Jan Leyssens

I’m an industrial designer and strategic business designer working at the intersection of circular economy, sustainability, business model innovation and AI.

I co-founded SILA, where we are developing AI-assisted tools and facilitation methods that help translate complex sustainability knowledge into concrete decisions, experiments and implementation. Rather than using AI to automate judgement, we use it to help teams move faster from research and information towards informed action.

My work over the past years has focused on circular business models, strategic innovation, transition processes and helping companies turn sustainability ambitions into practical next steps. I combine this with hands-on workshop design and facilitation, which gives us a strong environment for developing and testing new digital tools in real-world settings.

For the DUT Call 2026, I’m particularly interested in Circular Urban Economies and in collaborations between cities, applied research organisations and companies.

We are currently exploring a project around how cities can help local companies move faster towards circular production and business models. One potential approach is to combine research, facilitated company interventions and AI-supported decision tools, while using insights across participating companies to identify shared barriers, opportunities, resource flows and policy needs.

We are interested in meeting cities, universities / applied research institutes, industry networks and technology or implementation partners who want to develop and test these kinds of approaches in real urban environments.