For more than ten years, a group of professors have been working on research relating two concepts of vital importance for the competitiveness of companies: innovation and sustainability.

The confluence of these concepts, called eco-innovation, and its barriers and enablers has attracted much attention from researchers, managers, and institutions over the last decade. Understanding eco-innovation and its extension to the broader concept of social innovation has helped guide business and public policy to improve the sustainability orientation of companies and the products and services they offer.

Although some of this work was initially concerned with environmental sustainability, a broader approach to sustainability soon emerged, including concepts such as social sustainability. Institutions have strongly reinforced this interest in sustainability in recent years through its inclusion in their strategic lines.

Research lines

Within these strategic lines, the Circular Economy has a preferential place. The Circular Economy demands new ways of doing things (innovation) to reduce the environmental impact of companies' activities (sustainability); it requires the connection (cooperation) of different industries and their resources to use waste from some industries as raw material for others (industrial symbiosis), it requires rethinking business processes in search of waste prevention, or, if this is not possible, working for its reduction, reuse, repair, selection and separation, or recycling.

The Circular Economy is not only focused on environmental aspects but also considers social aspects (quality of life, health, employment generation, etc.), and to move forward in the adoption of models based on the Circular Economy requires the participation of multiple agents (research groups, companies, public administrations, etc.) and disciplines (engineering, business management, public management...) working on the implementation of methodologies, technologies and good practices.

History

In 2020, the Department of Business Organisation of the Universitat Politécnica de Valencia started to promote the creation of a Working Group to promote the Circular Economy in the Valencian Community through global and systemic analyses, as well as interdisciplinary analyses at the level of strategic management and process planning.

This work involves complex analyses at the sectorial (and in some cases cross-sectoral) level and their implications for the search for optimal solutions in terms of cost-benefit, search for indicators and modelling, among others. The name given to this Working Group was "Innovation Lab on Circular Economy and Industrial Symbiosis".

Nowadays, this working group, consolidated through the collaboration of different research and transfer projects in the area, is aware of the existence of a society demanding the services and results that we can offer, helping to improve processes and competitiveness through the development of innovative technologies and solutions, we are taking the step of establishing ourselves as a research group to respond to the new challenges related to the Circular Economy and eco-innovation.