Orchestrating AI-based circular business models through platform ecosystems: Review, framework, and future directions.

Abstract

Prior research has examined isolated aspects of artificial intelligence (AI) and circular business models (CBMs), including lifecycle optimization, stakeholder collaboration, and AI-enabled offerings. However, the literature remains fragmented and provides limited understanding of how AI reshapes circular value creation, governance, and coordination across platform ecosystems. Addressing this gap, we conduct a systematic literature review of 88 peer-reviewed articles and apply thematic analysis to develop an integrative, process-oriented framework. The analysis identifies three interdependent dimensions of AI-CBM transition: strategic reframing, AI-driven dematerialization, and ecosystem platformization, alongside socio-technical tensions that emerge through barriers, ethical and interpretive challenges, and strategic trade-offs. The findings show that AI-CBM transitions unfold through recursive cycles of experimentation, validation, and recalibration, as developments in one dimension expose misalignments in data maturity, governance arrangements, and ecosystem coordination. The framework further distinguishes when AI remains a peripheral enabler, becomes constitutive of circular value logic, or operates as ecosystem-structuring infrastructure. Conceptually, the study explains how AI reorganizes the specification, evaluation, and coordination of circular value through data-driven routines and platform infrastructures. Practically, the study develops decision heuristics and readiness conditions related to data maturity, ecosystem alignment, governance, participation, and value distribution. The study frames AI-CBM transition as a movement across socio-technical configurations that vary in structural dependence on AI and require ongoing alignment among strategic intent, technological capability, and ecosystem coordination.