Sustainable Development and Strategic Thinking

From an economic point of view, the industrial economy is efficient to overcome situations of a scarcity of goods. From a technological point of view, the resource efficiency of the manufacturing processes of the industrial economy has been permanently improved during the last 200 years. In addition, cleaner processes have been developed. However, from an ecologic point of view, an increasing world population with increasing consumption has produced a "global footprint" which approaches the carrying capacity of the planet. A circular economy and its high-value spin-offs-a lake economy and a performance or functional service economy-: an fulfil customers' needs with considerably less resource consumption, less environmental impairment in production and considerably less end-of-life product waste, especially in situations of affluence, when a considerable stock of physical goods and infrastructures exists. Also, in situations of a scarcity of natural resources, both energy and materials, often characterised by rapidly rising resource prices, the economic actors of a circular economy have a high competitive advantage over the actors of the industrial economy, due to much lower procurement costs for materials and energy. From a social point of view, a circular economy increases the number of skilled jobs in regional enterprises. From a social point of view, a circular economy increases the number of skilled jobs in regional enterprises. However, the shift from a linear manufacturing economy to a circular or service economy means a change in economic thinking, from flow (throughput) management to stock (asset) management: in a manufacturing economy with largely unsaturated markets, total wealth increases through accumulation as resource throughput (flow) is transformed into a higher stock of goods of better quality (but in a manufacturing economy with largely saturated markets, wealth represented by the stock of goods will no longer increase); in a circular or service economy, total wealth increases through a smart management of existing physical assets (stock) that are adapted to changes in both technology and customer demand. This second approach not only applies to physical capital but equally to social capital, such as health and education and green GDP. To measure the social wealth of a population, it is not the amount of money spent on schools and hospitals that matters, but Corresponding author: Walter R Stahel( wrstahe/@ vtx.ch) if this expenditure has led to a better education of the students, and a better health of the people.