Overview

Despite the increasing number of Circular Economy innovative initiatives in Europe, many of them arose from civil society, they are many times characterized form being sparse in time, space and accession. Many of them are condemned to fail, for lack of visibility (and awareness), in the end, for lack of cooperation.

This open environment were Circular Economy initiatives raise, offers much chance for development but, at the same time, many of these initiatives are isolated from each other’s and from the innovation mainstream – that could contribute to their success - due to various reasons, e.g. lack of digital ‘socialization’ (older, but still active and involved generations), location (less developed regions far from pulsing innovation hubs or big cities), limited financial possibilities (voluntary basis and / or cooperation with SMEs), lack of relevant strategies and possibilities to share ideas with peers, missing information and know how.

Systematic cooperation remains a challenging task and skill to master; it is crucial that the various actors – education providers, companies, Circular Economy actors, civil society, governmental institutions - got informed on social innovations toward Circular Economy management and cooperative dimensions, and be skilled to handle this in a harmonized, systematic way involving the widest scale of possible contributors.

CIRCULINK focuses on merging social innovation and the world of work, committing to raise awareness about the advantages of Circular Business Models and their relation with Social Innovation at work by a complex b-learning training kit for corporate trainers, SMEs and Circular Economy entrepreneurs. Furthermore, it promotes large scale cooperation building on standardized cooperation models and systematic approach.