Abstract
We investigate why companies collaborate within the circular oriented innovation process. The purpose is to understand what motives trigger collaborative circular oriented innovation, as well as conditions, drivers and barriers. First, we define circular oriented innovation building on sustainable oriented innovation literature. Subsequently, we investigate 11 leading circular economy companies operating within the Netherlands, who developed collaborative circular oriented innovation activities. ‘Hard’ and ‘soft’ dimensions for innovation are identified and applied to delineate the drivers and barriers for collaborative circular oriented innovation. Our findings indicate that collaborations are conducted by entrepreneurially-minded actors through sharing a vision, enthusiasm, and crucially, a credible proposition for a circular economy. Furthermore, collaboration is sought early, to co-develop the problem and solution space and integrate disparate knowledge from across the value network, to mitigate increased complexity. Motives to collaborate vary between personal and organisational, and intrinsic and extrinsic levels. Collaborations start based on a relational basis between ‘CE front-runners’ to advance knowledge through experimentation. ‘Soft’ challenges to advance collaborations towards the competitive remain around culture, and the mindset to share rewards and risks. Without suitable solutions to these challenges, collaborative circular oriented innovation could remain underdeveloped within the transition towards the systemic level.
Highlights
Growing concerns about the over-consumption of finite resources contributes to increased calls for a transition to a more sustainable society
To answer our research question, and to explore why companies pursue collaborative circular oriented innovation, we looked for the circular economy strategies, evidence of collaborative approaches, and circular oriented innovation activities, and we explored the motives, drivers and barriers
We propose that future research is needed within circular oriented innovation (COI) to explore whether these specific conditions interact to affect collaborations or the COI process
Summary
Growing concerns about the over-consumption of finite resources contributes to increased calls for a transition to a more sustainable society. The rationale for SOI compared to traditional innovation is that businesses can become key actors within sustainable transitions This requires strategically changing their operations to create beneficial impacts from their economic activities that seek sustainable growth through innovation [6,10,11]. The assumption is that such collaborative COI activities will drive radical sustainable changes within research and innovation actions, create jobs, economic value and reduce environmental impacts [26,27] Understanding why such collaborative COI activities begin, how they relate to other sustainable oriented innovation approaches, and what the associated challenges are, is paramount if CE is to endure and not become another sustainability buzzword. We propose a framework to describe why companies collaborate, based on our findings, which is used to support the discussion and conclusions that are subsequently presented
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