Do you design your products without planned waste (such as disposable products or planned obsolescence) by default?

Business as Usual designs products for maximum profit

iPhone

Many mainstream products are still designed around replacement rather than longevity. A clear example is the Apple Inc. iPhone, which has often been criticized for prioritizing tight control, brand lock-in, and recurring sales over repairability and product lifespan.

Apple Inc. designs the iPhone within a highly closed ecosystem. Components are tightly integrated, parts are often glued or difficult to remove, and repairs typically require specialized tools, software authorization, or official service channels. This makes independent repair more difficult and often more expensive.

In addition, software updates and hardware requirements can gradually reduce the usability of older devices. While updates improve security and features, they can also contribute to slower performance or incompatibility with newer applications, nudging consumers toward replacement. The result is faster turnover, growing e-waste streams, and continued pressure on scarce materials such as cobalt, lithium, and rare earth minerals.

Future Entrepreneurs design circular products with a maximum lifespan

Fairphone

In contrast, Fairphone was built around a fundamentally different design philosophy: extending product life as much as possible. Instead of maximizing replacement cycles, the company focuses on durability, repairability, and material responsibility.

Fairphone develops modular smartphones in which users can easily replace key components such as the battery, screen, camera, or speaker themselves. This dramatically lowers the threshold for repair and reduces the need to replace an entire device because of one broken part.

The company also integrates recycled and more responsibly sourced materials, including conflict-reduced minerals, and provides long-term software support for many years. By extending product lifespan, the environmental impact is spread across a much longer use phase, significantly reducing waste and resource extraction per year of use.

What you can do

If you want to design products like a Future Entrepreneur, here are some practical tips:

• Design for repairability
  Make products easy to open, repair, upgrade, and disassemble. Avoid unnecessary glue, proprietary screws, or locked components that make repairs expensive or impossible.
• Design for longevity, not replacement
  Focus on timeless design, durable materials, and upgradeable parts. Ask whether your revenue model depends on repeat replacement or on long-term customer value.
• Build circular business models
  Offer repair services, spare parts, take-back systems, refurbishment, or leasing models. This keeps materials in circulation longer and reduces virgin resource dependency.