Collaborative business model experimentation for urban upcycling

Across Dutch municipalities, unusual collaborative initiatives emerge that aim to stimulate the creation of value from municipal waste resources. Circular economy literature proposes that experimentation competences are important for developing initiatives towards circular business models and a wide range of innovation frameworks and business model toolkits have been developed to support the development of circular business models based on experimentation.

However, more insight is needed to understand how experimentation contributes to the development of urban upcycling initiatives, in particular those where collaborative business models are created. Literature suggest that business model experimentation occurs differently in various collaborative contexts. For example, depending on the type of initiating focal actors involved, collaborative business models develop along different pathways

Therefore, we aim to understand how experimentation occurs in various types of collaborative urban upcycling initiatives and we investigate the following research question: How do stakeholders in collaborative urban upcycling initiatives use experimentation to develop circular business models?