BookClub

The Water Innovation Townhall: Stories from the Tipping Point

• Lily Chen

Share episode

The Water Innovation Townhall brings together three companies moving through the Water Technology Adoption (WATA) Model at strikingly different velocities:  Evove, Cerafiltec and Vortech Water Solutions. In this conversation, their CEOs unpack how lighthouse projects evolve into market pull, why strategic partners accelerate trust, what real-world friction looks like, and how design-for-adoption choices shorten the path to scale. Dr. Paul O’Callaghan, Prof. Cees Buisman and Dr. Reinhard Hübner then connect these stories to the dynamics explored in The Dynamics of Water Innovation, reflecting on velocity, reference data, and the market conditions that shape innovation decisions today.

To go deeper or for bulk orders, you can explore the book here, and download the BlueTech articles on Evove, Cerafiltec, and Vortech Water Solutions from here. 

Watch the video recording from here.

If you think we should feature another company in a future Townhall, you can nominate one on our website.


💡 Got a suggestion for a book or author we should feature? Drop us a line at lily.chen@bluetechresearch.com

📘 Paul’s book The Dynamics of Water Innovation is available at braveblue.world/book—Lily will personally make sure it wings its way to you.

🔗 Connect with Lily and Paul on LinkedIn, and visit bluetechresearch.com and braveblue.world to learn more.

Rhys:

uh, right. Okay.

Lily:

Oh yeah.

Rhys:

before I start. So welcome everyone. Uh, thank you for joining us. I'm Mari Soin, research Director at BlueTech, and I'm joined by my colleague, marketing director Lily Chen. Hello.

Lily:

Hi. Hi, Reese. Hello, everyone. Joining today.

Rhys:

Uh, today we're bringing something a little bit different to our normal web briefings. It's gonna be a conversation that brings together data experience and, and lived, experienced innovation. Um, so for more than a decade, blue Tech's been tracking how water technologies actually move through the adoption curve. Um, and then we look at the lighthouse projects, the early successes, the moments of acceleration. Um, there's periods where progress maybe feel slower even when the fundamentals are strong. And those patterns are at the heart of the book we're talking about today, the dynamics of water innovation. Uh, I'm very pleased to be joined today by the authors Paulo Callahan, BlueTech, CEO, professor Case Boisman from Weis and Vagan University, along with Reinhardt, Hubner, CEO of ski on Water. And I'm also very pleased to welcome three innovative companies whose stories illustrate a lot of the themes in the book. So we have here with us today Julius Glockner, chief Growth Officer of Stech, which has helped pioneer ceramic flat sheet membranes, Chris Wyers, CEO of Evo, which has been developing amongst other things, 3D printed ceramic membranes and exploring additive manufacturing. And Sean Mulligan, CEO of Vortex, which has developed Vortex power duration, or VPA. So, uh, strong cast today. Uh, thanks for joining us. Uh, hello.

Reinhard:

Hey, great to be here.

Julius:

Hi everyone.

Rhys:

Great timing, happy with us. Yeah. So, uh, the three companies of o Stech and Vortec, you've all shared your stories with us through individual BlueTech articles, and anyone who's read those articles will see that the trajectories, you know, they're not linear, that everyone's taken a slightly different path through the water model, shaped by design considerations, capital, timing the market. Um, but it all reveals something fundamental about how innovation gains traction in practice. Uh, so what we're gonna do today is look to weave all these stories together. We'll hear directly from the companies, uh, what it took to get, go from pilot, from curiosity to real demand, what surprised you along the way. Um, and then we're gonna move on a bit later to, uh, a panel discussion with the authors about the book, um, and how those stories apply to the, to the theory. So with that, uh, Lily and I are gonna kick off with some, some questions for you.

Lily:

Yeah. Uh, thank you Reese. Um, so in general, I'd like to zoom in on the innovation journey in one moment. gentlemen, if you look at your trajectory so far, what was that single moment when you felt your technology, move to an early promise, to credible reality? Uh, that could be like a lighthouse project, a customer decision, or a technical milestone. who wants to go first?

