• Description The primary function of a firm is to convert resources (land, capital, people and knowledge) into goods and services.  They consume natural and technical resources (including energy) to achieve this.  The CE is a resource-based view and therefore it is hard-wired into a firms DNA – once they are helped to realise it.  text goes here

• Description text goes hereFirstly, CE is not anchored in being responsible; it is a resource-based view and thus cannot be picked-up or put down based on fashion, subsidies or economic difficulties.  Recent observations have shown economic instability raises the awareness of the resource-based view for firms (for example COVID has made firms acutely aware of the fine balance they have in their supply chains and their vulnerability to resource-price fluctuations for example). Existing initiatives are also shown as not progressing fast enough exactly because they are an optional ‘bolt-on’ to business as usual; rather than being anchored in everyday resource-based practices.  CE tries to side-step the slow pace being achieved by “less bad” style approaches to regenerate our economies, society and the environment in equal measure (instead of accepting a focussing on one or the other).

• The downside is that CE is a system-level approach to rewiring our current ‘linear’ economy, which is a cognition leap for many people.  The other approaches appear more palatable as they rely (to differing extents) on linear economy business-as-usual.  The shift to a CE requires a systems-level transition and thus careful framing is essential to retain an air of achievability. This is why ‘managing waste’ is often used as a way to begin to explain the concept, but this also leads to misconceptions that CE is just good waste management.

It is not exclusively a firm-led activity; policy, working together with communities of action play an essential part – but neither are able to achieve the change without firms making a lion share of the running, as firms control the flow of and access to key resources.

• Firms need to move swiftly, to retain the momentum crossing the ‘valley-of-death’ to bring their new innovations to market.  These new innovations face a huge challenge – to be profitable in a linear economy whilst being CE focused.  Acceleration provides a route to speed this process up (and thus reduce the costs along the way) and it facilitates fail-fast and pivoting practices that are essential for more radical innovations.

• Firms allocate significant funds to manage, improve and try to optimise their resource-consumption.  Once educated, firms quickly realise a CE approach is very much business as usual, allocating funds to manage circular resources and waste accordingly.