Rethinking the Future
A circular economy seeks to rebuild capital, whether this is financial, manufactured, human, social or natural. This ensures enhanced flows of goods and services. The system diagram illustrates the continuous flow of technical and biological materials through the ‘value circle’.
In order to create value in a circular economy, businesses need to totally rethink their products, business models and customer relationships.
Circular Economy
Today’s economy is a linear model of resource consumption. Companies extract raw materials, manufacture products, sell them to consumers, who then discard them when they’re no longer useful.
As opposed to the linear ‘take-make-waste’ model, in a circular economy companies manage resources as valuable assets. The lifecycle length of products is maximized, utilization optimized and at the end of life of a product all materials are fully reutilized. As a consequence, all waste is eliminated.
Digital Transformation
Organizations that digitize their value chains and core business processes using mobile, Big Data, and advanced analytics technologies will be well positioned for the Circular Economy.
Business Process Innovation - Supply Chains and Logistics Networks will need to be reversed, and also re-engineered as closed loops; new methods will have to be created for designing products and using materials. Advanced manufacturing techniques and systems will need to be designed and implemented.
Business Model Innovation - Products as Services, Next Life Sales, Product Transformation, Recycling 2.0, Collaborative Consumption, and how to monetize these business models.
Enabling Technologies – Embracing the Cloud through collaborative networks for person-to-person, business-to-business (B2B), and the Internet of Things (IoT), will enable the tracking and measurement of all aspects within the value chain accelerating the transition to a Circular Economy.