Explained

Circular business
design

Reimagine your business model or product to make it fit for the circular economy – minimize your impact on the natural environment, while creating renewable value for your customers 

What is circular business design?

A circular business model represents how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value for a wide range of stakeholders while reducing environmental and social impacts.

Circular businesses shift operations from using virgin materials to prioritizing recycled and upcycled parts from the economy.

Not only do circular businesses minimize downstream waste by giving it a second life or as an input to another industry, but in tandem with Creative AI, transforming towards circular business model opens up new lifecycle opportunities and can generate new product ideas.

Key challenges of transforming towards circular business models

How do we decouple revenue from resource consumption?

Most businesses face a trade-off between selling more/selling faster (and making more money) and preserving nature’s resources (and not creating waste). Sound familiar?

With circular thinking you can decouple your revenue from your environmental impact by defining revenue streams connected to recycling, remanufacturing, repair, sharing and other zero-impact ways of creating value.

How can we enable our customers’ or suppliers’ circularity?

Circular business models depend on having the right partners, customers and suppliers. It can be tough to coordinate innovation to make sure they work across the full value chain.

Through co-creation, we help you work together with the value chain to define business models that work for each party and complete the circle.

How do we design a circular product?

Designing products for the circular economy is tricky because it can be difficult to imagine the product’s full lifecycle – where does it go after the customer is done with it? Who disassembles it or adds value to it, to return it to the economy? How does it return back to nature? How do we justify additional costs to make our product circular?

Through thinking of the product’s lifecycle and how it navigates the ecosystem, we can define how to redesign it to enable circular business.

How to create a successful circular business model

1. Defining the circular business model

A clear visual schematic and draft business case that articulates the key stakeholders and transactions in the business model.

We will provide insights into potential opportunities and increase efficiency in the innovation process.

By leveraging AI, you can quickly generate more creative and innovative solutions, making the innovation process faster and more efficient.

2. Defining the circular product

Visuals and product requirements (design principles) that articulate how to modify a product for circular economy purposes.

For example, inclusion of recycled materials, designed to be ready for disassembly, repair, remanufacturing and recycling.

3. Scaling plan based on real in-market data

Test results with real, in-market tests (success/failure metrics), with learnings and strategic recommendations on how to scale your circular business model.

How to create a successful circular business model

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Laura Stevens

Laura Stevens

Helping organizations define their AI mission and drive strategic transformation. Focusing on balancing speed with long-term AI resilience, integrating people into AI adoption, and ensuring investments create both business value and human impact.

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