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Circular business model experiments may help firms transition towards a circular economy. Little is known about how the participants of experimentation e entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, innovation managers e develop and test their assumptions during the experimentation process to achieve more circular outcomes. Using a design-science approach, we investigate this process and develop principles to improve it. This is done during three workshops in different contexts: an innovation festival with 14 early-stage circular startups, a workshop with a health technology incumbent, and a workshop with six growth-oriented startups. We find that analyzing their available means e what they find important and prefer to happen (part of their identity), what they know (their skills and knowledge), and whom they know (their social network) e helps to understand how the participants develop and test their assumptions. We show how the mindset and awareness of the participants impact how much attention they pay to the circularity potential of their envisioned circular business models. Based on these insights, we propose a set of principles to prepare the innovation participants for experimentation, and to increase their ability to reflect on their circularity assumptions. Future research is needed to further grow our understanding of the types of principles that can guide meaningful experimentations towards a circular economy. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The intensification of industrial activity within an unsustainable development paradigm caused an alarming environmental crisis intertwined with societal problems on a global scale. Sustainable design theory contains an extensive body of knowledge on how these environmental and societal issues can be addressed by rethinking industrial products, processes and, more broadly, how organizations operate in the context of a more sustainable socio-economic system. Nevertheless, evidence shows that implementing these ideas is a problematic yet under addressed aspect, resulting in a gap between abstract speculations and concrete action. In this study, we focus on this critical gap by looking at how existing theory of sustainable design is implemented in business practice. To this end, we conduct a literature review followed by interviews with twenty international experts, to uncover their knowledge related to relevant project experiences. The outcome is a framework that integrates existing sustainable design theory with important business concepts, clustering it into four literature streams:ecodesign, product service system design, sustainable business model design and collaborative ecosystem design. These streams correspond to four levels of design for sustainable innovation. The framework also encompasses a set of themes related to the implementation of sustainable design theory in business practice across the aforementioned four levels. Based on this, we outline our contributions to theory and practice, and pinpoint recommendations for academic researchers, industrial designers and business managers who want to leverage their professional position to play an active role in the transition toward sustainable development. (c) 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Sustainable business model innovation is about creating superior customer and firm value by addressing societal and environmental needs through the way business is done. Business models require intentional design if they are to deliver aspired sustainability impacts. Scant research has been done on 'ecologies' of different business models in order to understand and improve these and create positive impact on the environment, society, economy and other key stakeholders. Hence, in this paper a novel framework is presented to enable a systemic form of sustainable business model experimentation. The framework is based on the recognition of three key issues which have not yet been sufficiently incorporated in the literature on sustainable business models: construct clarity, boundary setting and uncertainty about outcomes. These concepts are discussed first. Building on earlier work, the resulting framework incorporates potential side-effects and boundary setting based on the concept of an 'ecology of business models'. Second, an approach is proposed that could stimulate more profound forms of sustainable business model innovation: The Ecology of Business Models Experimentation map. Third, the approach is illustrated through two cases. The approach could help minimise symbiotic dependency on less sustainable business models; help destroy unsustainable business models by outcompeting them; and maximise contributions to favourable institutional infrastructures for more sustainable business models. This paper contributes to research on sustainable business model innovation, design and experimentation by providing a potential approach for 'business model ecology redesign'. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Next to the redesign of industrial products and processes, sustainable business model innovation is a strategic approach to integrate environmental and social concerns into the objectives and operations of organizations. One of the major challenges of this approach is that many promising business model ideas fail to reach the market, which is needed to achieve impact. In the literature, the issue is referred to as a "design-implementation gap." This paper explores how that critical gap may be bridged. In doing so, we contribute to sustainable business model innovation theory and practice. We contribute to theory by connecting sustainable business model innovation with business experimentation and strategic design, two innovation approaches that leverage prototyping as a way to iteratively implement business ideas early on. Using a design science research methodology, we combine theoretical insights from these three literatures into a tool for setting up small-scale pilots of sustainable business models. We apply, evaluate, and improve our tool through a rigorous process by working with nine startups and one multinational company. As a result, we provide normative theory in terms of the sustainable business model innovation process, explaining that piloting a prototype forces organizations to simultaneously consider the desirability (i.e., what users want), feasibility (i.e., what is technically achievable), viability (i.e., what is financially possible), and sustainability (i.e., what is economically, socially and environmentally acceptable) of a new business model. Doing so early on is functional to bridge the design-implementation gap of sustainable business models. We contribute to practice with the tool itself, which organizations can use to translate sustainable business model ideas defined "on paper" into small-scale pilots as a first implementation step. We encourage future research building on the limitations of this exploratory study by working with a larger sample of companies through longitudinal case studies, to further explain how these pilots can be executed successfully. (C) 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

