Especially the global economy – which evolved from cultivated assumptions and underlying paradigms – goes beyond that. How to emphasize the meaning of communication in economies? How to embed the history of countries or societies that differ as the two parts of this world: The Global North, much shaped by the industrial age, and the Global South, much shaped by exploitation and by running behind the paradigms of an industrial Global North? All of this makes the general idea of economy more complex than basic models taught us.

Complexity is part of the VUCA world. The term “VUCA” is made-up out of a necessary that we need new words to describe our economy. VUCA describes our economy as: volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.

Still, modern economic institutions adhere to the idea that we can manage economy in a simple manner. The direction is given by the power of profit. But: Theory makers must notice that economy has some new players on board. Not a single economy can be run without nature stabilizing the basis of all life and of all our resources that we manage. Nature laws and systems rules can’t be ignored. Climate crisis has shown us that economy needs to inherit systems thinking. The planet itself has become a player on the field. This is where circular economy comes into play. It offers an opportunity to see economy as it really is – as part of a complex system.

As Thinking Circular® it is our mission to give orientation in the economic jungle of dysfunctional systems to make circular economy not only a vision but reality. Therefore, we have adopted and adapted SI tools with circular approaches.

Here you can find our handbook. This handbook shall build a bridge from Systems Innovation to Circular Economy. It shall be a guide for managers who want to pave the way to a circular economy. Inspired by the Systems Innovation Network (SI), it delivers a description of the basic understanding of Systems Thinking that is needed to find one’s way in the complex and everchanging world of economics. To help readers better understand this system.

It will be available as a free open-source document. Just have a look at Knowledge -Thinking Circular (thinking-circular.com)

Der Beitrag Understanding the Economy as a Complex System erschien zuerst auf Thinking Circular.

A construction site is always fascinating, exciting and surprising. For builder Leif Ziebeil, this has become an everyday occurrence in the past few months. But despite all the tensions and surprises – it’s done. We have moved in.

99.9 kWp photovoltaic systems produce electricity on the roof and supply buildings and production. The vision of circularity, sustainability and energy efficiency has become real. Anyhow – even after months of planning and construction, the corona pandemic and lockdown, the ideas and plans have become a tangible reality.

On the office floor of Thinking Circular^® there are cupboards, shelves and desks on the shimmering wooden floor, books, files and work materials are stored. Network and computers are set up. Large windows let in a lot of light and allow a view of the fields and forests of the Eifel. It is easy to look out over the neighboring halls of the industrial area.

“Working here is as nice as we imagined it to be,” says founder and owner Eveline Lemke. “We have created a great environment for our customers and partners as well as for the employees. Even in times of  Corona, which has made a lot of things difficult, we are confident about the future” With the vision of a more sustainable future and the mission to advance the circular economy, Thinking Circular^® is well positioned and prepared to assist their customers in mastering the challenges of implementing systematically greener concepts after the crisis.

Der Beitrag We have moved in! erschien zuerst auf Thinking Circular.

See the Video here.

Christoph M. Klein, founder and managing partner of ESG Portfolio Management GmbH, has now appointed Eveline Lemke to the advisory board of ESG Portfolio Management GmbH. Lemke can complement the advisory board with her wide range of experience.

Even if ESG-Portfolio Management GmbH is still young, it is currently receiving awards in sustainable financial management. Klein is considered a pioneer here. He has years of experience in sustainable finance. In particular, his membership in the United Nations’ UN PRI Fixed Income Working Group has catapulted him to the international level in working on sustainability goals and a few small steps closer to the goal of a world without child labor and fair pay.

Christoph M. Klein also has extensive experience from classic investment institutions, such as Portfolio Strategist and Head ESG Credit, Managing Director at Deutsche Asset Management. Before that, he worked as a partner and head of fixed-income credit at TriPoint Asset Management. Mr. Klein also worked as a multi-strategy portfolio manager for credit hedge funds at CPM Advisors and as an analyst and portfolio manager for corporate and convertible bonds at Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management.

Christoph M. Klein has received extensive training, so he was a visiting scholar at the Salomon Center for the Study of Financial Institutions at New York University and began his career as an analyst in the private client investment strategy at Deutsche Bank AG.

Christoph M. Klein has a degree in business administration from the University of Trier. He is a CFA charterholder and achieved the CEFA degree from DVFA.

