Circular economy business training for companies aimed at accelerating the transition from a linear economy to a more sustainable circular economy through training companies. The project was a business training, which was organized in the summer of 2020. Turku University of Applied Sciences was responsible for implementing the project, and Sitra was the client and the financier.

The goal of the project was to pilot a new business training model that aimed to increase both the circular economy skills of companies and to help develop actual circular economy business. Previous trainings have been concentrating on increasing the know-how, but the idea in this training was to bring along it a concrete development task in which the company's circular economy business was developed. Another goal of the project was to document the training publicly available and to distribute the materials and training framework openly to other companies and various training providers after the actual training.

The project was implemented in a situation where the COVID-19 pandemic had caused significant damage to the Finnish business community. Sitra's goal was to help Finnish companies create sustainable growth from the circular economy, as the sustainability crisis did not disappear with the corona crisis. Due to this exceptional period, the training was free of charge for the participating companies.

The training was specifically for companies in the built environment and the technology, process and engineering industries, and eventually involved eight companies. The idea was to teach teams alongside individuals, and through them companies.

The training consisted of lectures, exercises, sparring and the company's own development task. The lecturers were scholars and professionals of circular economy and financial instruments. Experts in circular economy and service design act as trainers and sparrers. Throughout the training, the focus was on the company's own development task. The structure and content of the training was based on Sitra's Circular Economy Playbook (Circular Economy business models for the manufacturing industry - Circular Economy Playbook for Finnish SMEs) published in 2018, which is aimed at manufacturing companies. The Howspace platform was used in the training.

The training model piloted in the project proved to be effective and the training received good feedback from companies, financier and trainers.