A growing body of scholarship has examined circular business models as a pathway towards sustainability. However, employee skills to support such business models have been largely overlooked. Addressing this research gap, this article proposes a comprehensive skill taxonomy for start-ups embracing circular economy transition. As the first large-N effort to develop a comprehensive skill taxonomy for circular business model implementation, this study uses a clustering analysis of self-reported skill profiles for 2407 staff working in circular start-ups. The taxonomy outlines 40 skills across six categories: business innovation, operations, social dimensions, systems, digitization, and technical issues. Findings suggest that circular business model implementation requires a set of general, sustainable, and circular skills, but some of these skills have been neglected in scholarship. Promoting circular narratives as a framing device for skill development can help advance CE towards mainstream uptake, and this study’s taxonomy offers a practical framework for using talent to accelerate CE transition.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095965262301185X

Straub, Lucas; Hartley, Kris; Dyakonov, Ivan; Gupta, Harsh; van Vuuren, Detlef; Kirchherr, Julian. (2023). “Employee Skills for Circular Business Model Implementation: A Taxonomy.” Journal of Cleaner Production, 410.