THE SEMINAR HAS BEEN CANCELLED IN LINE WITH THE RECENT ANNOUNCEMENT OF POLITECNICO DI MILANO

Leena Aarikka-Stenroos
Tampere University, Hervanta Campus, Finland

Abstract:

The circular economy has recently emerged as a major sustainability paradigm, with a focus on improving sustainability of the economic system: the circular economic model aims to reduce the use of natural resources and the generation of waste. To enable circularity in market and society, the material and business flows need to change on system level and not only on the level of individual actors, such as companies, cities or consumer-citizens. Here the ecosystem approach becomes pivotal in turning linear models to circular and to enable resource efficiency and material flows with feed-back loops among diverse actors. Even though ecosystem approach is crucial also in the sustainability and circular economy transition, we have limited – even non-existing – understanding on the circular economy ecosystems. Therefore this paper reviews the notion of the circular economy ecosystem and defines applications of the construct to provide such clarity. Our goal is to provide an encompassing yet parsimonious typology which both places existing scholarship in context, and to develop a framework that can help stimulate cumulative future research. We illustrate our typology with examples both from extant literature and from the field. This knowledge has also pragmatic relevance as it can encourage and advice practitioners, companies and public actors, such as municipalities, and other organizations to organize and re-organize their activities and turn their ecosystems more sustainable. We conclude with implications of our typology and theory of ecosystem intersection for practice and research, and thereby suggest topics for future research and advice for practitioners.

Leena Aarikka-Stenroos is Professor in the field of Industrial Management at the Faculty of Management and Business, Tampere University, Hervanta Campus, Finland. Her expertise is in the technology business.

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