From a sustainability perspective, the design of industrial solutions should follow natural and ecological principles. This applies especially to the visions of a circular economy and industrial symbiosis (IS) as cross-cutting approaches serving the global goals of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. But systemic changes and successful transformations require shifts in paradigms and technologies as well as mindsets and behaviors. In this regard, the equally cross-cutting inner development goals aim to further the individual and institutional capacities and awareness needed for driving and realizing the SDG agenda; significant barriers, however, inhibit progress and need to be addressed by effective knowledge co-creation/sharing to identify and scale potential synergies and collaborative solutions. Knowledge-based systems ought to assist but – as this paper argues – are constrained by their own types of entropy referred to in the literature also as (knowledge) wastes. While digital technologies are spreading, so do worldwide opportunity divides due to the lack of digital dividends. The paper exemplifies how the IS barriers are affected by the current shortfalls of conventional knowledge management systems and practices. It suggests an alternative approach based on a digital platform for knowledge co-creation currently under development. Accordingly, it contributes to the intersection of sustainability sciences, knowledge management, and digital transformation (including educational technologies).
Ulrich Schmitt (Thu,) studied this question.