In the past decades, industrial design practice and research have focused extensively on how to optimize production and consumption, as a way to prevent negative environmental impacts, such as resource depletion, pollution, and excessive waste. Recently, the &ldquo, circular economy&rdquo, concept is increasingly used to achieve environmental benefits and economic growth simultaneously. Industrial design can contribute to a circular economy by fostering systems changes to achieve durability, optimal reuse, refurbishment, remanufacturing, and recycling of products and materials. Indeed, researchers have examined both the theoretical and practical aspects of how design knowledge can support the transition to a circular economy. However, this body of knowledge has not been systematically analyzed yet. To address this critical gap, this paper poses the following question: How has industrial design research so far contributed to advancing the circular economy knowledge? Accordingly, we survey relevant design literature focusing on the circular economy, through a review of contributions published in 42 scientific journals. Based on our results, we discuss how industrial design practices can potentially contribute to a circular economy across four thematic areas: (1) design for circular production processes, (2) design for circular consumption, (3) design to support policy towards the circular economy, and (4) design education for the circular economy.

Concerns about the societal and environmental impact of how companies operate have generated increasing interest in more sustainable ways of doing business (Porter & Kramer, 2011). Research and practice from the past decade show that a Sustainable Business Model Innovation lens is suitable to embed sustainability into firms’ objectives and operations (Bocken et al., 2014; Schaltegger, Lüdeke-Freund, & Hansen, 2012). Consequently, Sustainable Business Model Innovation has been emerging rapidly as a research field (Lüdeke-Freund & Dembek, 2017). Recent developments in this field build upon seminal work on Design for Sustainability from the past two decades to establish a connection with Strategic Design (Baldassarre et al., 2019; Geissdoerfer et al., 2016; Manzini, 1999; Tukker, 2004). Strategic Design is a research stream that studies how to leverage the discipline of Design in the context of Strategy and Innovation Management (Calabretta et al., 2016; Karpen, Gemser, & Calabretta, 2017). More specifically, it focuses on the application of design practices, principles and methods to the formulation and implementation of innovation strategies that benefit people and organizations alike (Calabretta et al., 2016). The connection between Sustainable Business Model Innovation and Strategic Design is mainly supported by the argument that the strategic and experimental nature of design enables the integration of stakeholders’ objectives including sustainability concerns, while also providing the process dimension needed to move away from theory towards concrete practice and tangible impact (Baldassarre et al., 2017; Bocken, Schuit, & Kraaijenhagen, 2018). However, research on the role and contribution of Strategic Design to Sustainable Business Modeling is still in its infancy. Consequently, within this track of the 2019 edition of the Academy for Design Innovation Management Conference, we collected four research contributions at the intersection between Strategic Design and Sustainable Business Model Innovation. These contributions are summarized in the paragraphs below, followed by a reflection on all of them and potential directions for future research.

Design for Sustainable Development refers to the application of a design process to solve a problem related to sustainability, such as creating a pair of shoes that can be recycled or managing waste collection in a large city. Since the origins of this concept in the 1960s, Design for Sustainable Development has been evolving, gradually broadening its scope over time from the design of products to the design of services, business models and wider ecosystems. In this evolution, designers have come closer and closer to business problems, thus becoming more strategic. In this paper, we explore this evolution from a business perspective. We visualize it into a framework and interview eight academic experts about the Strategic role of Designers for Sustainable Development. We find that the evolution can be framed around five topics: the strategic goal of designers, and their related perspective, language, key activities and main challenge. After discussing how the evolution took place around each topic, we draw implications for designers and managers who are willing to play an active role in the transition towards sustainable development.

