Shifting from “Linear Thinking” towards “Circular Thinking”

Shifting from “company thinking” to “supply chain thinking” has successfully replaced the system managers had in mind when making their decisions. This shift has put some of the parts of what has formerly been considered the company’s unmanageable environment into their unit of analysis. A supply chain, however, is per definition linear. In the age of sustainability, we might thus need to go one step further and shift from “linear thinking” towards “circular thinking”. The circular economy (or closed-loop supply chain) could replace the linear system by a circular system in the minds of decision makers. This is illustrated in a video released by the European Commission.