Tekla Komlóssy, Sonja van Dam, and Conny Bakker
Co-creation has become widely adopted in the development of circular solutions, but systematic approaches for planning, monitoring and evaluating the process remain underdeveloped. This gap limits designers’ ability to navigate co-creation challenges, document success and failure, and build cumulative knowledge across circular transition projects. This paper proposes an adaptive process management and evaluation framework, grounded in two studies: a comparative analysis of 14 existing co-creation evaluation frameworks and models, which revealed critical gaps in their applicability to circular contexts, and a systematic literature review combined with 11 expert interviews, which identified 18 success factors and their dynamic relationships in circular co-creation processes. The proposed framework translates the factors into three distinct temporal application modes: prospective (before), concurrent (during) and retrospective (after). In prospective mode, factors serve as guidance for planning, in concurrent as measurable criteria for reflection and adjustment, and in retrospective as evaluation criteria enabling systematic assessment and cross-case learning. This temporal flexibility distinguishes the framework from prior contributions, which typically address either planning, ongoing guidance or evaluation, and do not offer integrated support. The paper establishes the framework’s conceptual foundation, presents operationalisation functions for each mode, and outlines directions for future development, testing and validation, aiming to support researchers and practitioners in navigating the multi-actor, multi-level, and long-term complexity inherent to co-creating in circular transition settings.
Keywords: co-creation, circular economy, circular transition, process management, evaluation framework, impact assessment