Circular Design – a path towards circular economy, training programme

Finland is paving the way for circular design in companies. A unique Circular Design programme was carried out in 2023.

From the international perspective, the programme was the first and only national training programme deep-diving into circular design principles and focusing on generating concrete product/service concepts to secure companies’ competitive advantage in the biggest market transition of our time. In addition, this programme prepared companies for the forthcoming Ecodesign Directive requiring product durability, reliability, reusability, upgradability, repairability, ease of maintenance/refurbishment/recycling in addition to being energy and resource efficient, just to mention but a few.

The pilot online programme was free of charge, and Finnish companies from various sectors and of diverse sizes were invited to apply. The only prerequisite was that the company genuinely wanted to develop its business & operating model and product/service design according to the carbon neutral circular economy principles.

The 1-year programme consisted of two tracks: the strategic track is designed for the executives/board members/owners and investors; the R&D track is designed for people in charge of or taking part in product and service development, marketing, brand and customer experience.

Being part of the National Strategic Circular Economy programme of Finland, this training programme was led by the Ministry of Environment and coordinated by Design Forum Finland and Ethica Ltd. Other partners included VTT (Technical Research Centre of Finland); the Finnish Environment Institute; Sitra Innovation Fund, Frankly Partners, Miltton and Alice Labs.

As the programme is in Finnish, please see for more details on the Finnish webpage!

Programme Timetable 2023

Timetable in bigger size (pdf).