The Circular Service Platform

The “Managing Value in Circular Networks” Community of Practice (CoP) looked into opportunities for recent technology developments to address key barriers to circular business models.


We designed a decentralised digital infrastructure that automates administration and improves coordination and trust for a network of circular, pay-per-use service providers. Key learnings are outlined in a whitepaper, available here. 


This whitepaper outlines key learnings and design decisions  from the proof-of-concept phase.

A Technical-Administrative Infrastructure For Managing Value In Circular Networks

Key take-aways

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In a circular economy, assets are no longer sold. Rather, the assets are collectively serviced by circular service (CISE) networks, comprising all stakeholders involved in keeping an asset functioning.


This requires unprecedented levels of cooperation and coordination, leading to often prohibitively high administrative costs and the need for trust and transparency in the network.


This Community of Practice used new technologies (distributed ledger technology (DLT), smart contracts and cryptocurrencies) to radically lower these costs and provide the called-for transparency


We piloted the case of Bundles - a circular company that provides its customers with ‘clean laundry’ per washing cycle – on a proof of concept DLT platform of Rabobank.


Our Circular Service (CISE) Platform functions as a decentralized digital administration system and adapts value management to circular ownership and incentive structures.


A Code of Conduct is provided that constitutes governance of the CISE Platform, and introduces a not-for-profit custodian holding all titles to all assets in the platform.


Before the CISE Platform can be brought to market, regulatory compliance needs to be ensured, privacy must be encompassed in the entire design, and technical issues need to be solved.


We invite anyone that wants to participate in the circular economy to join our network and engage with us in future developments.


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"This Community of Practice (COP) — an interdisciplinary open learning space — was different from all other projects I have been doing so far. We didn’t study a specific circular problem this time, but we studied a solution: a platform for circular business networks with the aim to grow the circular economy. This may sound easy, it was far from easy!


In a circular economy, assets are no longer sold. Rather, assets are collectively serviced by circular service (CISE) networks, comprising all stakeholders involved in keeping an asset functioning. This requires unprecedented levels of cooperation and coordination, with high administrative costs and the need for trust and transparency in the network. Redesigning business processes towards cooperation and transparency diametrically opposes the business logic we are used to..."

Elisa Achterberg

Project Manager Sustainable Fintech

An insider's perspective

A whitepaper by:

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