Focus on circularity in new projects

Two different Creaternity projects within circular economy were granted financing at the Family Kamprad Foundation's latest call. They are in two highly topical areas: information security in the circular economy and circular business models.

Much of what goes on in industry and in our society is now digitised. What then happens when a threat landscape arises against the digitised value chain, which is the whole idea behind the circular economy?

"Cybercrime will kill the digital society if we do not find a solution. That is one of the reasons why we are starting the DiTrust project", says Åsa Ericson, who is one of the project leaders.

For a circular industry to work, users need information that they can trust and to be able to share it with each other in a secure way. Traditionally, you have developed a service first, and then thought about security. In the new project, they focus on increased user-friendliness and confidentiality right from the start, something they call "security by design". In addition to developing more secure services, they must also develop policies that the system user understands. It should be easy to do right.

Put a value on the risk

At the same time, the developers cannot build in any amount of security. They have to look at the risks and make an assessment at which level they should settle. Too much security results in slower systems and nobody wants that. It is also important to introduce a security culture where the systems are used, above all to evaluate how companies work with security today.

In order to form an idea of what it looks like in the market, the research group will interview and conduct surveys at a number of IT consulting companies that work with different customers. They will look at the application of digital trust, the technical perspective versus the interpersonal perspective, and the connection between users and systems.

High risk of "green/circular washing"

In the second project, TwinWin, the researchers will use a method (Business Model LCA) that they developed in a previous project, SYSTAIN, which companies can freely use to calculate the environmental impact of their business model. The business model should be designed in such a way that the company wins both financially and environmentally from it, otherwise it will not last in the long run. Thomas Zobel, who co-leads the project, says:

"Many companies have no idea if they are doing the right thing because they haven't calculated it. The risk of "green/circular washing" is great when they market that their business model has a low climate impact when it really doesn't. Then the company can get itself in trouble."

Communication and training modules

To make it easier for the companies, the project will invest heavily in communication. They want to spread the method to see how it enters the companies and how it works in a business context. During the project, the method is applied in six different environments (see project link below) in order to form as broad a view as possible.

It is also important to communicate the results so that they end up in the right hands, i.e. in the hands of the decision makers. Here they will collaborate with the Swedish Life Cycle Center and the goal is to produce training modules that are easy and free to use. Also involved in the project is Henrikke Baumann, professor and researcher of LCA (life cycle assessment) at Chalmers University of Technology.

Both projects start this autumn and last for three years.