The circular economy is promoted as a contributor to sustainable development; however, the process of circular business model innovation remains under‐explored to date, hindering its implementation. Dynamic capabilities research provides a theoretical perspective to explore how incumbent firms can innovate in rapidly changing environments. An abductive qualitative research is done through an exploratory multiple case study on 10 incumbents that implemented a circular business model innovation. We identify 26 practices, aggregated in 12 micro‐foundations of the dynamic capabilities of sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring. By integrating the few empirical studies characterizing dynamic capabilities for sustainability‐oriented business model innovation, we offer a comprehensive framework of 33 practices. This study proposes that the most relevant practices for circular business model innovation processes are adopting a lifecycle perspective, employing sustainability‐oriented instruments, ideating sustainable value propositions, developing a sustainability strategy and culture, and engaging and coordinating stakeholders in the business ecosystem. We also suggest seven particularly relevant practices for long‐term business model transformations (e.g., top management commitment), four for innovations focused on short and medium loops of the circular economy (e.g., early customer engagement), and four for long loops (e.g., business ecosystem coordination). This study corroborates and expands recent research on dynamic capabilities for sustainability‐oriented innovation and provides practitioners with a set of 33 skills, processes, procedures, and activities to be prioritized to successfully innovate their business models for the circular economy.

While the conceptual underpinnings of the circular economy (CE) date back to the 1970s, the concept has recently become a major discourse in contemporary sustainability debates. The idea of CE, as it is now understood, is thus rather new and remains in conceptual development. Moreover, it is a contested concept with many different circular visions competing in the discursive sphere. Many researchers have evidenced that dominant CE propositions focus on technocentric solutions and do not address crucial social, political, and ecological implications. This opinion paper seeks to help address this gap by going to the root of the CE metaphor and asking: What do circles, cycles, and flows mean for an economy and a society? To answer this question, this article unpacks the idea of cycles, loops, and flows by analysing what socio-ecological cycles are most relevant for sustainability and circularity. It thus finds a set of seven cycles that are key to better understanding CE and its relation to human and planetary well-being (biogeochemical, ecosystem, resource, power, wealth, knowledge, and care cycles). This article then analyses how and whether dominant CE discourses currently address these cycles. This paper proposes the idea of a circular society as an umbrella concept that can help us better address the critical ecological, social, and political implications of a circularity transition. Moreover, this article develops a set of interrelated strategies to operationalise the circular society concept. This paper thus hopes to contribute to expanding the imaginary regarding the concept of circularity that can help the cross-pollination of ideas, solutions, and approaches to face the manyfold socio-ecological challenges of the twenty-first century.