworks needed to better understand the role of product design. Building on the work of several highly cited CE-centric literature reviews and voices in research and industry, we selected and merged complementing frameworks: Slowing-Closing-Narrowing, Circular Design, and the Circular Business Model Innovation framework. To understand how to put these frameworks into practice, we analyzed CE's links with electric vehicle and white goods research and industry perspectives respectively and collectively. The review and analysis of CE and selected industries’ research was supported by a co-occurrence keyword analysis of 5,960 most cited papers in CE as well as the two product categories, electric vehicles and white goods. The analysis indicated limited maturity and linkage of circular business models and role of product design toward a CE in the research literature for the product categories. This result corroborated the knowledge gap and guided our focus in searching for further research and industry clues. We structured the clues of interest that were specific to or common across product categories and industries, using the integrated framework to visualize our Design for X conclusion. The merged framework visualizes how paths toward CE by design and logic of value creation, delivery, and capturing may differ. To conclude, the authors’ own experience and literature examples from relevant industry-leading and start-up companies are used to apply the framework and reveal strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Future research and industry experiments focused on the circular business models based on product service systems and design for CE strategies identified, will be needed to test and extend the framework to other product categories and industry sectors.
Highlights
The circular economy (CE) is becoming more prominent in business organizations (Ferasso et al, 2020; Korhonen et al, 2018).C. de Kwant, A.F
Mindful of the CE literature debate, as well its business model archetypes and strategy framework mentioned above, we reviewed the research and industry literature looking for key characteristics of electric vehicles and white goods respectively and collectively that might clarify the role of design in the context of the circular economy
Our review showed that thermodynamic and system boundaries may limit electric vehicles (EVs) and white goods (WG) companies from recovering and looping materials without losses, but strategies focused on design and circular business models have been recommended
Summary
The circular economy (CE) is becoming more prominent in business organizations (Ferasso et al, 2020; Korhonen et al, 2018).C. de Kwant, A.F. The notion of design is central in creating and transitioning to a CBM (Thomas, 2013), but as Sumter et al (2018) point out, “In spite of the widespread recognition of the importance of design in a circular economy, there is very little empirical research into the role of design during the development of a circular business model.”. This review analyzed the role of product design, opportunities, and challenges for the design of CBMs in practice. EVs and WG were selected to enable and focus our analysis of both different and shared challenges and performance levers within the design of CBMs and products to shift to- and operationalize a CE in practice, starting from the current state and shifting toward a more circular future
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