The circular economy (CE) is experiencing increasing attention, as it has the potential to move away from unsustainable production and consumption patterns, such as the linear one. The circular innovation has even more considered an approach to be adopted in pursuing the sustainable development goals, embracing environmental, social and economic nature of sustainability. Starting from the above premises, our study aims to investigate how inter-organisational collaborations lead to the creation, sharing and exchange of knowledge with potential benefits for the companies involved, especially in terms of innovation. To achieve this, we observed the circular economy context since, as mentioned above, the interactions between different knowledge areas, as well as the interaction between different actors, are considered strategic keys to support and foster the transition to the circular economy. Furthermore, our paper also aims at contributing to the debate on industrial symbiosis and innovation processes in circular enterprises, focusing on knowledge management (KM), through the integration of different skills provided by local partners. The results underline that the collaborations with local actors are a phenomenon rooted in circular businesses, and that the interconnections between different and complementary knowledge and skills are fundamental to support circular innovation. Implications and suggestions for future studies derive about the knowledge management function both in managing knowledge flows to and from partners and in processing knowledge.