Abstract
The circular economy represents a concrete path toward more sustainable consumption and production modes. It creates value from already existing resources by extending the products’ lifecycle and transforming “waste” into new inputs to be reintroduced in production processes. Shifting from a linear to a circular economic system requires the involvement of both firms and customers. Their joint creation of value through continuous interactions is regarded as co-creation process. The chapter illustrates four case studies of virtuous co-creation practices in “born circular firms”, highlighting key underpinning co-creation mechanisms. In these case studies, customers come to play an active role in closing the loops, highlighting the great potential of co-creation processes in favoring the success of circular firms.
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Notes
- 1.
The circular advantage is the competitive advantage a firm can gain if able to rethink product and services from both the perspective of the value delivered to customers and the alignment of the business model with the circular economy.
- 2.
It should be noted that while the terms “consumers” and “customers” are used quite interchangeably in the literature, here we explicitly refer to customers, to take into account both the B2C and the B2B contexts.
- 3.
Additive manufacturing technologies could compete with traditional manufacturing methods, based on subtractive processes (Paris et al. 2016). The latter involve progressively cutting material away from a block and usually generate higher waste than additive manufacturing processes (Kreiger et al. 2014).
- 4.
A linear business model represents the status quo in most manufacturing industries (Linder and Williander 2017). “Its essence is generally summarized as take – make – dispose. That is, take the resources you need, make the goods to be sold and make profit and dispose of everything you do not need – including a product at the end of its lifecycle” (Sariatli 2017, p. 32).
- 5.
According to the Theory of Diffusion of Innovation (Rogers 1962), the innovators are those 2.5% of individuals willing to be the first to try and adopt an innovation.
- 6.
Entrepreneurial firms are defined as “risk taking, innovative, and proactive” (Covin and Slevin 1991, p. 7). They are usually prone to “take on high-risk projects with chances of very high returns and are bold and aggressive in pursuing opportunities” (ibid, p. 7–8).
- 7.
LifeGate consists of a group of companies engaged in the communication of sustainable economy principles (Zucchella and Urban 2019). The founder of the holding company, Marco Roveda, is a pioneer in bio-agriculture. The holding aims to promote a sustainable world and to place sustainability at the core of every human decision. LifeGate’s mission is the creation of the world’s biggest information and communication network of people, companies, NGOs and institutions, all committed to building a sustainable future (www.lifegate.it).
- 8.
The project Impatto Zero® is aimed at calculating, reducing and compensating the CO2 emitted by all the human activities. To do that, it buys the carbon credits generated through the intervention in favor of ecosystems of forests and the development of projects aimed at obtaining energy efficiency as well as the production of renewable energy (www.lifegate.it).
- 9.
ESO Società Benefit was founded in 1999 to offer a service of waste management and consultancy to Italian firms. ESO is certified EN ISO 9001:2015, EN ISO 14001:2015, BS OHSAS 18001:2007.
- 10.
GreenApes is a certified B-corporation. It is a social network rewarding sustainable actions and ideas (www.greenapes.com).
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We would like to thank the entrepreneurs for sharing with us their “circular stories”. We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments that helped us improve the manuscript.
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Re, B., Magnani, G., Zucchella, A. (2021). The Future of Sustainability: Value Co-creation Processes in the Circular Economy. In: Park, S.H., Gonzalez-Perez, M.A., Floriani, D.E. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Corporate Sustainability in the Digital Era. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42412-1_25
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