Exploring How Usage-Focused Business Models Enable Circular Economy through Digital Technologies

By Gianmarco Bressanelli, Federico Adrodegari, Marco Perona, Nicola Saccani. 2018

548 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Recent studies advocate that digital technologies are key enabling factors for the introduction of servitized business models. At the same time, these technologies support the implementation of the circular economy (CE) paradigm into businesses. Despite this general agreement, the literature still overlooks how digital technologies enable such a CE transition. To fill the gap, this paper develops a conceptual framework, based on the literature and a case study of a company implementing a usage-focused servitized business model in the household appliance industry. This study focuses on the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, and analytics, and identifies eight specific functionalities enabled by such technologies (improving product design, attracting target customers, monitoring and tracking product activity, providing technical support, providing preventive and predictive maintenance, optimizing the product usage, upgrading the product, enhancing renovation and end-of-life activities). By investigating how these functionalities affect three CE value drivers (increasing resource efficiency, extending lifespan, and closing the loop), the conceptual framework developed in this paper advances knowledge about the role of digital technologies as an enabler of the CE within usage-focused business models. Finally, this study shows how digital technologies help overcome the drawback of usage-focused business models for the adoption of CE pointed out by previous literature.

Subfields: Marketing, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/247acf790d1cf72fba6a6b9d4e97cc5bff03b7a7

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Citations in the corpus

The smart circular economy: A digital-enabled circular strategies framework for manufacturing companies (2020, background): “First, on the descriptive level, DTs can trigger a request for repair based on sudden product failure, for instance, through a reactive maintenance scheme (Bressanelli et al., 2018a; Caterpillar, 2020; Rymaszewska et al., 2017).”
Industry 4.0 in Management Studies: A Systematic Literature Review (2018, background): “0 and the theme of sustainability emerges, highlighted by six papers in three journals dealing with this topic (Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues [23,24], Journal of Security and Sustainability Issues [25,26], Sustainability [27,28])—8.”
Industry 4.0 and Sustainability Implications: A Scenario-Based Analysis of the Impacts and Challenges (2018, background): “(ix) Self-control and prediction (allowing predictive maintenance) [35];”
Challenges in supply chain redesign for the Circular Economy: a literature review and a multiple case study (2018, methodology): “…of enablers and favourable conditions may support a CE transition, such as collaboration (Elia, Gnoni, and Tornese 2017), digital technologies (Bressanelli et al. 2018), users’ awareness towards sharing, regulation, financing and the creation of a market for secondary products (Saidani et al.…”
Assessing relations between Circular Economy and Industry 4.0: a systematic literature review (2019, background): “…(i) to develop automated (Antikainen, Uusitalo, and Kivikytö-Reponen 2018) x (Baines 2015) x (Bianchini et al. 2018) x (Bressanelli et al. 2018b) x (Bressanelli et al. 2018a) x (Butzer et al. 2016) x (Chang, Ong, and Nee 2017) x (de Man and Strandhagen 2017) x (Eden 2017) x (Fisher et al. 2018) x…”
The applications of Industry 4.0 technologies in manufacturing context: a systematic literature review (2020, background): “…et al. 2017; Weking et al. 2020) Internet of things Customised and advanced services (Anshari et al. 2018; Ardolino et al. 2018; Ardito et al. 2019; Bressanelli et al. 2018a; Dalenogare et al. 2018; Frank et al. 2019; Kiel, Arnold, and Voigt 2017; Lopes de Sousa Jabbour et al. 2018; Müller 2019;…”
Analyzing Barriers of Circular Food Supply Chains and Proposing Industry 4.0 Solutions (2021, background): “In the CE transition, coping with the growing number of suppliers, customers, and the emerging multi-stakeholder and complex nature of the food supply chain is only possible with effective digital technology tools [17].”
Synergy between Circular Economy and Industry 4.0: A Literature Review (2021, methodology): “[9] Framework This paper develops a conceptual framework, based on literature and a case study of a company, identifying the functionalities of I4.”
Learning from Failure and Success: The Challenges for Circular Economy Implementation in SMEs in an Emerging Economy (2021, background): “From our results, we also confirmed that circular or sustainable products that account for a firm’s negative externalities or have a longer life are usually more expensive, which might deter people from buying the products, as was the case with Company B [23].”