Ofwat explores importance of collaboration for innovation

Ofwat is encouraging water companies to look at how collaboration can help the sector be truly innovative.

As part of the regulator’s bid to drive innovation, it said water companies should look beyond themselves and strive for greater collaboration with customers and other industries.

In its latest instalment last week as part of its digital campaign Spark! Ofwat looked at what other sectors and large organisations are doing to promote collaboration within their business and beyond.

Mike Barry, director of sustainable business at Marks and Spencer, said: “Innovation can only be done if there’s a partnership. Of course, we are always trying to win in the marketplace and there will always be things we seek to do first and foremost ourselves.

“But more and more we only become a truly sustainable business, and a sustainable society more importantly, if everybody around us moves in the same direction.”

Barry said for him there are two types of collaboration: one which is about the whole sector coming together to discuss how to tackle issues, while the other involves more one-to-one collaboration to get a point of difference ahead of the sector.

Nick Sumption, industry innovation lead at Tideway, the infrastructure company building a new super sewer beneath London, said: “In order to innovate you’ve actually got to look elsewhere, look outside, sometimes look within yourself at how you can change the way you are thinking and make yourself available to be challenged.”

Pippa Henderson, marketing and communications executive at Bio-bean, which recycles coffee waste into bio-fuel, said the company’s work would not be possible if it worked in insolation.

She said: “From the start setting up collaborative and mutually beneficial partnerships with waste management companies and logistic companies was crucial. Collaboration has opened the door to lots of other opportunities for us.”

Future Water, a not-for-profit membership of suppliers to the water sector said three quarters of water company outputs are delivered through the supply chain.

Paul Horton, chief executive of Future Water, said: “As water companies look forward they need to look at doing things differently, they need to look at the culture within which they operate and the supply chain is at the heart of that.

“It brings in ideas and helps the water sector meet its challenges going forward and engage on a broader level with the public.”

Charley Maher, director at Flipper and managing director of water2business, added: “If you are going to innovate and do something different, you have to have the customer voice within that. Both to spark the ideas to start with, but also so you can test and try things and listen to the feedback that will drive you to create the end product or service you are going to produce.”

In a live review of Ofwat’s video on Twitter on Friday afternoon (23 February), the regulator’s new chief executive Rachel Fletcher said collaboration and working with “engaged citizens” provides a “massive opportunity” for the water sector.

She said: “There are big challenges in the water sector such as water shortages in areas of high population growth, flooding, pollution and plastics – none of these are things that a regional company by themselves can solve.

“Arguably some of these are international challenges, so the need for collaboration is really strong.”

Watch the latest Spark! video here.