Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Sources of new technology (not innovation) are fairly abundant but suffer from the
applied context required for innovation. The wide recognition that water puriication is
an important worldwide problem, and a growing one, results in technology research in
institutes and universities. However, since those organizations often do not participate in
complete market immersion, and do not have to contend with other business models that
ensure sustainability as well as innovation, the output of these endeavors are often frag-
ments of technology that may or may not be classiied as water puriication innovation.
Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have traditionally realized part of this problem
and have attempted to address the problem of context by immersing themselves, gener-
ally, into a speciic marketplace. However, such a context is not complete for innovation,
as the organization itself does not demand a proitable business model that can result in
a self-sustaining innovation. Many NGOs have realized this and attempt to partner with
for-proit companies; however, extending the innovation process across organizations is
dificult.
Migration of products from developed communities to developing communities does
not work well since the innovations were developed in a different context. For example, RO
systems are a universal technological solution but are too expensive and waste too much
water for many developing regions in the world. Activated carbon systems have a lower
price point and therefore could be propagated more widely; however, the technology is
insuficient to meet the more complex puriication demands of many other regions.
With this landscape of the relevant water industry and its technological base, we will
now describe the evolution of TWI's unique innovation process and resulting penetration
of previously unattainable market space.
21.2 TWI Formation and Early Innovation Iteration
In this section, we describe how TWI has purposely kept uncertainty, or options, in market
application, business model, and technology open as it formulated its iterative innovation
process.
The iterative innovation process requires that the technology, market application, busi-
ness model, and other implementation factors interact to deine the potential innovation.
The need for these elements of innovation to interact is obvious upon inspection. A partic-
ular market application, for example, often requires a composite of technologies to deliver
value to that market. Additionally, the technologies must it within practical business con-
straints, i.e., cost, methods of production and delivery, etc. By encouraging all factors to
interact instead of preselecting a technology or exact market application, the chance of
converging on new innovations is much greater.
When TWI irst formed in 2006, the research environment was speculating that “nano-
technology” would revolutionize many ields, including water puriication. Instead of
choosing a speciic technology and “bringing it to market” as in a typical ineficient linear
innovation model, TWI stepped back and decided to form a database of the basic mate-
rials and processes that can comprehensively remove various impurities and organisms
from water, as well as dissecting current water puriication technologies. This landscape of
materials, processes, and devices allows TWI to rationally investigate the beneits of various
technologies for speciic market applications and business factors. During this process, TWI
was alerted by various organizations as to what technologies were more easily applied, and