Sean:

I, I can jump in there, Lily. Um, there, there were a couple of, uh, signals from the market that indicated we, we were reaching a tipping point. Um, we had a number of commercial references across municipal and industrial. Um, relatively small scale in that there would be one unit per site. I think our first site in the UK with Yorkshire Water, uh, was a big step for us where we moved to multiple reactors, 60 years old, eight units deployed across, uh, across that site. So, and that was also, um, a project where we had to work with a contractor, um, consultant and also the end user. Um, but then moving on from that as well as actually seeing us getting specified in tenders and currently we're specified on, uh, in tenders across, uh, four countries. So that was a big tipping point to indicate to us that, uh, yeah, the market is actually recognizing our technology and the value it brings.

Reinhard:

That's a good point. When the engineering firms get to the point where they accept you and spec you, you've probably reached the hurdle with one of the toughest groups to convince of something new.

Paul:

An observation I had on that looking at it was normally when that happens, it's frequently that there'll be two or three, you could say we're specifying ceramic membranes and there's a choice. Sean, you occupy a unique position right now in that if they did specify that this particular type of aeration technology, I don't know that they could go to somebody else.

Sean:

It's an interesting point, Paul. Well, VVPA Vortex Power Duration represents a, a new class of, of iteration technology in its own right. So Vortex iteration is, is a new class. Yeah.

Paul:

Yeah. Yeah. So I imagine you'll expect in time, and it might even be beneficial to you in time if there were one or two others in, in, in the area. And then it would be even easier possibly for, for the consulting engineers and the utilities to specify it. I mean, sole sourcing is fantastic, and a star, for example, withdrew out recovery needed to be sole sourced for a while originally, and they were, and they got specified in for their first plants, no doubt about it. Over time, of course, as the area evolved, o other companies began to, to realize this was a, a class that they wanted to get into.

Julius:

Just, um, kind of reflecting on the Cerafiltec journey on this question, what is that one moment in time that really pivoted everything? I think. When, when I take a few steps back and look at it, it's almost like building a house brick by brick, where every single brick is really important, but there's not one single brick that makes up the house. It just slowly takes up a picture eventually and comes together. And you know, there there's many, I think, important milestones that happened along the way that solidified the technology towards a mainstream adoption and close on closer. But it's really the sum of all events that come together, and not just from Cerafiltec, but really from from all industry participants that help establish the technology in the market. Um, certainly they were like from, from an evolution perspective as a technology, I think certain important, let's say leapfrogs, that helped. Uh, for us specifically, this was the launch of the, of, of the module. You know, the ceramic itself is, it's a super powerful membrane, but in the past, the bottleneck was never the ceramic. It was all that stuff around the ceramic. And then when, when we launched our product version of the market at that time, it was for the first time I think giving ceramic the full power at which it could perform, right? There were no bottlenecks. It was hydraulically optimized so that the ceramic can really run at high flow rates and, and without much pressure losses. So this was, for us, probably the biggest, let's say technology leap brought forward. But at the end, it's like many bricks make up the house,

Lily:

I like that metaphor. Uh, Julius, thank you. And I see Chris also nodding. Uh, can you add something to that? light?

Chris:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, um, there are many moments in a company's history which, which lead you to, to where you are and, and put you on a path to success for Evove. I mean, we don't have to look too far back. Uh, earlier this year we did our first industrial demonstrator at Northern Lithium, and that was really our off our lighthouse project in, in that sector. Um, and that transformed the business for us. It really did. It was a critical step forward. Uh, we demonstrated the market leading performance of the, of the solution, but more importantly, that secured us the partnership with Kurita, uh, secured additional investment, uh, both from Kurita and our existing investor base. And we also secured a tripartite exclusive supply agreement with the customer and Kurita. Uh, and that's targeting 20,000 tons of lithium carbonate by 2035 lifetime project value in terms of capital equipment. Probably in excess of half a billion dollars. Um, and to give you a feel for the scale of that operation, it's gonna be a hundred, 150 MLD water treatment plans. So, real key, milestone for our business and really sets the, the company on a, on a growth trajectory, um, which, um, you know, has, has, has always had the potential to achieve. But that's our first real demonstration of where we can get to quickly.

Lily:

Impress.

Rhys:

Yeah. Um. That sort of, uh, links to a thought that we had going into this. Looking at the three stories, uh, the idea of designing for adoption rather than disruption or emphasizing adoption over disruption. Uh, we talked a little bit earlier, in fact about how the word disruption is maybe overused. Uh, and I know Evove avoided that language and you focused on compatibility with existing infrastructure. Um, and, you know, Vortech and Cerafiltec also, can be, you know, uh, retrofitted into existing plants. And I was just wondering how intentional were you in designing that? Uh, were you looking to, you know, fit into today's systems rather than rebuild them?

