A Bridge To Innovation: Water Technology Clusters
By Cristina Ahmadpour
Despite the increased attention toward innovation, many end users are faced with the reality of declining revenues against growing infrastructure costs and the prioritization of today’s needs and longer-term projects, all while having to manage limited resources of staff time to oversee day-to-day operational requirements. Generally, however, the water industry recognizes that current and future challenges cannot be met absent of innovation. This is not limited to technology development, but also to best practices, procurement policy, financing, and evaluation of emerging solutions against incumbent processes. This brief piece is intended to highlight the vital role regional water clusters play in the innovation ecosystem as well as highlight key insights from a recent exercise to profile some of the leading clusters globally.
Broadly, water technology clusters are recognized as a geographical network of resources brought together to leverage core assets furthering research and innovation, product development, and commercial applications. The U.S. EPA defines these as “environmental technology innovation clusters” which have a common goal “to leverage a region’s assets to create economic opportunity and catalyze innovation.” Clusters typically engage representatives from higher education, industry, entrepreneurs, government, and end users around identified issues and/or themes. Today, the EPA recognizes over 25 clusters in the U.S. alone. The greatest period of growth has been during the past five years and indicators suggest this will continue in the years ahead.
Isle Utilities sought to profile leading clusters around the world to understand their drivers, the stakeholders they serve, key service offerings, and business models, with the interest to do a deeper dive into their differentiation and market positioning. Notable insights from this effort include:
- There was a loose understanding and use of the term “cluster” vs. “accelerator” vs. “incubator” vs. “alliance” in the cluster community itself and among broader industry professionals.
- Most clusters are established as a non-profit 501(c)3 organization. If internationally-based, they have the non-profit designation. Interestingly, a few U.S.-based clusters were designated as a 501(c)6. A key difference under this designation is that donors cannot claim contributions as charitable, therefore limiting prospects for additional funding.
- Regional economic development is at the core of many clusters versus their accelerator and incubator partners and counterparts. This is sought by bridging the gap of regional resources, collaboration, innovation, investment, workforce, and training.
- Successful groups have been able to work beyond regional drivers to seek strategic international partnerships with clusters abroad, yielding greater opportunities for program development, international technology transfer, and exchange of information and resources between stakeholders. Locally, successful clusters have been able to engage strong stakeholder participation.
- Technology companies’ participation in water clusters are not driven by financial incentives alone. For technology companies and the private sector, the ability to focus on local market challenges/opportunities through regional validation, expansion into new sectors, and streamline local efforts are highly valued. Therefore, a cluster’s ability to offer technology validation through trials/demonstrations, networking with the industry, and prospective clients are more of an interest over financial incentives to join the cluster organization.
- Don’t try to be something that you’re not. Leverage your local assets, resources, and operational and system characteristics to define your competitive advantage and value proposition. Further understand your stakeholders and their needs and build a strong advisory group that comes from the private and public industry.
Collectively, the industry’s leading clusters offer services to support the water industry in various verticals — municipal, agriculture, manufacturing, food and beverage, and other industry applications. Together, they provide services from office space, advisory and mentorship, networking, education and training, product development and validation, and identification of prospective customers. Therefore, water clusters can be an invaluable channel to market for entrepreneurs in various stages of their product/service development. Likewise, for regional stakeholders it can be a meaningful platform to advocate needs and interests related to water challenges and opportunities.
As new clusters continue to form across the U.S. and abroad, a notable challenge will be to balance the efforts of establishing differentiation while aligning synergies to build on strengths. This will ensure that the greatest impact for technology companies and end users are achieved, all while maintaining a competitive advantage to sustain the cluster’s continued growth.
It is without doubt that water clusters are driven by committed individuals that are passionate about addressing some of the water industry’s greatest challenges that will expand far beyond their region, and therefore, will continue to be a vital piece to furthering innovation in the water space.
*The views expressed in this piece are not that of Isle Utilities, but that of the author. For more information, please contact Cristina.ahmadpour@isleutilities.com.
About the Author
As President of Isle, Cristina Ahmadpour is driven to accelerate positive change through the engagement of technology innovation and best practices via collaboration, evaluation, and engagement of key stakeholders. Cristina graduated from Vermont Law School with a Master in Environmental Law, emphasis in Energy (Summa Cum Laude), and received her Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, emphasis in Global Business Management, from California State University. She was selected for the Water Environment Federation’s (WEF) Water Leadership Institute class of 2015 and is a volunteer member on WEF’s Government Affairs Committee and Water Reuse Committee.