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Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulations require that producers organize and pay for treatment and recycling of waste arising from their products at end of life. EPR has been effective in implementing some aspects of circular economy. In Europe, 35% of e-waste and 65% of packaging waste have already been recycled (or reused in some cases). This article analyzes the challenges of implementing EPR and provides useful insights for what has worked well and what challenges remain. Identifying and addressing these challenges will be crucial for framing legislation that will move industry and society toward a more circular economy.

This article presents an in-depth case study detailing the history, experiences, and wider practitioner and policy lessons from a circular economy business model over a 30-year period, highlighting the successes, difficulties, and conflicts of adopting a circular economy model. The case is based on interviews, key documents, and customer insight. The findings demonstrate how sustained circular economy business practices can deliver significant new revenues, resource productivity, and business continuity benefits, but also require managers and practitioners to develop competencies and capabilities, such as balancing linear and circular systems, to address complex and highly dynamic factors, including rapid technological shifts and market volatility.

This article applies the Biosphere Rules--a biomimicry-inspired management framework for circular economy initiatives--to the emerging field of additive manufacturing and three-dimensional (3D) Printing, which are revolutionizing industrial sectors from medical devices to spare parts. They are also potentially keys in the emergence of a true circular economy that will bring about environmentally sustainable manufacturing. This article lays out an established strategy that can guide managers and policy makers in pursuit of a cradle-to-cradle economy.

Three-dimensional (3D) printing has been widely identified as an emerging disruptive technology. This study examines how this technology could enable the circular economy by disrupting the existing materials value chain. Specifically, could this novel technology be used to locally manufacture new goods from local sources of recycled plastic waste, thereby offering benefits for the efficiency and effectiveness of materials cycling? This article uses the London metropolitan area--where system conditions already exist in the form of material flows, technology policy, and facilities--in order to assess 3D printing's viability as an enabler of a circular economy at the local level. An analysis of stakeholder perceptions identifies economic, technological, social, organizational, and regulatory barriers to mainstream implementation, and their likelihood of being overcome.

This article explores how to get companies engaged in value-creating cooperation regarding residual materials. Within different contexts, industrial ecology needs matchmakers who act as network orchestrators to facilitate new forms of interorganizational cooperation on what were previously perceived as "junk materials." Three case studies of eco-industrial networks in Denmark (Kalundborg), Canada (the Québec region), and France (Dunkirk) demonstrate the various roles of the matchmakers to ensure the implementation of industrial ecology at the interorganizational level. This article highlights four strategic activities for matchmakers: revealing value in industrial ecology, generating trust, activating industrial ecology, and institutionalizing industrial ecology.

China's moves to introduce a Circular Economy have attracted wide attention as a solution to severe problems of resource inefficiency and lack of resource productivity. This article highlights the distinctive strategy of focusing such efforts on existing industrial parks, turning them into eco-industrial parks. It provides three case studies and highlights the management issues involved as overcoming reverse salients and capturing network advantages. China is an especially instructive case because it starts well behind the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries and thereby has much to gain by adopting comprehensive policies.

To understand how managers can better provide the development that up-and-coming talent need, researchers at Gartner surveyed 7,300 employees and managers and interviewed and surveyed hundreds of HR executives. From this work they identified four coaching profiles-- Teacher Managers, Always-On Managers, Connector Managers, and Cheerleader Managers--and assessed their impact on performance. Surprisingly, time spent on employee development seems not to matter; it's more about quality (and in fact, hypervigilant Always-On Managers often do more harm than good). The clear winner: Connectors, whose employees are three times likelier to be high performers than are subordinates of the other types. These managers give targeted feedback in their area of expertise, but when necessary they connect their employees to others with experience in the desired skills. Encouraging managers to adopt Connector behaviors may require a shift in mindset; managers should focus less on the frequency of developmental conversations and more on depth and quality. They should open up development conversations to the team and encourage subordinates to connect with colleagues across the organization.

Does a nip or two of the hard stuff help you get ideas flowing? That's a claim that many people, including artists and writers, have made. Now a new study has produced evidence to back it up.