Circular oriented innovation aims to address sustainability problems such as resource scarcity, pollution and climate change by (re)designing industrial products, processes, business models, and value network configurations. Although the literature identifies collaboration as crucial for circular oriented innovation—due to the complexity, risk and uncertainties involved—few tools have been developed to support it. To address this gap, we develop and test a tool that helps companies ideate to identify partners and value within circular oriented innovation. The tool integrates decision-making principles from the entrepreneurship theory of effectuation within a design thinking approach to stimulate collaborative ideation of circular propositions. We demonstrate and test the tool through six workshops, and collect data via observations, field-notes, assessment forms and user discussions. Our results show that: 1) users are receptive to visualisation and effectuation-based questions to collaboratively ideate circular propositions; 2) expert facilitation helps to maintain a circularity focus to avoid ‘business-as-usual’ ideas; and 3) differences in the maturity and scope of projects may influence the usefulness of the tool. We contribute to theory by demonstrating the integration of effectuation, design thinking, and lean experimentation approaches into a tool to advance circular oriented innovation. We contribute to practice with the tool itself that supports early and quick ideation to identify partners and perceived value. This supports companies to collaborate and advance the design of circular propositions that bring circular business model ideas closer to implementation.

Industrial Symbiosis (IS) is a collective approach to competitive advantage in which separate industries create a cooperative network to exchange materials, energy, water and/or by-products. By addressing issues related to resource depletion, waste management and pollution, IS plays an important role in the transition towards sustainable development. In the literature, two conceptual perspectives on IS can be identified: the Industrial Ecology (IE) and the Circular Economy (CE) perspective. Despite the recognition of these two perspectives, their relationship remains unclear and explicit attempts to develop an integrated perspective have not been made yet. Consequently, the goal of this research is to highlight and start addressing this critical gap of knowledge in order to support future research and practice geared towards the design of new IS clusters. We pose the following research question: How can the IE and CE perspectives on IS be combined in order to support the design of IS clusters? To this end, we first investigate the two perspectives more in depth and compare them in terms of nature, features and relevance for the study of IS. This is done by applying them as conceptual lenses for the analysis of the same case study, an existing IS cluster. The comparative analysis provides insights into how the two perspectives differ, ultimately demonstrating that they are complimentary and both necessary to fully describe an IS cluster. While the CE perspective is more suitable to explain how a cluster functions from a business standpoint in the operating phase, the IE perspective is more suitable to explain its development over time and its impacts on the environment, the economy and society. Building upon the outcomes of the comparative analysis, we leverage on the discipline of Strategic Design and integrate the two perspectives into a process for designing new IS clusters. We suggest two directions for future research. First, improving our comparative analysis of the two perspectives by looking at a wider sample of IS clusters of different sizes and in different contexts. Second, focusing with more specificity on the issue of how IS clusters can be designed, potentially by trying to apply the process we propose on a real case aimed at designing a new IS cluster.

With an increasing population, a growing middle class and increased resource use, our current ways of living and doing business are unsustainable. Next to the implementation of innovative technology, sustainable development based on innovative business models, better understating of customer needs and behavioural change are crucial. This research aims at combining principles from both sustainable business model innovation and user-driven innovation to develop more successful, radical and user-centred sustainable value propositions. Sustainable business model innovation entails developing value propositions that create value for multiple stakeholders at the same time, including customers, shareholders, suppliers and partners as well as the environment and society. User-driven innovation allows developing solutions that are meaningful for people and profitable for business by involving potential customers, users and/or other stakeholders in an experimental and iterative design process. The study adopts a research through design methodology, a qualitative research approach that uses design practice to inform research. To this end, a design project in the framework of the Climate-KIC (the largest European partnership addressing the challenge of climate change) was investigated. As a result, this paper proposes a process for sustainable value proposition design which adopts a thorough, dynamic and iterative perspective (talking to stakeholders, thinking about the problem, testing the product/service) that leads to an actual sustainable value proposition and to a superior problem-solution fit. In practice, managers are provided with an initial methodological framework for mapping and understanding the stakeholders in a broad sense (including and especially users), identifying their needs and interests, and progressively combining them into a more meaningful and enriching value proposition.