Circular entrepreneurship: A business model perspective

Abstract

The circular economy, which takes inspiration from the ‘waste not’ functioning of the ecosystem to propose more resource efficient production and consumption patterns, has attracted the interest of different stakeholders recently. Yet very little is known about the companies that put circular principles at the heart of doing business and their ecological and social sustainability outcomes. Circular entrepreneurship, conceptualised as the processes of exploration and exploitation of opportunities in the circular economy domain, is just emerging in the circular economy literature and the empirical evidence about how it is implemented through innovative business models is still limited. Our research illustrates and describes the entrepreneurial process and orientation from a business model perspective of a circular firm - Wasted Apple - in the British drinks and beverage industry. We find that entrepreneurial value proposition, value creation and delivery and value capture define our case circular business model. Entrepreneurial orientation is also characterised by embeddedness: being entrepreneurial in the circular economy means to create value for the broader system an organisation is part of. Furthermore, the pursuit of ecological and social value is central to the logic of value creation and typifies the entrepreneurial process.