Network sprints: Unlocking the business case

Unlocking the business case: Exploring collaborative strategies to scale circular business models

IN PERSON DATE: LONDON, 9 - 11 SEPTEMBER

Is the business case for your circular business model falling short due to barriers beyond your control? Have you attempted to scale a circular economy solution but faced unmanageable upfront costs, a lack of customer adoption, or economy of scale challenges?

For many companies trying to scale circular business models, the business case often falls short because they lack the resources or investment needed to go it alone. However, businesses could come together to collectively change the market conditions and make the economics work, enabling them to scale.

During this sprint — Unlocking the business case — hosted in London by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, we will support our Network to explore how collaborative strategies could overcome pivotal hurdles in scaling circular business models.

Sprint objectives

• Collaborate with other organisations to identify common barriers and collaborative opportunities for scaling circular business models

• Unpack the types of collaboration that would unlock your business case and identify who you need to engage to accelerate scaling circular solutions

• Develop an understanding of different commercial collaboration archetypes, hear best practice examples from successful approaches, and explore what it could look like in your industry

• Articulate a clearer ‘cost of doing nothing’ argument for your business, and establish a wider group of potential business benefits from scaling new models collaboratively

What will happen at the sprint?

What will I gain from being part of the sprint?

• Sharing challenges with other organisations, from across industries and value chains, facing similar barriers to surface mutual learnings and ideate opportunities for commercially-driven collaboration

• Exploring collaborative strategies to unlock the business case for commercially viable circular economy solutions 

• Tools to help you develop successful collaborations and build stronger partnerships Leave the sprint inspired and equipped to better articulate the value and future impact of commercially-driven collaboration as a tool, with written and visual content to support your narrative

Who should attend from my organisation and what project focus do we need to bring? What level of knowledge and experience is needed to participate?

During this sprint, we aim to unpack the systemic challenges preventing your circular business model from scaling and identify opportunities for collaboration as a mechanism for unlocking the business case. Therefore, to attend, you must have a circular business model or proposition you are currently developing. This may be a project or pilot that has already launched, or a business case for one that failed.

• We require two participants per organisation to attend together. One senior business development or innovation professional, plus one colleague from another relevant function, such as sustainability/circular economy or corporate strategy, should attend 

• An advanced understanding of the circular economy is highly desirable 

• When applying, please share the existing circular proposition or implementation challenge you would like to focus on during the sprint and the main hurdles you have faced or anticipate in trying to scale this solution 

• As this sprint is about inter-organisational and industry collaboration, we are open to and encourage companies to nominate partners (within or outside of the Foundation’s Network) to accompany them on the sprint. 

Who else will be in the room?

This sprint is cross-sector, so a range of industries will be present. It aims to enable different industry clusters to collaborate and develop solutions together. 

How much time is involved? 

The sprint consists of:

• Pre-work: two hours (virtual or offline)

• In-person: 2.5 days (in person in London)

• Follow-up: one hour (virtual)