Tuomas Ahola and Matias Ståhle from the Center for Research on Project and Service Business (CROPS) received the most cited article award of the department of Industrial Engineering and Management at the faculty of Management and Business for their article ”Unlocking circular business: A framework of barriers and drivers”. Among all publications of the faculty in 2019, this article was the most cited.
The article was published in the internationally acknowledged Journal of Cleaner Production and co-authored in collaboration with partners from LUT University and VTT (author team Tura, N., Hanski, J., Ahola, T., Ståhle, M., Piiparinen, S. & Valkokari, P.). The research material was collected as part of the group’s earlier research project D2W (From Data to Wisdom) that was funded by Business Finland. The study was based on a literature review and interviews conducted in four Finnish companies (BMH Technology, Fortum, Solita ja UPM) and identified and categorized factorss that enable and hinder business based on the circular economy. Companies may benefit from the categorization, when they analyze the business potential of their new circular economy business concepts.