Cir­cu­lar Eco­nomy – Busi­ness mod­els for the 21st Cen­tury

Course content

The objective of the course is to give the student a deeper understanding of the why, the what, and the how of circular economy.

Our economy is linear and based on a logic of take-make-waste, which causes the Earth Overshoot Day earlier and earlier each year. These production and consumption patterns lead to increasing depletion of natural capital, massive biodiversity loss, and climate change through use of fossil fuel energy and unhealthy exploitation of raw material resources. These are all challenges that are just recently acknowledged as market failures of the neo-classical growth economy, which lack inclusion of impact and cost of fossil fuel energy input and use of natural capital in production and consumption.

As opposed to the neo-classical growth economy, the circular economy is an economic system that is: regenerative and restorative by design, powered by renewable energy, minimizes leakages to incineration and landfills, and keeps the resources at highest possible value at all times. Thereby, the circular economy holds the possibility to relieve the pressure on natural capital reserves and progressively decouple economic growth and development from consumption of finite resources, and thus avoid biodiversity loss and climate change.

The course starts with an introduction to the global challenges that are caused by our current linear economy (the why), before going through theoretical foundations, principles and models of a circular economy (the what). The theoretical foundation is then applied to product, business and system level and emphasizes how these three interact and depend on each other (the how). Importantly, circular economy business includes different business models, the role of the consumer, competitive possibilities and businesses interaction and codependence with cities. As the circular economy demands cross-sectoral collaboration and has a higher complexity than linear business models and supply chains, the how on a systems level covers strategic management collaboration and systemic change, hereunder systems transformation, ecosystem innovation, and global value chains. Lastly, the course gives an introduction to how circularity can be measured on all three levels and closes off with a brief introduction and assessment of the criticisms against the circular economy.  

Key topics for circular economy – business models for the 21stcentury:

• The theoretical foundations of the circular economy
• Design for circularity
• Business model design strategies for a circular economy
• Product, service, and business process innovation for circular economy
• Transition in socio-technical systems and processes
• Multi-stakeholder network collaboration supporting circular economy
• The role of incumbent industries and inertia – lock-in and unlocking markets
• The role of cities and citizens for circular businesses
• How to measure circularity, both on product, business, and systemic level