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Circular Hot Takes
#CHT001: Welcome to Circular Hot Takes!
Welcome to Circular Hot Takes. In this first episode, Nancy Bocken, Ankita Das, Sveinung Jørgensen and Lars Jacob Tynes Pedersen bring the band together and take stock of where the circular economy stands in 2026. Circularity has moved from the margins into corporate strategies, policy agendas and boardrooms, yet the gap between ambition and adoption remains stubbornly large. We discuss why so many promising circular initiatives struggle to move from pilots to scale, why the action increasingly shifts from individual firms to business ecosystems, and how experimentation, finance, measurement, resource security and resilience are changing the conversation. We also look beyond circularity towards regeneration and sufficiency, and ask what researchers can contribute when the aim is not just to study change, but to help make it happen. Along the way, we set out some of the questions, cases and tensions we want Circular Hot Takes to dig into in the episodes ahead. Find out more at www.bdjpcircular.com — and feel free to send us questions, topics you think we should explore, or guests you’d like to hear on Circular Hot Takes.
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3. #CHT003: What Does Regenerative Business Actually Mean?
32:19||Ep. 3In this episode of Circular Hot Takes, we turn to regeneration. What does it actually mean for a business to be regenerative — and does every company need to become one? We move beyond regenerative agriculture and explore what regeneration can mean for ecosystems, communities, employees, finance and the resources businesses depend on. We discuss regenerative finance, place-based responsibility, investing in ecosystems rather than individual firms, and why regeneration may make straightforward business sense when companies rely on healthy soils, communities, skills, water, biodiversity or other resources over time. We also ask whether the regenerative agenda risks setting the bar too high. The answer may be more pragmatic than it sounds: businesses do not have to regenerate everything at once, but they can start with concrete strategies, learn from others and gradually leave the systems they depend on in better shape than they found them. Find out more at www.bdjpcircular.com — and feel free to send us questions, topics you think we should explore, or guests you’d like to hear on Circular Hot Takes.2. #CHT002: How to Make Sense of the Circular Economy
25:33||Ep. 2In this episode of Circular Hot Takes, we go back to some of the ideas that helped make the circular economy easier to understand. Marking the tenth anniversary of the 2016 paper Product Design and Business Model Strategies for a Circular Economy, we revisit the logic of narrowing, slowing and closing resource loops—and how regeneration later became part of the picture. We look at where these ideas came from, how they helped connect environmental thinking with business and economics, and what the circular economy really boils down to. Why can simple design principles be so powerful, and how do they translate into products, business models and real-world decisions? We also explore what nature can teach us about efficiency, resilience and regeneration—and why some of the biggest circular business opportunities may lie in the inefficiencies of the supposedly efficient linear economy. Find out more at www.bdjpcircular.com — and feel free to send us questions, topics you think we should explore, or guests you’d like to hear on Circular Hot Takes.