How circular is your product? A systematic literature review on the circular product development process

The Circular Economy (CE) has increasingly emerged as a viable economic model for organizations across the globe. Nevertheless, despite this heightened attention, there is still a lack of in-depth discussion on how circular products should be conceived and developed from the earliest stages of the product life cycle. 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. 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.