Made to Last: Exploring the Impacts of Product Durability on Sustainable/Circular Business Models

In this panel symposium, we respond to recent calls to better understand the barriers to circular economy transformation and to move from ‘circular utopias’ to ‘real utopias’ that represent achievable transformation. To date, most studies on circular business focus on recycling products and recovering materials, and creating business models based on waste or resource recovery. While ‘slowing down the loop' and extending life cycles through durable, better quality products are viable circular economy strategies, relatively few studies have investigated the implications of longer-lasting product durability in circular business models on firm growth. The (sustainable) business model literature has neglected durability as a source of value creation and capture. We intend to draw scholarly attention to the role of durability in circular transformations.