The Digital Self-Scan provides a competitive advantage for entrepreneurs and makes them sustainable.
There are more and more circular initiatives and companies worldwide. Due to the changing environment and consumer demands, circularity is valuable for a company’s image, and it can also be a competitive advantage for companies. For those companies that want to become circular but don’t know how, they often don’t have the appropriate local support. The “Circular SME Scan” (CSS) project aims to help these SMEs figure out what they need to become more circular.
CSS is a European project that started in April 2021, will last two years, and four partners are working together: DDRIÜ (Hungary, DDRIÜ), EOLAS (Spain, EOLAS), BDF (Netherlands, BDF) and AVACA (Greece, AVACA). DDRIÜ, as the project coordinator, initiated the expansion of circular strategies by creating a self-assessment tool in which entrepreneurs can easily find out about circular approaches that align with their corporate strategy.
The goal of CSS is to connect digitalization with the circular economy, which in practice means that SMEs, using self-assessment tools, can see what level of circular activities they are performing and what they can do to adopt further circular strategies. In order to enable SMEs to gain valuable information, CSS plans a skills and competence framework based on circular business strategies. This is followed by the development of a digital self-scan tool for SMEs to track their circular activities. The next step of CSS is to develop a learning environment on circular opportunities, as well as to create an online platform including best practices, inspiring resources, and examples. The platform includes videos, podcasts, interviews, existing courses, and much more. Finally, guides will be available for interested parties to help them carry out self-examination and apply the circular economy opportunities.
The first year of the project was dedicated to in-depth research to ensure that the self-monitoring tool and the online environment meet the needs of the target group. The research consisted of three parts: secondary analysis, surveys among the target group, and focus groups, including circular economy experts, SMEs, and business support organizations. As a result, the partnership is aware of the needs and scope of the self-monitoring tool, which it will address in the following stages. in national reports They worked out.
