ABSTRACT
The circular economy (CE) has become a prominent concept to drive sustainability transitions in business. In the CE, resource loops are narrowed, closed and slowed to deliver on the increasing demands of a growing world population. This chapter introduces the types of innovation in a CE. Trough case analysis, it describes the companies’ experimentation practices with circular business models. The CE requires innovations at the process, value chain, product, business model (BM) and ecosystem level. Business experimentation has gained foothold in the start-up and incumbent business sphere and academic literature and, recently, the sustainability sphere. Experimentation has been described as a process to learn about future BMs and co-create them in practice. The chapter explains two approaches to experimentation in business: Lean Startup and effectuation. The Lean Startup is a possible approach to experimentation which gained popularity in business practice. It involves validated quantitative and qualitative learning starting with a hypothesis about the future process.
