Addressing sustainability and Circular Economy (CE)-issues is nowadays not only demanded by NGOs, but also strongly driven by governments and society in general. Businesses therefore need to think of innovative ways of overcoming ecological issues without losing profitability. The Cradle to Cradle (C2C) concept goes beyond eco-efficient strategies, which are indeed connected to sustainability but seeks to avoid negative environmental impacts at all. C2C rather requires to completely rethink how products are designed, produced, consumed and reutilized. Driving this revolutionary system change cannot solely be the responsibility of businesses but must include a variety of stakeholders as well. The present master thesis emphasizes the openness of C2C related R&D systems. The study is focused on different processes of Open Innovation as well as the variety of knowledge sources, external partners in the innovation process and knowledge exchange mechanisms. While researching the outlined topics, a qualitative expert study was conducted. The empirical findings suggest three different archetypes which display different C2C strategies and thus also different Open Innovation processes: (1) Circular System Builders, (2) Ciruclar Business Model Adopters and (3) Circular Diversifiers. This master thesis contributes to both the Open Innovation and CE/C2C literature and further provides interesting insights for companies aiming to transition towards circularity.
