The Circular Economy Trio: Business, Policy and Design

Interreg Europe`s Design Collaboration for Sustainable Business (DeCo) project has brought together organisations, companies and universities from seven countries: Belgium, Finland, Spain, Greece, Poland, Croatia and Czechia. In this text, we will share the key insights and best practices from DeCo’s Round table discussions across regions.

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In March 2025, DeCo’s topic focused on how public sector and design practices could support the private sector in circular business transformation. In the round table session with partners and stakeholders. The expert introduction to the topic was given by Eero Jalava from Sitra, introducing successful examples of public and private sector collaboration such as Finnish Circular Economy Roadmap, Circular solutions for nature Handbook for Business and The World Circular Economy Forum.

The main insights from the round table discussions include the need to target funding and legislation, to build the business cases, to facilitate collaboration networks for circularity, and to develop critical capabilities. In short, when policies, business and design are aligned towards the same goal, companies can move forward faster.

3 ways to boost circular transformation

Support SMEs with targeted Funding and Policies

Many SMEs lack internal capacity and capabilities in jumping to circular business development. Currently many companies need help in finding funding and navigating through complex legislation and policies. Funding is still seen as a way to cover the costs, but it can become the main incentive and driver to begin the circular business transition. Still to be effective, funding instruments should support multidisciplinary projects and companies to approach funding as a strategic boost.

Best Practice
The Finnish Green Deal shows how shared public-private commitments can shape industry direction.

Develop Business Cases and Capabilities

To be able to start, companies need support to understand their business case for circularity. A practical starting points are actions that are low in cost, clear in impact and easy to implement, which generate insights and confidence to progress. However, businesses need more help in developing the strategic combination of circularity, business and design capabilities.

Best practice
Offer public funding for SMEs to hire circular design experts enabling companies to increase their critical capabilities and start the business development.

Best practice
Showing examples, playbooks and guidelines is beneficial in raising motivation to start, but sharing successful experiences directly between companies is more effective. On top of this, tailored support and coaching for circular transformation will be needed.

Build Collaboration Networks for Learning and Innovation

Most SMEs do not have R&D departments and they need collaboration with external research centres for creating pilots and bridging the gap between pilots and scaling. Businesses need help in creating networks and ecosystems for collaboration, learning and innovations. To support this change, the value of design is in facilitation and orchestration, but also in fast testing, iteration and development which reduces failed investments.

Best Practice
Sitra’s Finnish Circular Economy Roadmap work in Finland demonstrates how coordinated support at industry level transition roadmaps creates peer pressure and momentum for action.

Best practice
In Brussels and in Finland, the public sector has been leveraging the change, whereas in Međimurje, Croatia, the most successful sustainable business transformations have been closely related to market demand adaptations in the B2B sector. There companies responded to market shifts and used circular approaches to stay competitive.

Change requires new thinking, capabilities, and strategic use of design.

In conclusion, circularity is still often perceived as a cost and a challenge unless we embrace multidisciplinary approaches. When many of the most accessible cost efficiency gains have already been captured, the next phases require deeper transformation.

To go forward, companies need support in building the capabilities that turn sustainability from a burden into a source of business value, where circularity becomes a driver of innovation and opportunity.

This transformation demands human understanding, customer insight, and both material and business model innovation, underpinned by systemic, analytical, and creative thinking. This is where design proves its true value: making sense in complexity, guiding iterative development that reduces risks, as well as envisioning future business models and solutions that serve both people and the planet.

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This text is based on the text originally posted in Design Forum Finland blog.