Christoph M. Klein himself wants a world where things are fair, where there is less poverty and the environment remains intact. For Klein, peace and security are the basis of a better world for future generations. The corona crisis in particular made it clear how important this was. By caring for what he does, the earth can be preserved for future generations, Christoph M. Klein is convinced of that. This also applies to financial investments. A good, careful selection of sustainable investments not only secures companies and provides them with money. It is precisely this prudence and responsibility in dealing with other people’s money that ensures the stability and long-term sustainability of investments and companies. The resulting obligation to report and keep promises will not be fulfilled by Christoph M. Klein in the future, but every day of his work as a sustainable portfolio manager and in each of his monthly reports. That his funds perform better in the crisis March 2020 speaks volumes.

Find more information here.

Der Beitrag Eveline Lemke is appointed to the advisory board of ESG-Portfolio Management GmbH erschien zuerst auf Thinking Circular.

It was exactly three years ago that the small team from Thinking Circular was sitting together at the crisis meeting concerning the corona situation. And like some crises, whether Chernobyl, the forest decline, Fukushima, the climate crisis or the financial crisis of 2008, the Corona crisis has burned itself into the minds of the employees. What is not longer part of the team in 2023 is the fear of another crises. Only one thing is certain: the next crisis is bound to come. What has remained, what has been consolidated, is a different way of thinking, acting and living to deal with the crises in a resilient manner.

The word “corona” comes from Latin and means crown. At that time our small team decided to simply overthrow the crisis king. In any case, we wanted to do our part to flatten the infection curve of the corona virus. We committed ourselves to flexible working at home and short-time work. In 2023, everyone survived and raised antibodies. And we realize that our culture of rethinking is an effective antibody that builds resilience. But how did we do it? Our motto REthink and REsolve was an approach. And we wanted to put an end to the stress of constantly having to reinvent everything. Emotionally, this was stabilizing enormously. However, rethinking was essential. What followed was a referral of what CORONA actually means.

The CORONAL level is the so-called frontal level and describes what is just in front of us. If you don’t want to be in constant CORONAL emotional stress, you have to change the level, the perspective. Following this logic, we immersed ourselves in the so-called sagittal (= parallel) level and to the transversal level, which also exist. We wanted to enter these three dimensions because we humans are familiar with them. We can overview them. Height, width and depth in the room are known dimensions to everyone. Some physicists even speak of 8 dimensions, but our experiment should not go that far.

Is it a coincidence that the two terms “coronal” and “corona” fall together? Rather not. Because a crisis is always about firstly solving problems on the surface. If Thinking Circular would have stayed on the coronal level (symbolic: y-axis), the company would have only dealt with the negative effects of the corona virus.

Instead, Thinking Circular tried out the other two levels. What are tasks of the sagittal level (symbolic: z-axis) and the transverse level (symbolically x-axis) that go hand in hand with digging into these two dimensions? To find out, you have to look at what is behind the term “Corona”.

There are actually many positive terms in connection with the word “Corona”. For example the heart. Because “coronarius” means coronary arteries (Latin “corona” means both, crown and wreath – both closed loops). What does the corona situation mean to our hearts? The goal seems clear. The heart needs to be strengthened. Be kept alive. What else does the word Corona mean to us? A connection to the climate crisis? So we dared a play on words:

It doesn’t matter whether it’s the corona or the climate crisis. The circular economy would be a beneficial remedy for both crises.

What else fits into the word corona? A historic anthropogenic word. A connection to people?

Crises create confinement. But they also create closeness. Sven Schumacher sings in his song: We want to get up, approach each other, learn from each other, deal with each other. For Thinking Circular, this experience has shaped the last three years after the corona crisis.

How does a new way of thinking, acting and living develop to make such experiences possible at all? One last word game – Corona also stands for:

In summary, all of this can be found in the word corona: strengthening the heart, building up a regional and circular economy, cooperating with others and helping each other, training circular cognition. That was and is our mission.

When our author looks up from her laptop in 2023 and looks at the central dashboard in the office, she can see the live current project progress. The health risk of the individual projects is “green”. The projects that were lost in the Corona crisis were all realized subsequently. And not only that, Thinking Circular has worked on establishing the circular economy as a solution to future crises, resulting in more and more projects and customers after the corona crisis.

Our author looks around. In the office, the others are in a mood of optimism. It’s 1 p.m. – lunch break. As they go out, they meet the team of FZ Recycling, the partner of Thinking Circular, in the stairwell, with whom many exciting projects have been realized, especially in the past two years. When the teams work together, two worlds meet here: solid technology meets creative think tank. The connection: a green multiverse. And while both teams have grown considerably over the past three years to pursue their common mission of expanding the multiverse, the team is now realizing its goals as planned. FZR has gained team support in the technical area. Thinking Circular has remained true to its ideals and has hired a colorful mix of young and of experienced people. The mixture unites a lot of future: young employees having their future ahead them and less young but a lot experienced employees willing to use this experience for their common future. FZ Recycling has recruited a total of five additional team members. Thinking Circular hired a total of four. All of them green pirates who steer the ship together even through windy times.

