Andrew Maynard and Heather Ross recap major themes from the futurethink podcast miniseries on the circular economy, part of the 2016 Disruptive Innovation Festival.

•Overarching Themes

•Circularity

•The biological system is circular (though you always have sun inputting energy from outside the circle).

• The circular economy model is gaining traction and we discussed its role in cities in an earlier episode: https://soundcloud.com/user-723097380/the-future-of-cities-and-the-circular-economy

•People

•You can’t discount the role that people play in innovation. People are a significant factor in determining if a new technology will work and how it will be implemented.

•We can look at people on two scales: the broader social scale and also on an individual level.

•Inclusion: We need to think about all communities' role in technological transition and how we can engage these communities.

o Heather mentions Martin Buber’s notion of “I and Thou” in the discussion of how we relate and understand to other people. Read more about Buber’s ideas here: http://www.iep.utm.edu/buber/#SH2b

•There is a problem of capital in the energy transition. How do we ease the transition?

o Government incentives

o Social acceptability of technological change

o Creating habits surrounding change