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IFI in the Forum of Cities, towards the circular economy

Managing Director of Insight Foresight Institute (IFI), Totti Könnölä participates in the round table on cities that move towards the circular economy, in the third edition of the Forum of the Cities of Madrid IFEMA (13-15 June 2018) that will once again offer a a cross-sectional look at the world of cities, their innovative management and the role played by all the actors that interact in urban environments.

CITIES THAT TRANSIT TO THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY

Afternoon session 15.45-17.20, 14 June.

Opening presentation

• City of Madrid. Inés Sabanés, Councilor of the Government Area of ​​Environment and Mobility.

Discussion-round table

• City of Girona. Empar Vila, Head of Urban Services.

• Ecohispanic. Christian Manrique, General Director.

• FORETIC. Elena Ruiz, Coordinator of the Action Group in Circular Economy.

• Circular Economy Foundation. Anabel Rodríguez, Director.

• Totti Kónnölä, member of the “100 of COTEC” network. Director of IFI. Expert in innovation ecosystems.

Moderates and energizes: Plataforma Envase y Sociedad, Miguel Aballe.

The city for citizens will be the main axis on which all the themes will revolve, an approach that has always been the distinguishing feature of the Forum of the Cities of Madrid. For this reason, a part of the program will be devoted to discussing the so-called “NEW URBAN ECONOMIES”.


All the presentations, good practices and debates of the IFEMA 2018 Madrid Cities Forum will be included in a FREE DIGITAL BOOK, just like in its two previous editions, in order to disseminate information and knowledge about the sustainable, inclusive and green management of our cities.

Digitalisation as the gear for circular economy

Totti Könnölä, experto en economía circular. FUNDACIÓN RAMÓN ARECES
Totti Könnölä, expert in circular economy. FUNDACIÓN RAMÓN ARECES

El Mundo, the leading newspaper in Spain, interviews Totti Könnölä on digitalisation and circular economy.

Totti Könnölä defends the role of ‘big data’, industry 4.0 or the economy and collaborative platforms as spurs to achieve economic and environmental sustainability.


A total of 16 tons. That is the amount of materials that each European consumes during a year. Of them, six tons end up turned into waste. And, of these, around 50% end up forgotten in a landfill with the consequent environmental impact and for the health of all.

This is an untenable situation for anyone with some common sense and who has driven political efforts of various kinds (recycling, restrictions on industrial waste, …), BUT often without addressing the root of the matter: the real nature of products and how they are generated, consumed and reused. We better talk about designing products thinking of their future beyond the life-cycle. To change our mindset from a model with beginning and end, to another where there are no extremes and everything flows forever.

“What we have now is a totally linear value chain, in contrast to what is being proposed by the circular economy: a systemic change that will allow us to reuse the products to create new ones and thus close the entire life cycle of the goods.“, Says Totti Könnölä, executive director of the Insight Foresight Institute. This man, whose life is halfway between Finland and Spain, is a recognized expert in innovation and sustainability.

The reason that the circular economy has not been firmly committed is that “typical chains have many actors and each of them seeks to optimize its business, but only does so with its share”. That inevitably results in a problem that is not technical (the recycling of materials takes years), but a business model. «The question is mainly organizational. Even in many cases, the waste is separated and then it ends up coming together again because it can not be used,” says Könnölä in an interview with INNOVADORES held at the Ramón Areces Foundation.

Faced with this panorama, marked by the dissonance between theory and practice, we asked Könnölä about the disruptor that makes this philosophy take off once and for all, not from production, but from survival as a species. «Digitization is key. Thanks to trends such as big data, we can take full traceability of the materials, know what their history is and how we can make better use of them, “he explains.

“concepts such as the collaborative platforms [e.g. Airbnb] allow better use of existing resources, avoiding the production of more goods than necessary. In addition, digitalization also facilitates that many products that were previously bought and sold, are now marketed as a service. By controlling the whole life cycle of the product, companies can design for future recycling or perform a more efficient preventive maintenance that reduces the need for spare parts.

