Aligning Circular Economy & Stage-Gate Innovation  A Workshop for Researchers & Practitioners  Most organizations manage innovation through a Stage­Gate process designed to reduce risk and improve decision quality. At the same time, the shift toward a Circular Economy requires fundamentally different design choices - many of which must be made very early in the innovation process.  The two logics are often misaligned. Circular opportunities are frequently assessed too late, evaluated with the wrong criteria, or deprioritized in favor of short­term cost and predictability. The result is lost value, late rework, or circularity becoming an "add-on" rather than a driver of innovation. This workshop demonstrates how to better align Circular Economy and Stage-Gate through making better decisions earlier, using the right evidence at each gate, and ensuring circularity is embedded as a core part of innovation governance.  Key questions for managers: •    Where do Circular Economy principles create the most value across our current Stage-Gate process? •    What Circular Economy criteria should inform gate decisions - and how early? •    How must governance, incentives, and decision rules evolve to enable circular innovation? Facilitator: Prof. Dr. Cornelius Herstatt of Leuphana University (Lueneburg, Germany) and The University of Auckland. 

After his academic career as a professor of technology and innovation management, Prof. Dr. Cornelius Herstatt left the Hamburg University of Technology on 30 September 2025 after 27 years. Prof. Dr. Moritz Göldner will take over as head of the Institute for Technology and Innovation Management, initially on an interim basis until 2028. He is head of the Data-Driven Innovation working group and has been a junior professor at the TUHH since June 2022. Prof. Herstatt will remain connected to academia as an honorary professor at the University of Auckland (focusing on the circular economy) and, from November 2025, as a visiting professor at Leuphana University Lüneburg, focusing on innovation management and sustainability.

Wir freuen uns über die Publikation von Dr. Timo Achtelik zum Thema „Frugal Engineering - Challenging Performance-Improving Paradigms in the Context of Automotive Material Development“, die in Zusammenarbeit mit der Volkswagen AG entstanden ist.