Designing for the next (Circular) Economy. An appeal to renew the Curricula of Design Schools

“We don't have a waste problem, we have a design problem", say Michael Braungart and William McDonough, the principle architects of the cradle‐to-cradle concept (Braungart & McDonough, 2010). Our current economic paradigm is based on goods being produced, which are used briefly and finally gotten rid of by the consumers. Such a system is so conventional, that we actually stop noticing it (Kortmann & Piller, 2016) and continue teaching it in the business schools and design schools the world over. In November 2015 the department of Design and Product Management (DPM) at the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences hosted an international conference on “Circular Design”. Indeed, at DPM much design research is dedicated to circular product design and due to the very nature of the department- teaching skill sets for the entire breadth of the design process- we feel that we have much to offer in the form of advice. © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.