Betting on the circular economy is the simplest solution to avoid reputational potholes derived from the purchase of materials (such as metals or minerals used in electronics) to countries in conflict, while reducing installed volatility in the commodity markets.

The platforms, adds this guru of the second opportunities, are especially interesting because, “as has happened with the music industry, intermediaries are removed from the chain, causing the different agents to abandon their traditional roles to connect or even be themselves both the producers and consumers of the same good ».

Some meeting points between two vertices can also be extended to the less glamorous area of ​​waste. “In Atlanta (USA) they have created a platform to coordinate the collection of garbage and make matching with companies that can take advantage of it. That is to make an innovative use of waste. turning the problem of garbage into tremendous opportunities ». If we add to this equation the 4.0 industry and its capacity to personalize products and adjust the use of materials to the maximum, we have the perfect bases to make the circular economy a reality. 

But first, as with any great revolution, we have to change our mentality. The citizens, of course, but also the companies. “As consumers we are vague, we do not look at the data where a product comes from and, furthermore, it is difficult to know. Now, with big data, we generate more information for users and that is an opportunity for companies that want to differentiate themselves in the market because of their transparency and trust, “Könnölä summarizes.
 
“Companies must also change the chip with what they understand with sustainability. For example, Apple boasts in its reports of the use of clean energy in its servers, but then uses different combinations of materials in its mobile phones that are very difficult to separate once their life cycle is over. Also, they prevent their equipment from opening easily, which makes it difficult to recycle other components. It is a question of your brand, but it is essential that you design your products thinking about their future uses.“
 
All this without forgetting the primary role of the public sector in these issues. “The Administration should guide and accelerate the adoption of the circular economy through environmental policies and reducing legal uncertainties in these matters. For example, stop crushing collaborative platforms and blocking new technological possibilities. But everything is a process of learning and continuous adaptation, not only in terms of the circular economy, but also for the digital economy and society in general”.

The interview available in English in El Mundo.

Find out also about our training on platforms.

Transformative governance of personal health ecosystems

Invited speech of Dr. Totti Könnölä, CEO inf Insight Foresight Institute in the scientific conference ‘Bioengineering for Healthy Ageing. Adding Life to Years’ November 9th 2017, CosmoCaixa Barcelona.

Future personal health ecosystems encompass various areas of application such as chronic disease management, life-style management, independent living and emergency services. Such future systems assist in the provision of continuous, quality controlled and personalised health services to empowered individuals regardless of location and provide a horizontal development area across variety of patients, clinical specialties, technology fields and health services. Hence, the development of such ecosystems requires transformative governance that enable coordination and federation of diverse stakeholders.

Is it possible to achieve smart specialization?

Juan Mulet Melia, a member of the Innovation Council of IFI, and Totti Könnölä, CEO of the Insight Foresight Institute (IFI), write in Cinco Días, one of the leading economic journals in Spain, to promote smart specialization in the regions.

The aim of any policy to promote innovation is to make more innovative companies, and those that already are, to address innovations that generate greater added value. An innovative company sees innovation as one of its operations in pure business logic. However, companies that are not innovative consider that it does not compensate them to assume the inherent risk of any innovation. For this reason, innovation policies will only be effective when they are able to reduce the technological, commercial, organizational or financial risk acceptable.
Two are the ways in which policies to promote innovation are usually pursued. One, of general application, is financial aid, which must be sufficient to make the risk acceptable to a company that feels averse to innovation. The safest way to waste public money is to design financial policies for innovation with scarce resources.
The second path is to facilitate access to the technologies needed to develop innovations. If there are already sources of adequate technology, this path will be less expensive, but only reduce the technological risk, leaving intact commercial, organizational and financial…

Link to full article

Image: Gitty Images / Cinco Dias