From Waste Streams to Revenue Streams: Entrepreneurial Value Creation and Value Capture in an Emerging Circular Economy in Ormoc City

Research in progress ABSTRACT Circular-economy research increasingly examines how firms redesign business models to preserve resource value, yet the economic transition from circular value creation to firm-level returns remains insufficiently specified. This study develops and proposes an enterprise-level model of circular entrepreneurship in which entrepreneurial opportunity recognition informs circular business-model innovation, which enables circular value creation. The model then distinguishes value creation from entrepreneurial value capture—the firm's ability to monetize circular offerings and retain a meaningful share of the economic value generated—and positions value capture as a mechanism linking circular value creation to enterprise performance. Access to finance, market access, and institutional support are proposed as boundary conditions that may strengthen the conversion of created value into captured value. The study is situated in Ormoc City, Philippines, and targets enterprises engaged in activities such as repair, reuse, refurbishment, recycling, recovery, upcycling, resale, and other forms of resource valorization. The manuscript integrates entrepreneurial opportunity theory, business-model innovation, the resource-based and dynamic-capabilities perspectives, and value creation–value capture theory. It also specifies a quantitative research protocol, construct definitions, preliminary measurement items, sampling and power-analysis requirements, and a prespecified analysis plan. No empirical results are claimed because data collection has not yet been completed. The principal theoretical proposition is that circular activity does not necessarily yield enterprise performance unless the firm can capture value through viable monetization, retention, and appropriation mechanisms. The proposed model is intended to support empirical investigation of the commercial conditions under which circular entrepreneurship becomes economically sustainable in an emerging-city context. Keywords: circular economy; circular entrepreneurship; business-model innovation; value creation; value capture; SMEs; emerging cities; Ormoc City; enterprise performance