Automated identification of circular value chains and synergies

A human-driven procedure able to identify cross-sectorial and cross-regional circular economy value-chains was co-created by 17 European regions within the H2020 SCREEN project. This paper explains how such a procedure has been translated into an automated service able to be inserted in a digital platform overcoming current information asymmetry among value-chain stakeholders, currently under development within the H2020 DigiPrime project. The open innovation approach adopted for the translation enables local companies to directly insert their data and to be directly notified about circular business opportunities. The advantage of the automated identification mechanism consists in avoiding the support of a circular economy expert for the first identification of value chains and synergies matching, thus leaving the regional officer more freedom; the lower accuracy of the automated mechanisms will be compensated by the large number of data that will be available once the DigiPrime platform will be fully operating.