What's The Next Big Thing In Water?

Laura Shenkar, principal with the Artemis Water Strategy, talks about the The Artemis Top 50 – what it is, how it is compiled, and what it means to the water industry.

The following is an excerpt from a Q&A with Water Online Radio. Click on the Radio Player above to hear the full interview.

Water Online Radio: What we want to do today is get into what is called the Artemis Project, so go deep and tell us all about this project.

Laura: The idea is that one of the key things that you need to understand, if you're going to look into water as a technology theme – both in terms of partnering with a water tech startup, as well as investing in it – is you need to look at whether there's a critical mass of great companies out there.

Is this a blip on the screen, or is this a trend? So, what we've been doing for the last 4 years is bringing together leaders in the water industry – water industry executives, experts from academia, experts from the water municipalities – to try to look at some of the most promising companies around the world, and select 50 that seem to be the most important.

So, the Top 50 each year emerges. It's the compilation of evaluations from 12 different judges, and these companies range from being relatively well-developed – under $25 million in revenues – to very early stage companies that have proven their technologies, but are just beginning to sell them.

Water Online Radio: Talk a little bit more about how you make that selection. There are so many companies and organizations and groups that are getting into this field. How do you decide which 50 are the top 50?

Laura: That's a great question. You see quite a bit of interest in technology. What we try to do is go beyond that. So we do an evaluation of technology, but we also look at what the value of a technology is in application. Thirdly, and probably most difficult, we look at the business viability of a startup.