Walter R. Stahel

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Walter Stahel-2019, Geneva .

Walter Rudolf Stahel (born June 5, 1946 in Zurich ) is a Swiss political, economic and management consultant. He was an advisor to several working groups of the European Commission .

He is the founder and head of the Geneva «Institute for Product Life Research» (The Product-Life Institute), a non-profit organization that aims to integrate economy and ecology by pointing out new ones, optimizing the life of products based because of the economic development. He has been a full member of the Club of Rome since 2012 .

Life

Walter R. Stahel studied architecture and local, regional and national planning at the ETH Zurich . After completing his studies, he worked for several years in architecture and planning offices in Switzerland and Great Britain. From 1973 he worked at the Battelle Research Center in Geneva as a project manager in the Center for Applied Economic Research, mainly in the fields of corporate planning, innovation and construction.

Since 1984 he has worked as an independent consultant and researcher in numerous European countries, the USA and Asia. His areas of expertise are strategy and political advice for a sustainable society , problems of optimizing the useful life (further use, repair, reconditioning and technological upgrading of goods and systems), regional economic development and risk management of companies and institutions.

He was a co-founder of the Product Life Institute consultancy in Geneva . In 1982, his publication, Product Life Factor, won an award. His ideas, along with those of other theorists, led to what is now known as the circular economy. In this, the industry uses a strategy that avoids waste by reusing and extending the useful life of goods, creates regional jobs and uses resources efficiently. The aim is to decouple prosperity from resource consumption, i.e. to dematerialize the industrial economy. The state coal industry in China has adopted the circular economy as its guiding principle. In the 1990s, Stahel expanded this vision; He sees it as the most efficient strategy of the circular economy not to sell goods as such, but as an ongoing service. He described this approach in his book The Performance Economy, published in 2006, with a second, expanded edition in 2010 containing 300 examples and case studies. He is currently working closely with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation to further promote his ideas among economic actors.

In 2005, Prime Minister Oettinger, Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg , made Stahel a member of the consumer commission of this German state, where he is particularly responsible for sustainable development. In 2007 he was appointed to the editorial board of the Chinese Journal of Population, Resources and Environment. Stahel has worked for the European Commission in a number of roles. From 1988 to 2014 he was director of risk management research for the Geneva Association, a think tank for the global insurance industry.

In 2005, Stahel was invited to the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Surrey at Guildford as a visiting professor .

In November 2012, Stahel became a full member of the Club of Rome .

Prizes and awards

  • First prize from the German Society for Future Research to Peter Perutz and Walter Stahel
  • Winner of the Mitchell Prize competition on sustainable societies in the USA with the contribution The Product-Life Factor .
  • 2012 Honorary Doctorate from the University of Surrey

Fonts (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Who's who in Finance and Industry. 32nd edition (2001). P. 662.
  2. ↑ Vita
personal data
SURNAME Stahel, Walter R.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stahel, Walter Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss political and economic advisor
DATE OF BIRTH June 5, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Zurich