**4. From volumes and profits to value and impact measurement**

Nowadays, business models focus on sales, while cost reduction and the integration of more extended use or the reuse of products are not the drivers of business [13]. It is necessary to embrace a new mindset and generate value differently. (repeated from the abstract) It is possible to operate commercially but not oriented toward maximizing profits but toward creating value for the ecosystem and society. It will require a high commitment to reduce negative externalities and create positive externalities (especially in R&D and training and education).

As previously mentioned, there are three key components that any circular business model should ideally have. These components are:

• to engage in a preliminary form of circular value creation. To include one or more ways to close, slow, or narrow resource loops;


These three values reduce the uncertainty approaching circularity accordingly to design strategies and support the communication between the team members.

#### **4.1 Value creation and impact assessment: the design role**

Circular design is a philosophy extensively used nowadays and widely acknowledged as the development paradigm still to be followed. Circular Design cannot be regarded just as an environmental statement to the extent that closely related are economic and social issues.

A change of mindset and behavior is fundamental. In what concerns the consumption patterns that are implied in what is still today understood as a quality of life, if circularity is to be attained [14].

For generators of design constraints, it is the user that is the ultimate carrier of uncertainty, and the user can delay the adoption of innovations carried to the market within the circular economy. James Woudhuysen [15] discusses that it is needed to distinguish between the user's subjective perception of change before it becomes a reality and its implementation.

Nevertheless, the success of design solutions breakthroughs does not directly depend on users' perceptions of change, but on its acceptance when it is massively distributed. On the other hand, inciting Lord Keynes in Cities for a Small Planet, Richard Rogers [16] brings up the argument that it is much easier to introduce a radically new idea, rather than to exempt from an old one.

This argument is, however, sometimes counteracted by that in which it is believed that users accept new ideas but need some continuity to push them softly to change. This way, radical or disruptive discontinuity makes things difficult or impossible to implement. Whatever the prevalent idea is, and from a design point of view, this resistance to change creates a momentum to identify the future windows of opportunities and to simulate usability contexts that may shed some light on the reaction to a given innovation — the circular approach at a product, value proposition, or at business model levels.

Design for circularity is necessarily subjective because it reflects human value the relative importance stakeholders assign to the activity to be sustained— to the perceived benefits of that activity, and to other values "traded-off" to sustain the activity in question [1]. Additionally, the fact that circular economy is a long-term issue and that the effects of noncircular behavior are often delayed in time, companies tend to focus their effort on near-term issues and avoid problems that are not imminent. However, many companies are becoming increasingly conscious of the need to change their practices.

In fact, the environmental strategies of companies have been evolving. The first strategies to be introduced were of a compliance nature, that is. strictly related to environmental regulation and pollution control, and were therefore process-oriented. To assess compliance, these strategies make use of tools such as energy and environmental audits. Improved strategies arise with extended environmental consciousness and product responsibility, introducing lifecycle thinking.

The focus of these strategies is on products/services and the minimization of the environmental impact throughout their lifecycle, that is. from material extraction to final product disposal, passing the use stage. LCA is an assessment tool of the environmental performance of the product or service that accounts for all the relevant flows of energy and materials [2].

Design for sustainability emerges in this strategic context as a lifecycle thinking design approach in which the design goals are those of minimizing the consumption of resources, decarbonization, and facilitating the disposal of the product at its endof-life, ideally with excellent prospects for reuse and recycle.

Finally, it is necessary to mention that the most recent and holistic environmental strategies are those based on industrial ecology. These strategies are aimed at closing loops in industrial ecosystems, namely by promoting the exchange of wastes across industrial sectors and energy cascading utilization and are therefore system-oriented.

When designing for sustainability, a large number of actors may be involved in the process, and that will imply a mutual understanding of problems and the identification of common interests and possible synergies, the mutual exploration of different solutions and finally, defining and fine-tuning a common objective. In the process, opportunities for innovating, while delivering more environmentally responsible products, are most likely to occur.

#### **4.2 Circular design implementation strategies**

Design, among other fields, is feeling pressure to adapt to goal on the European Green Deal. It aims climate neutrality by 2050 and includes [17–19] zero pollution, affordable and secure energy, smarter transport, and high-quality food. It provides a roadmap with actions that are relevant to the product value chain and its supply chain:

*Circular Systems Design: Seeking Outgrowth Based on Disruption DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.111439*

#### **Table 1.** *Design strategies to increase product circularity.*


Over the last few years, the focus has been in the effort to reduce material losses and bring materials back into new material loops. European countries have been successful recovering materials from industrial residues and reintegrating them in the production process, and at the end of the product life, bringing materials back into the loop through, for example. Waste collection systems and treatment facilities. But recycling and waste management are insufficient to reach those goals. The development of tangent cycles is required in the design of circular products, to manage the products and the material in a new approach and evolve in the direction of dematerialization.

The conventional cycles refer to dismantling end-of-life products and sort them into single materials, which are used as raw materials for new products. The inner cycles refer to different strategies to retain value by extending the lifetime of the actual product. And only after cycle longer in the economy they return to their material basics functions.

These endurance cycles are shorter than the conventional loops and are achieved through repair, reuse, and remanufacturing design strategies (**Table 1**). Design for refurbishing or remanufacturing strategies also set up shorter loops allowing designers to create a loop back to the production stage, keeping the value and functionality of the products in circular savings for longer.

In **Table 1**, the relation between the several cycles is represented and based on this scheme; several circular business model archetypes can be explored as bringing to a design solution. Short loops, as in the design for repair strategy, can quickly return to the use phase. Slightly longer loops such as in the design for repair strategy can extend product lifetime. And the long loop either retains value in the loop for longer through the durability of the design solution (which is presumed as a basic request of circularity) or by design for reuse strategy where the same product goes back to other stakeholders of the value chain several times during its lifecycle. For example, a washing machine can be designed to be repaired or lent to optimize its life while in the" use" stage of the value chain. A water bottle, which is refilled by the user, is also a strategy to prolong the use of the product. But if the user goes to the retailer to fill the water bottle is a new loop. Reuse loops are often avoided due to the complexity of partner management and logistics, but with the digitalization of the industry, that complexity can be overcome.