Chris:

Yeah, for Evove it was a hundred percent intentional. Uh, having that, um, yeah, capability to fit into the infra existing infrastructure gives you immediate market opportunity opportunities in the market. Um, and again, I can't stress enough that the fact that we don't want to be seen, seen as a disrupt disruptive company, uh, with disruptive products. We just want to be seeing with a, with a company, with trans products which have transformational performance gains. Um, so that, that's really how we've positioned and it seems to be working pretty well for us.

Julius:

I can echo that. You know, especially as a growth company or early stage company, one of the biggest challenges are this the sales lead cycles. I think that everyone in the water sector knows how long it takes from lead generation to execution. And if you focus on greenfield project, that timeframe is massive. It's an autumn magnitude bigger than focusing on retrofits or existing operations where you can be a direct replacement for another solution. So we were very intentive about focusing on Brownfield projects, specifically to drive company growth and demonstrate the technology quickly without having to wait three years till the project was built. And just as Chris said, also, I think the industry inherently is a bit scared of the word disruption and rather like, like small incremental improvements, but stays within the sphere of known.

Rhys:

Well, that's why I'd be interested in your take on this, Sean, because you are bringing something that. It is different and new. So how do you manage that? You know, perception.

Sean:

Yeah, to go back and as I was reflecting there, um, the technology was conceived through I, I guess, you know, my younger days looking at river systems and watching the way, uh, a river naturally keep the self healthy, but also then being exposed to wastewater treatment infrastructure as a civil engineer, identifying all of the challenges there. And I said, what if we could just invert the process of aeration and, and know, treat it like a river system where we eRate the stream rather than pump an air into a tank, right? So that, that was the seed that was set that, uh, that was eventually, um, that led to the vortex power duration solution. And at the time it was really like, if we could do that, then we could unlock simplicity. We could unlock a solution that you didn't need to drain the tank through retrofit. You didn't need all that complexity. So our solutions then just are simply retrofit on existing infrastructure or new builds and everything is accessible above the, the water line. And you know what I think is interesting about where disruptive. I think, I think true innovation lies in simplicity as well. I think we need to go back to basics and be very simple in our approach.'cause water and wastewater is difficult, particularly wastewater.

Rhys:

Absolutely.

Reinhard:

I mean, if you take the end user perspective, um, even if you are open for. New stuff. Uh, it's always a risk return consideration. What risks do I take? What benefit do I get? If it works? And the easier it is to integrate and test properly in your system, the less risk you carry. So if you have a membrane that fits in the same housings, uh, that you already have and you plug the membrane in, you can run one train on the new membrane, and if it doesn't work, you retrofit the membranes. Again, the risk is fairly minimal compared to when you have to completely redesign the process. Um, just as an example, and, and understandably so, end users are risk averse because if, if it goes wrong, they will be in the newspaper or in court. If it goes well and they fi say 5%, they, nobody will even say thank you. So if, if you really, really want them to take risks, you also need to have the benefit be substantial, which then is, or I always preach a 30% cheaper than the current solution. That's a threshold within a paper. It's 30% cheaper than it becomes attractive or 30% with throughput or, but something, something really substantial. And I mean, some of the, some of you guys, you have achieved both, right? A really substantial improvement at, uh, in a solution that can be integrated relatively easily. So you, you are lucky, uh, not everybody is that lucky that it's possible to have both. Uh, but that makes a big difference.

Julius:

I just to build on, this is a really good point. You know, it's, it's so counterintuitive in the water sector, you have to be in some form replaceable. If you're the only one offering a solution, it scares the heck out of end customers, right? They, they need to be able to have alternatives to choose from, and the, the commercial traction is actually greater and you have a higher probability to win projects if there's a healthy, competitive landscapes that end customers can choose from. And it's a bit counterintuitive to many other industries, but because the customer base is so risk averse and conservative, they wanna be able to know that there's other technologies that can fill the void if anything were to happen, right?

Reinhard:

Yeah. And, and also public procurement rules in many cases.

Julius:

Yeah, yeah. Single source is not accepted in many public tenders.

