Description of the Workshop

Transforming the Economy to become more regenerative, restorative and circular is one of the key drivers for business in the EU as well as for the increasing amount of sustainability-minded citizens. The EU Circular Economy Action Plan, alongside the Green Deal, promotes that all products in the EU need to be developed in a sustainable way. This starts with the design for the circularity of products and services but also looking at circular solutions along the entire Value Chain. Looking into circular solutions should become part of the business development of each Spin-off, and it is important to understand that circularity is a lot more than thinking about recyclability. So, quite often the potential of circularity is not explicitly considered when building the business case.

In this workshop, you will gather an understanding of which business opportunities exist when applying circular thinking. We will look at tools to identify the potential and how looking into the entire circular value chain can show potential to bring your ideas to an application in business. We will open the minds to see what partners along the circular value chain would need and how you can tap into these opportunities. Based on a case study you will learn how you can use the Circular Canvas to identify solutions by applying good practices of circularity.

At the end of the workshop you will:

• Have a good overview of what opportunities for circular business models exist• Know what is required to make your solution more circular• Have experienced working with a powerful tool to activate your team and stakeholders• Get an idea of which steps you can go to further embrace the circular thinking

Guest Lecturer

Andreas Ellenberger is Co-Founder and CEO of Circonnact, an organization focusing on the application of circular economy in urban areas, supporting companies and communities to explore, create and implement regenerative circular solutions.

For more than 20 years he has been delivering changes successfully in small, medium and large companies and organisations. After graduating in Business Administration at the University of Gießen, Germany, he supported and ran projects and programmes and was IT department lead for a financial services group. 12 years ago, he became a certified project management trainer and developed project governance structures for medium-sized companies and business units.

In more than 250 trainings he helped the participants to become well equipped to handle projects and changes with an open mindset and professional methods and tools, always focusing on how to transfer the know-how into the reality of the participants. He organized the collaboration of the Horizon2020 research project Sport Infinity to develop circular sports products and noticed that circular thinking is motivating people to find new innovative solutions and to cooperate. Since 2014 he is actively involved in spreading the ideas of a circular economy, with a focus on how to work in an agile and collaborative way to ensure the implementation is future-proof and based on the contribution of all stakeholders.