Circular Economy part 3: How to avoid circular economy innovation theatre

Hi there, my name is Kevin Shahbazi and I'm the Circular Economy Innovation Lead at the Board of Innovation. And today we're going to explain what is Circular Economy Innovation Theatre and how can you overcome it. So Circular Economy Innovation Theatre is much like all the regular innovation theater that's out there. It's innovation that's not impactful, in this case specifically, not impactful in a circular way. And if you're interested in what that means, check out our other video about circular impact. A lot of organizations fall into four common traps that lead to Circular Economy Innovation Theatre, which we believe that you can overcome. The first pitfall of circular economy innovation is vanity metrics. And this is the deliberate choice of certain metrics that are maybe easy to achieve, that don't reveal the full picture of circular economy impact. So for example, if you switch to 5% recycled materials while creating 10% more products overall, your net impact may still be very negative, although from a vanity perspective it may appear as progress. And this can be corrected with a really critical look at what are all the different ways to make circular impact and making sure you're looking across all of the different lifecycle stages and gauging what your impact might be. The second pitfall that we see is this mindset of incrementalism or less harmful. And the reason that that's not good enough is that the circular economy is a really huge untapped opportunity that's been waiting to that, that's waiting to kind of be capitalized on. And it involves a lot of new connections between stakeholders and new business models to fill in gaps and in the market. And those gaps don't get filled with an incremental mindset or a less harmful mindset. And this can really stifle the progress that's needed to make circular impact. The third pitfall which we see is something we call single player innovation. We know that circular economy value chains are involving a lot of different companies and are really complicated. And that's why we really challenge organizations that innovate on their own, deep inside their companies, in an ivory tower. To make real impact, you need to be working with your suppliers, your customers and the customers of your customers, the aftermarket as well, to make sure that value is being created at different stages in a value chain and not just in your own. So pay attention to that and see if you can break this pattern by reaching out to your suppliers and customers and by inviting them to co create with you. And the last and maybe most dangerous pitfall of circular economy innovation is ignorance, and that is ignorance to KPIs and real data and information about how you're performing on circular impact. Many companies have real big gaps in this and maybe at most measure once a year for their annual report and to that extent, maybe not even all of the life cycle. And this can really create inertia and stop commitments to big circular economy and ambitions and also disable evidence based decision making in innovation projects. So there you go. These are the four different pitfalls to circular economy innovation that can lead to innovation theatre. And now that you know you have what you need to start at least being aware of the problem and trying to overcome it, Check out our newsletter if you'd like to learn more about circular economy innovation and how you can create this for your organization. It.