A practical recipe for open innovation for the circular economy

Abstract

The article proposes a hybrid approach that combines various design methods to organize and deliver successful open innovation ideation workshops to prototype new circular products and services. Three case studies are presented, including two intra-company collaboration workshops and a creativity and interdisciplinary workshop for students. A well-defined workshop setup structure and tools used are presented to enable practitioners to run similar workshops. The challenges and solutions developed during the case study workshops are summarized, and funding and realization details are provided. The paper emphasizes that the workshops are just the first step towards realizing circular economy solutions and further support and resources are needed to bring the ideas to fruition.