SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Sustain.
Sec. Circular Economy
This article is part of the Research TopicInnovative Pathways to Sustainability: A Focus on Emerging Technology, SDGs, and Circular EconomyView all 7 articles
How circular is your product? A systematic literature review on the circular product development process
Provisionally accepted
Paulo Henrique Paulista
Carlos Henrique Pereira Mello*
Jeniffer de Nadae
Patricia Kelli Silva de Oliveira- Federal University of Itajubá, Itajubá, Brazil
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This article presents a systematic review investigating how the circular economy (CE) can contribute to the product development process (PDP). A total of 4,144 documents were retrieved from the Scopus (557) and Web of Science (3,587) databases. After applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, 84 documents were selected for in-depth analysis. Among these, 13 studies proposed product development models that explicitly integrate circular economy principles and were subsequently compared to the Stage-Gate model. The review identified 17 key benefits and 28 major barriers associated with incorporating CE into PDP reference models. The comparative analysis revealed how CE principles can be embedded across different stages of product development, highlighting their potential to enhance innovation, sustainability, and value retention. The analysis shows that Circular Economy contributions are predominantly concentrated in the early stages of the Stage-Gate process, particularly during concept development and design, where decisions with the greatest influence on product circularity are defined. This finding is coherent with the premise that, for circularity to be effectively implemented, products must be conceived and designed as circular from the outset. Overall, the findings underscore that the development of circular products is essential for the effective implementation of the circular economy as a business model.
Keywords: Circular economy, innovation, Product development, Stage-Gate, Systematic review
Received: 09 Oct 2025; Accepted: 31 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Paulista, Mello, Nadae and Oliveira. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Carlos Henrique Pereira Mello
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.