Outi Kettunen

Sustainable Supply Chain Management in a Circular Economy—Towards Supply Circles

In the last few years, the circular economy has attracted increasing attention as a way to overcome the problems of the current production and consumption model based on continuous growth and increasing resource throughput. A circular economy is an industrial system that is restorative or regenerative by intention and design. Although supply chains are the key unit of action in the change towards a circular economy, the academic literature on supply chain management approaches in a circular economy is very much in its infancy. However, two distinct literature streams, namely sustainable supply chain management and product service systems, seem to offer valuable insights into the investigation of supply chain management in a circular economy. The aim of this paper is to analyse the main characteristics and challenges of supply chain management in a circular economy and identify how these two literature streams can contribute to researching it.

Mapping Multidimensional Value(s) for Co-creation Networks in a Circular Economy

The transition towards a circular economy cannot be achieved if individual organizations advance their own interests independently. Companies need to build new collaborative networks for value co-creation. Therefore, identification of what kind of value will be created or destroyed for different partners in the networks is critical. In this paper, we propose a framework for mapping multidimensional value in co-creation networks by combining streams of literature on three topics: (1) Circular Economy, (2) Co-Creation and Collaborative networks, (3) Sustainable value creation. The specific contribution of the framework is that it recognizes that the value created in different parts of networks is linked, and the change of value in one link influences others. Moreover, the approach of the paper adds the dimension of circularity into analyses of value creation.

Exploring Disruptive Business Model Innovation for the Circular Economy

Recently the concept of the Circular Economy (CE) has attracted growing interest as a novel economic model aiming to foster sustainable economic growth, boost global competitiveness, and generate new jobs. A system-wide disruptive innovation shaping new ecosystems and changing the whole process of value creation is needed to tackle the current challenges and transformation to the CE. This paper asks how disruptive business model innovations work as a change mechanism for the CE. The paper develops a conceptual framework for shaping the industrial systems towards CE ecosystems and proposes how value circles and co-creation of value with a variety of partners are crucial aspects in enabling CE. The paper highlights that the concept of value circles would be beneficial in clarifying the difference to linear value chain models and the co-existence of several overlapping value circles.

Life Cycle Cost Calculations as the Means for Value Communication in Networks

Financial benefits of products and services during the whole life cycle can be challenging to communicate to different stakeholders in industrial networks. To support the decision-making processes, the supplier and its network partners should discuss with the buyers the pros and cons achieved by their products and services and transform those into monetary values. There is a need for tools to facilitate the communication in the network. The aim of this chapter is to describe how product service suppliers and their network partners can support their customers by providing information about life cycle costs with the help of a LCC tool. The chapter describes the role of a LCC tool in a network, related background theory, LCC calculation process, and a case example.

Circular Economy Business Model Innovation Process – Case Study

The concept of the Circular Economy has recently caught the attention of academia as well and businesses and decision makers offering an attractive solution for an environmentally sustainable economic growth. Companies need to consider how to close material loops, reduce the resources needed and think more about how materials and products are kept in the loop as long as possible. In order to do that, companies need to find new collaboration partners and reconsider the value offered for stakeholders. To solve that, we need new or modified innovation tools and processes to guide businesses in their innovation journey resulting in novel business models in a circular economy. Thus, the aim of this study is to increase our understanding of the circular business model innovation process. Our main focus is to explore what kind of mixed methods create value in circular business model innovation and what kind of challenges there are related to each method and how is it possible to overcome those challenges. The paper highlights the importance of involving different perspectives, stakeholders and using mixed methods during the innovation process.

Life Cycle Cost Calculations Supporting Service Offering; Case Study of Air Conditioning Systems

The benefits of services, in terms of life cycle cost, can be challenging to prove to a customer making service purchase decisions. To support the buyers’ decision-making, the service provider can highlight all the benefits achieved by services and compare those to the service costs. In this paper, we will describe a practical case study the aim of which was to develop a method and a tool for estimating life cycle costs with or without service. The case company is Chiller Ltd. which is the largest manufacturer of air conditioning equipment in Finland.

Forecasting impact of technology developed in R&D projects: The FITMAN approach

A typical two-or three-year research project has an impact that is only really visible after the project has come to an end, at a time when there are no resources to monitor that impact. As a consequence, projects need to estimate/predict their future impact before they end. In this paper we describe the impact activity monitoring method in the FITMAN project. This method addresses the problem by accounting for actions to raise impact during a project and the planning for such actions after a project has ended. We also describe the socio-economic impact assessment methodology created in FITMAN, showing how this links to the impact activity monitoring method. Key to both is the assessment and monitoring of impact in three different areas: industry, society and the scientific community. Each area represents different challenges and we discuss their relative value to the overall assessment. We also report on our early experiences of applying this to ten industry-led use case trials in the FITMAN project. The insights gained by applying these methodologies can be more widely applied across domains related to technology management.

Assessing benefits and impact creation in IST research projects

This paper describes novel methodologies for assessing benefits and impact creation in IST related research projects. The paper first includes a Verification & Validation (V&V) method developed for evaluating of Future Internet software components implementation in a multi-sectorial environment. The proposed approach is based on best of breed V&V methodologies characterized by a structured assessment of the software quality at different levels and a reduced set of business indicators able to evaluate the business impact of the integrated solution. All of these are deployed via a configurable V&V Package based on a web interface. Second it includes a methodology for maximising post project impact creating through activity monitoring. The method used is based on impact waves and success tree approaches. Examples are given of practical implementation in the EU FP7, FI-PPP Project FITMAN. At the end of the paper the practical experiences and lessons learned from our work are also described.