Downstairs in the kitchen they all cavort like busy bees preparing lunch. The dashboard shows the weekly meal plan, mainly including ingredients from the own garden. And while some team members go out to get herbs, our author notices today’s date. It’s almost three years ago. The cornerstone for a corporate culture of solidarity was laid in the company agreement of 18.03.2020. While most company agreements begin with legal paragraphs, the Thinking Circular team decided to make a commitment. To stand up for each other and use the crisis to strengthen resilience.

When our author comes back from the garden with Ribwort, Giersch and Yarrow, she is amazed looking at the result of this crisis meeting: There is a colorful bunch of competent lateral thinkers in the kitchen, all of whom roll up their sleeves to snip the local vegetables. And by no means only then. Today, the culture of Thinking Circular is shaped by cooperation and resilience, optimism and solution thinking and by teamwork instead of loneliness.

Die Narrative von oben trägt Symbol-Charakter: Um zukünftige Krisen zu vermeiden, wurde Thinking Circular gegründet, um daran zu arbeiten, die Circular Economy zu etablieren.

The narrative from above is symbolic: In order to avoid future crises, Thinking Circular was founded to work on establishing the circular economy. The loop closes, thoughts circle. Maybe that’s it. Training the brain on circular cognition. And to write our own future.

Der Beitrag Future Writing erschien zuerst auf Thinking Circular.

The operating site there offers 600 m2 of production space, 300 m2 of social and office space as well as approx. 2800 m2 of reserve space for further development. This now forms our company home. We subject our demands on circularity, sustainability and energy efficiency to a reality check. We want to be and remain credible, which means that the building structures must live up to this claim.

We were able to implement the following groundbreaking innovations in construction technology, which not only brought the developer, Leif Ziebeil, but also the architects and general contractor forward. So we can report the following about our construction site:

As the section of our heat demand record shows, we achieve the lowest values. Our goal was to become a plus energy production facility. We will achieve this goal and these are the measures that lead to it:

Read more.

Der Beitrag Circular.Hotspot.de New home for Thinking Circular® and FZ-Recycling GmbH & Co. KG erschien zuerst auf Thinking Circular.

After her term as Minister for Economy, Climate Protection, Energy and State Planning in Rhineland-Palatinate, in 2017 Eveline Lemke seized the opportunity to reposition herself personally and professionally. Thus she founded the consulting company “Eveline Lemke Sustainability and Circular Economy Consulting”. 

Together with the agency for branding and design p21 by Yvonne Kamp in Grafschaft, a complex brand development was started aiming at systemic and science based consultancy for sustainability and circular economy.

As a result the green multiverse “Thinking Circular®” was registered as a trademark at the European Union Intellectual Property Office in 2018 and it forms the basis for further development.

The principle of Cradle 2 Cradle by Prof. Michael Braungart and the cooperation with his institute EPEA as well as the cooperation with Daniel Wortmann and his company DWR-Eco set the direction and very quickly led to cooperation with the OECD-IIASA Task Force on Systems Thinking and its chairman, Martin Lees. Thinking Circular was listed as a think tank at the UN ESCAP-SDG Helpdesk in 2018. 

The platform of the green multiverse quickly proved itself and met the different requirements for consultancy in a wide variety of industries as well as the many requests for expert knowledge and networks in the circular economy. This was followed by giving lectures such as “Chances and challenges of green economy in business and technology” at the EU-China Business and Technology Cooperation Fair in Qingdao, China, “Circular Economy – Flow of values” at Oslo Innovation Week, “Parallels between energy- and raw material-transition ”at the Berlin Recycling and Raw Materials Conference and much more. As a consultant, Eveline Lemke and Thinking Circular accompanied Startups such as Teraloop with their introduction for the Sustainable Innovation Forum at COP24 in Katowitce, Poland or REEP with their innovative concept “The digitalized workplace” for the World Economic Forum in Davos.

From the beginning, Thinking Circular was closely linked to FZ-Recycling GmbH & Co. KG, which develop solutions for separating composite materials. The office community caused the planning and implementation of its own shared location. The plant in Niederzissen, in the Brohltal Ost commercial area close to the A61, will be ready in 2020 and will present a circular hotspot with 600 m2 of production area and 300 m2 social and office area as well as 5000 square meters for further development. Low energy standards, CO2 neutrality and the self-sufficient supply of renewable energies are both a requirement and an incentive. All materials used in the building can be recycled and so circularity can be approved.

Der Beitrag The story of Thinking Circular® erschien zuerst auf Thinking Circular.