Biobased & Circular Business

The aim of this course is familiarize the student with the principles, practices and potential of realizing (small or large)-scale biobased and circular business; How and what firms fil the sustainability gaps, so prevalent in scientific articles and policy briefs? Who realizes new upcycles, more sustainable designs, fibers, biomaterials, etc? What BBCB-topic do you want to focus on?

Doing it together slows an innovation down, and makes a firm dependent, but ‘not one company has all in house to realise it alone. Thus cooperation is very important’ (Corbion) What advances the transition towards a more resource-efficient, circular, biobased economy? Due to the WUR Investment Theme Transition BioEconomy, we have some focus on building materials and textiles. Commercial, biochemical and transitional aspects of the BBCB will be on the table, illustrated and debated, by self-selected papers, the guest speakers, culminating in your own socalled Factpods/knowledge clips. Creating individually your Fact-pod helps to deepen your unique competencies, and add knowledge to this domain.

This course has co-makership high on the agenda and has a very diverse set of students, thus it is conditional that you are interested in diverse, but related topics. Dependent on nr of students we will invite and host two or three guest speakers. For students MBSc, specialization C: Biobased and Circular Economy this course is a restricted optional.

After successful completion of this course students are expected to be able to:

• Recall CE and BB topics and (biochemical) knowledge, interpret writings, use business management-argumentations, analyze settings, and appraise (contrasting) argumentations, in the circular and biobased business domains
• Find, introduce and debate (pre-agreed) your own article; contribute to class debates on guest lectures, the other articles and discussion topics, and optionally introduce a relevant firm
• Demonstrate skills and articulate them in the development of the Factpod/knowledge clip that builds on the cognitive assessment and shows that you can deploy the cognitive learnings and conceptualize (personally) acquired insights

Assumed Knowledge:

Completed a relevant BSc. No prerequisite knowledge is assumed, but knowledge on Circular Economy or Biobased Economy is a strong advantage. We will provide some clips to update on C.E. No specific scientific background is required. But you are expected to be interested to study scientific questions outside your comfort zone and plus an eagerness to become an expert in a circular or biobased topic, Evidently this comes with a feel for business level-complexities and Boundary crossing.