At a time when many traditional retailers are closing their physical stores, digitally native vertical brands such as Bonobos, which specializes in men's apparel, and Warby Parker, which specializes in eyeglasses, are aggressively expanding into offline locations. In this article, the authors explore two related trends: (1) the expansion of online-first retailers into offline stores that "supercharge"customer value and (2) the transformation of stores run by traditional, offline-first retailers from fulfillment-dominant centers into experience-dominant centers. As authors David R. Bell, Santiago Gallino, and Antonio Moreno note, as digitally native vertical brands have learned to build relationships with customers, traditional retailers have been reducing their store sizes and inventories and are attempting to improve and elevate the customer experience. "Showroom experiences," they write, "create better customers." When customers are exposed to the brand in a showroom, "they are better able to resolve any uncertainty about the nondigital attributes of the retailer's product."Similarly, the authors say, "showrooms create better retailers: When customers are physically present in the retail environment, observation of their behaviors can lead to meaningful insights." The authors developed their early insights into what customers value while working closely with Bonobos and Warby Parker. Through simulations, they saw that stores with smaller footprints and a higher level of service led to better results economically -improved margins, smoother logistics, and better control of inventory. They found that, rather than being dead, physical retail stores were very much alive with a profound shift in focus -from fulfillment to experience-oriented environments. The authors conclude that online-first retailers and traditional retailers have something to learn from each other.

New emotion-sensing technologies can help employees make better decisions, improve concentration, alleviate stress, and adopt healthier and more productive work styles. But companies must address important privacy issues.

Today's retailers need to adopt a data-driven view -with the goal of understanding how website features and advances in AI will affect consumer behavior.

It's common practice to develop a handful of strategic priorities to focus strategy -but formulated correctly, they're also useful communication tools for both internal and external stakeholders. Clear, credible priorities linked to explicit metrics offer a framework for assessing progress toward the company's goals, in a way that abstractions like vision or mission cannot.

As the effects of climate change become more prominent, business needs to grapple with its own attitudes toward government. A more destructive physical environment requires a more nuanced relationship in which government is viewed as a partner in enabling and supporting markets rather than as a regulator that needs to be managed.

Most CEOs have detailed long-term plans, which are often closely held secrets out of concern that competitive advantage may be undermined by detailed disclosure. Yet disclosing a long-term plan provides an opportunity to identify financially material sustainability issues and demonstrate how the company manages business-critical issues -information that's valuable to investors.

Meeting the recommendations for disclosure put forth by the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures might seem like a tough job. But if the oil & gas industry is any example, it's not as difficult as some might imagine -and there are excellent reasons for corporate boards to consider it.

As sexy as it is to speculate about new technologies such as AI, robots, and the internet of things, the focus on technology can steer the conversation in a dangerous direction. Because when it comes to digital transformation, digital is not the answer. Transformation is. In various industries, including banking, paint, and shipbuilding, digital leaders are finding that technology's value comes from doing business differently because technology makes it possible.

New studies show that companies can derive significant value from free digital goods such as open source software, especially when they pay their own employees to contribute to their creation -even if these assets become available to competitors.

"Investments in scale used to make a lot of sense,"argues author Hemant Taneja. They supported the development of cars, airplanes, radio, and television, and built out the electric grid and telephone system. But with the emergence of mobile, social, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence in recent years, Taneja argues that business logic has shifted toward what he describes as "the economics of unscale,"which allows for mass customization for increasingly narrow markets. Because companies can stay nimble and focused by easily and instantly renting scale, they can adjust quickly to changing demand and conditions with little cost and relatively little effort. According to Taneja, large corporations are taking note. Traditionally, Procter & Gamble Co. invented most of its new products in-house. But in recent years it has started to tap into ideas from outside inventors who submit ideas via the internet. Other large companies, including General Electric Co. and Walmart Stores Inc., are tapping into new, unscaled businesses as well. Taneja presents three recommendations to large companies seeking to remain relevant. His first recommendation is to become a platform. Operating a platform can be enormously profitable because the companies that operate on the platforms come to depend on them for their success. The author's second recommendation is to instill a product focus. Big companies, he argues, get sidetracked on issues that have little to do with making great products. But in an unscaled era, this can create openings for focused small competitors. His third recommendation is to find growth opportunities through what he calls "dynamic rebundling."The winners in the unscaled economy, he writes, "make every customer feel like a market of one."Products and services that are tailored to individuals will often have an advantage over mass-market products and services, Taneja says.

Considering the increasing pace of technological change and volatility in many industries, the need for corporate transformation is rising. Unfortunately, the chance of successfully achieving it is falling.

Launching a peer-to-peer knowledge-sharing platform is not easy. Online support forums have two distinct segments: those who seek product support, and those who provide it. Knowledge seekers are hesitant to ask questions if knowledge contributors are few and far between, and knowledge contributors will not sign up if there are not enough problems to solve. It is a classic chicken or egg challenge that can be effectively addressed by seeding the platform with expert knowledge.