Welcome to the Circular Solution Space. We are a strategic circular design consulting company. We use the Circular Solution Space®, a unique and proven approach, to help your organization determine where it currently stands from a circularity perspective, how it can best move toward being 100% circular and, most importantly, what changes (e.g. in value proposition, product & service design and/or business model) would be needed to make sure that the desired transition to circularity actually happens.
To complement our core circular consulting services, and depending of course on the available capacities in your organization, we can also provide extended services (i.e. design, engineering and academic level research) in support of the process of making new circular ideas become a reality.
The Circular Solution Space® approach is rooted in 30+ years of hands-on expertise in commercial industrial design and the result of 12+ years of academic research on the topic of designing circular product-service combinations tailored to circular business model archetypes.
Empowering your organization and its people
What sets the Circular Solution Space® approach apart from many other circularity consulting approaches and services is that it focuses on empowering your organization and its own people. So you will learn, as a team, how to identify and develop the best circular solutions for your organization with confidence. And enjoy the process. Not just once, but over and over again. For, whatever others might promise, we are convinced that truly becoming 100% circular is a marathon, not a sprint. As such, fostering intrinsic motivation within your organization becomes key to success.
Working together across business disciplines
The Circular Solution Space® approach was developed from the onset to facilitate working together and across business disciplines on circular strategy and product-service solutions. Why? Because we believe that truly circular solutions are designed not just in space (e.g.: What functions, color, materials and size?), but also in time (e.g.: What is the planned lifetime? What happens after one, two, five, ten or even twenty years, when the material product is finally discarded? How do we limit our supply chain risks with shifting geo-political realities? How will rules and regulations change?). As such, circular solutions are strategic by nature and therefore their successful development and implementation require knowledge, experience, support and buy-in from all levels and disciplines within an organization. Think management, marketing, sales, design, engineering, operations, procurement, finance and legal.
Four essential elements
Our approach is comprised of four main building blocks or essential elements. We believe that circular success requires all four to be present in an organization:
1. A shared and solid understanding of the concept of a circular economy and why it is of vital importance for your organization to become (more) circular. Also, of why the approach to sustainability in a circular economy is fundamentally different from that in a linear economy. (Hint: a circular economy is not primarily about recycling.)
2. A shared circular language and terminology. When developing circular solutions together, discussions and exchanges of ideas should be effective. That doesn't mean they can't be fun and inspiring. It just means that no time and energy is wasted on miscommunications. It also means that potential solutions can be formulated accurately as they are presented for evaluation. That way, no valuable ideas are voted out because they got lost in translation.
3. A shared set of circular design and development tools for systematic analysis of existing products and solutions (your own well as those of others) and for systematic generation of new (potentially circular) products and solutions.
4. A method for quantative circularity assessment of existing products and services as well as of new, potentially more circular alternatives. For, if you don't know where you are and where you are coming from, it is hard to determine if you are moving in the right direction.
Together, these four essential elements form a robust framework for making a series of changes to your products, services and processes over time that will ultimately result in your organization becoming as close to 100% circular as it can get.