Architecture-based scenario design methodology for platform-enabled circular economy business

Digital platforms are a key enabler for transforming a conventional business into a circular economy (CE) business. We aimed to develop a methodology for developing business scenarios to support the planning of digital platform-enabled CE businesses. In previous research, an architecture was developed to represent the interaction between vision and goal, product lifecycle, product, business model, and digital platform. We used the developed architecture to ensure internal consistency within a business scenario. To gradually detail the scenario by generating diversified candidate solutions for achieving a CE business, logic trees and morphological analysis were used in the scenario design process. We conducted a case study of a smart waste management business in Japan to test the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. By organizing several workshops involving business actors, two business scenarios were developed to compare the influence of introducing advanced data processing functions to the digital platform. Economic and environmental assessment results show that CO2 emissions can be further reduced by introducing advanced data processing at a similar cost as it enables less frequent trash collection and less transportation. The proposed methodology was effective in supporting idea generation by clarifying design elements indicated by the architecture and describing rationales for designed scenarios explicitly.