Chris:

yeah, I, I, I think that whole perceived risk, um, on deliverability is key. And, you know, we've sought to address that through our delivery model. Uh, we work with strategic partners, so big, trusted partners in the supply chain, and they effectively deliver the solution so that the customers have no doubt about, you know, long-term, uh, service support, access to the technology, um, and of course the scale, uh, of the operation necessary to, uh, to deliver some of the very, very large projects, particularly in the lithium sector.

Sean:

If, if I may build on that as well. Reinhard, it's a good point that not every technology is, uh, eminently retrofittable or can be sit on top of existing equipment, but I think who. Who can bring a lot to the table is the team that, uh, is behind the technology. So getting the technical team on the site in the early days with the customer, understanding truly their problem and need, and then baseline on that problem, and then working with them collaboratively to say, okay, when we do this together, this is gonna be the outcome. Um, so given that trust and confidence and credibility in the journey, I think it certainly helped us along the way.

Reinhard:

Yeah.

Cees:

You also need, uh, some kind of reputation that you are to be trusted.

Chris:

Yeah, and again, you know, the value of strategic partners in that is, is essential. You know, you are leveraging their brand equity, their scale, their service and support network, and it just gives clients confidence that, uh, this is doable.

Rhys:

And that speaks to, you know, something in, in the book, uh, which is the idea of market creating versus market taking. And, you know, I think what, what you're trying to do there is, is you're creating a market. And that's why that competitive element is important in a, you know, slightly counterintuitive way. Um, I still pick on people individually, uh, for this next bit. Um, starting with you Julius. Uh, we mentioned a minute ago about, you know, wastewater being more difficult as it is, but by 2024, half of Siltex installed base was wastewater and that wasn't even the original focus. So I was just interested in that shift and how it happened.

Julius:

So funny enough, actually, the globally first waste or globally first treatment plant ever built with Suber ceramic was in 2005 an MBR in St. Bend. Not far away from our headquarters in, um, but then. What the, the realization was that the benefit that ceramic has is able to operate in harsh conditions at extremely high flux rate. And that delta flux rate to polymeric movement was greatest in clean water applications, and therefore the CapEx competitiveness was more favorable in clean water. And that's where our focus was in the early days. You know, we, we felt like we had a stronger value proposition commercially and technically and these type of applications, but then, um, you know, customers demanded us to offer also in wastewater. We intentionally actually tried to stay clear of it. We were small team and we needed to be focused on what we're best at. But the repeated requests to, uh, to, to help out with failing, uh, MBR plans with, uh, poly based membranes then let ultimately us to say, okay, let's entertain that application as well. And you know, now the, we see a tremendous traction there. Um, first industrial applications, but then also, you know, the recently announced XAI project, um, it's a 49 MLD and we are in, in, in the US That Cerafiltec and XI is currently in the process of executing it's municipal feed water source. But what I think people came to find out is that reliability and robustness and, and therefore uptime is really a deciding factor. And, um, that led us to be on the wastewater side too, where these factors become important.

Rhys:

And that's, yeah. And it's a very strong segment if you know, and I, it's interesting. I I like that. Yeah. It's interesting that it was customer led.

Julius:

Yeah, I mean we, we had repeated requests and actually we had. We, we repeatedly said, no, we're not embarking on this. We are more competitive on the other side. And with confined resources, you have to make choices, right? But then ultimately we, we, we caved and we said, let's do it. And one project led to the next project.

Rhys:

day. Reluctantly came along and saved the day.

Julius:

And, uh, ultimately, yeah, we, we, I think are now almost 50 50 from a, from an equipment perspective present in clean water as well as wastewater.

Rhys:

Yeah.

Lily:

Um, I have a question for Chris, um, regarding the compression of the innovation timeline. So, um, Evove has moved from early pilots to demonstration scale, um, much faster than typical. Five to eight year cycle. Right. So I'd love to unpack that. Um, you've talked before about being deliberately capitalized and designing from compatibility as reach already touched upon, or as Andrew Walker from your team, ly phrased it like dropping a Porsche 9 1 1 Turbo engine into a VW Beetle. Um, was that philosophy a key reason you were able to accelerate the adoption timeline? And if so, uh, how did you engineer that from the beginning?

