Innovation Beyond Recipes: Creative Interventions for Circular Change in SMEs

Abstract

This panel examined creative collaboration as a method for circular innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises, drawing on the Label4Future project and its final output, the Innovation Cook Book (Schosswohl et al., 2026,). Label4Future paired six SMEs with artists and creative practitioners, with a focus on the plastics and materials sectors, and documented each collaboration from the framing of a concrete industrial challenge through partner matching, trust building, prototyping and the negotiation of ownership and value, to changes in products, processes and materials. The panel brought together the project partners, participating creatives and company representatives to report on these cases and on the methods distilled from them: how questions were framed, where friction arose between creative and industrial ways of working, and which conditions allowed small experiments to become lasting change. Rather than evaluating outcomes alone, the discussion treated the learning process itself as the finding, arguing that the codified "recipes" offer a repeatable and transferable pathway for embedding creativity in regional innovation strategies. The session was directed at SMEs seeking sustainable innovation, creative professionals working with industry, and policymakers designing cross-sector programmes.