- Companies face a rapidly increasing challenge, and opportunity, to grow their businesses and create value amidst volatile and scarce supply of natural resources and environmental concerns, driving up prices and uncertainty.
- Circular Economy – an alternative model decoupling growth from scarce resource use – provides the key to managing this challenge at both the macro and micro level, allowing economic development within natural resource limits and allowing companies to innovate to enable customers and users to do ‘more with less’.
- Accenture’s client experience and research show leading global companies are following the lead of innovative smaller enterprises, applying the circular economy as a framework for growth and innovation towards ‘Circular Advantage’ in what our research shows is already a trillion dollar plus prize.
- Five circular business models (Circular Supplies, Resource Recovery, Product Life Extension, Sharing Platforms and Product as a Service) and ten technologies—in particular ‘digital’ in the form of social media, cloud computing, analytics and mobility—are enabling speed and scale in ways not seen before.
- These business models and technologies are making possible a fundamentally ‘customer-centric’ approach to Circular Advantage beyond simply efficiency gains which require a new mindset amongst executives and a new set of capabilities at the intersection of strategy, technology and operations.
- To understand and capture the full business opportunity of Circular Economy, top executives need to ask themselves tough questions on the opportunity, value, capabilities, technology and timing of their investments on the journey to Circular Advantage.