Chris:

I, I think there, I mean, there are really three things which play a part in that. First and foremost, you need a, a talented, dedicated team. you know, who, who bought into the vision and are, you know, they'll do almost anything, to ensure you deliver success. The second is you need supportive investors, who will continue to back you through thick and thin. And we've been very fortunate, to have that. Uh, and finally for us, the, the key. Really for, for delivery is the strategic partners. You know, they give the clients confidence to progress both into demonstration, but you know, really looking out to long-term delivery at scale. So that, that's really what persuades people to move quickly and allows us to compress that timeline significantly. Having, um, you know, very clear way to deliver at scale, is, is of paramount importance.

Lily:

It is a people business in the end.

Chris:

It, it, it is, it is. But um, I think most start, I mean, most startups in this space, you can get pilots, you can get paid pilots quite, quite easy. but if you don't have a defined route, um, to deliver at scale with the right partners, you're not gonna progress. Or you have to wait until you've scaled your business, which takes a lot of capital and a lot of time. So leveraging strategic partners, uh, is, you know, the core to the two of those philosophy?

Rhys:

That network effect, isn't it? Yeah.

Chris:

It is. Yeah. Yeah. It just, it, it just gives clients absolute confidence in deliverability.

Rhys:

And another angle on that, you know, talk about roots in is, um, something we talked a little bit already before with Sean, uh, about Vortec having, uh, reached the phase now where utility specify the technology and tenders. Um, so that's a very strong signal of market. Paul, I'd like to dig into that a little bit more. Um, what changed in the last 18 months to make that start to happen? Sean, what's, what's. How did you get to that stage?

Sean:

Yeah, there would be, there would be two aspects, I guess. One, there's a time element, right? When, one of the biggest challenges when you start off on a journey, you know, we spun outta the University of Galway. Uh, we had our first, uh, uh, full skill commercial project. And, and then we said to ourselves, okay, now we need to wave. So, um, uh, as we done our first scale municipal, then we did an industrial and then and so on, and we got another industrial. And then all of a sudden we had two years of data behind us and then allowed us to get our, our next, uh, um, large scale reference site that I mentioned earlier in the uk. And then we had to wave again because that was another skill. And, but now we're three years into that project, nearly three years into that project. Three years of data, uh, reference site reports, you know, bringing that, uh, these reference sites reports to, you know, conferences like WEF Tech or ALS Water, and we're able to go up on stage and present right the results with the clients. That is very significant. That's very powerful. We, um, given our background, given the background of our team, we focus a lot on the customer experience and the, the technical performance. So we collect as much data as we can for as long as we can and then get that out there. So that was, that was key. So having a bunch of reference site collateral, technical collateral was very, very important to get to the next stage. But also, um, you know, at that time as we were building these building blocks, particularly on reference sites and data and testimonials, um, we gathered all that and then we decided, okay, now is the time to, to, to market the company. So we started building a lot more kind of, uh, customer facing material and, and, um, market it into different, uh, regions that we're, we were key to focus on. So the combination of them two things was key. Uh, to, to, to notify that market that we have a technology here that works and it's been proven.

Rhys:

It sounds like it was a real case of trying to judge the timing, just knowing exactly when to go for that and make that jump. That's interesting. Yeah.

Paul:

Just jump in there. Like, when I began studying this area, there was very little by way of literature, but the one paper that stood out was a paper by a guy called Denny Parker from Brown Caldwell. And it, it was a published paper and he said there were three things that he had noticed were common denominators with successful water technologies. And the first was, um, uh, have competitors. And you gave an example where one company actually licensed their technology to somebody else just so there was someone else in the market. Um, would just note that I, I do think in the case of the Ian technology, there are alternatives. So I think that almost ticks that box. The second common denominator he found was good marketing. Um, just getting out there and getting the word out. But the third was don't sell a black box technology where you don't tell people how it works and you don't, and say, look, but I think that's, to Sean's point there. You needed the three years of data to be able to talk and show the market how it worked.'cause that's what the water sector receives quite well. You many people come from engineering backgrounds, so they like to get the information in and the data and, and the things like that. So it's interesting when you look at the timeline, there's various different reasons it takes as long as it does. But you outline there, Sean, that maybe one of those reasons is you have to have enough time to get the data to tell the market how it works, to give them the confidence and that you know, that you, you gotta have, that's where pilots are good, but long-term operational, even better.

Cees:

think there is also a difference in biological processes and, and, and physical processes because biological process takes longer before you are convinced it's okay.

