Every Friday, Circulate rounds up a collection of interesting circular economy related stories and articles. Today, we take a look at Houdini Sportswear’s variety of innovations in clothing, explaining the Internet of Things with a jellyfish, millennials moving to megacities and more…

The European Commission has announced a €670 million two-year investment (£500m) in circular economy research and innovation. The investment comes ahead of the EU circular economy package, which is expected before the end of 2015. The fund is one part of the Horizon 2020 £12bn fund, a research and innovation programme launched in January to help tackle the largest challenges faced by Europe today.

Have you heard of the Internet of Things (IoT), but you’re not quite sure what it is? Watch the video below as the Grist team explains how IoT works, with a bit of help from jellyfish.

There will be 40 million “megacities” (cities with a population of more than 10 million) in the world by 2030, according to engineering consultancy company CH2M. Fortune writer Leena Rao cites the movement of millennials from rural to urban areas as the main cause of that shift. In her article, she covers a number of relevant topics including the growth of cities worldwide and the future of work.

Some companies isolate circular economy activities to one part of their business, failing to capture the full value of the economic opportunity. Houdini Sportswear does not fit into that category. They run a repair network across their network of stores, they consider end of life in their design philosophy and they offer a rental service for specific products. It’s a good example of a company maximising value through a range of mechanisms across their business.

Finally, Gartner has highlighted the top 10 tech trends for 2016, which includes a number of relevant topics for emerging economic models, including the growth in available 3D Printing materials, the development of the “Information of Everything” and Advanced Machine Learning. See the full list at First Post.

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