Sean:

Yep. And, and, and that's the thing. And there's a lot that can be done. Like we, we, we did realize in our first municipal project, we've believe in that for a year, if not two years, but we were immediately onto the next thing. Like you could still be building the relationships with customers, showing them what you're doing. You know, even, even if you're only three months in the project, look, here's what we found to it, you know? And, and, and starting to build the journey. Build a pipeline of, of opportunity.

Paul:

Actually, all three technologies here are not biological, interestingly Cees, and um, you're right.

Cees:

Vortech is, Vortech is aeration for biology or.

Sean:

Yep.

Cees:

So if the Vortech technology would interfere with the biological process, you would only know after half a year or something.

Sean:

It, it's a good, it's a good point. In, in the biological space, the two big questions we had initially were the effect of fibers on our equipment, and secondly, the effect of, uh, our equipment on activated slug flocks. And so, yes, so that was our very first kind of technical, um, uh, insight that we needed to collect data on and actually shared that with the utility. Yeah.

Chris:

Yeah, I, I, I think another very effective way, um, to provide confidence to clients, um, is the use of computation modeling and digital twins. And, um, you know, you can effectively model all the different scenarios and we spend a lot of time doing that in our business. So the client, when you get the, well, what if this happens? You've got the answer, or you can, you can show how the system will respond, uh, and show that, uh, you know, there's, uh, preventative maintenance measures you can, you can in input to, to really, um, plan around that or that, uh, you know, there's, there's flexibility in the system to deal with those. Undoubted variabilities, which will happen. I mean, who's ever run a water treatment plant where the, the feed is a hundred percent consistent. You know, you're gonna get slight variations, and if you're not prepared for that, your system will fall over and your clients won't buy. So, uh, but I, I do think digital has a, has a, you know, digital twins have a massive role to play, uh, going forward. As computing power improves, as, as our understanding, uh, of these systems improves, and for me, that'll enable us to really shorten sales cycles further.

Cees:

How many plans do you need before you can make a digital plan digital twin?

Chris:

it depends, uh, on, I mean, it, it, it depends on the uniformity of your, of your plant. Um, for us, uh, the real variable is on the pretreatment side. That's the only part of the plant that, that changes. The rest runs in lithium. That is, the rest is, is set. Technology runs in a set way, delivers the same output. All we're doing is conditioning the feed, uh, to a point that, uh, uh, you know, we, we want. So we've optimized that from, from there on in. So backend, yeah, we can run. We don't need a lot of plants. It's consistent. but the more, the better. You know, we're all data driven at the end of the day, so,

Rhys:

Yeah, and that's only going to increase as well, isn't it?

Chris:

yeah.

Cees:

Fortunately, so

Rhys:

Indeed.

Cees:

more magic.

Rhys:

Um, let's turn to, uh, looking at how the book relates to some of these stories now. So we're talking about the dynamics of water innovation, um, Cees, Reinhard and Paul. one of the first questions I had about the book is, uh, the 14 year rule, the 12 to 16 year average timeline for adoption. I mean, that's my favorite fact that I take out the book to shock people at conferences who aren't as familiar with water adoption. Um, people are always surprised about that. Uh,

Cees:

And also very, very happy because they're not the only one.

Rhys:

yeah, exactly. But I was wondering, you know, looking at the trajectories of Cerafiltec, Evove and Vortech, that suggests acceleration actually. So do you think things have changed or the fundamentals still the same as when you're doing the research based on.

Reinhard:

I think in the big picture, the principle still applies that it takes. Very long. Um, it's always easy to get customer number one, two, maybe three. And then there will be a time where it's more difficult because not everybody is as open to new things. And you, in the beginning you always find some who are curious, uh, and you have to reach the point where everybody accepts it as something that is robust market standard. Um, otherwise you will not get the ramp up. Um, do we see more pressure in the water sector on, on improving systems? Yes, of course, because the entire water sector is under more pressure than it used to be. Both from a regulatory point of view, but also from the fact that that basically climate change manifest itself in the water cycle. And, um, like, like in Germany, we're doing municipal reuse. Now, had you told me 10 years ago that we will do municipal reuse in Germany at a large scale, I would've said what the, no, it's not a very unlikely would never happen. And, and here we are and we would have to do more of it. So, so realities have changed and as a consequence of that. Uh, also there is more needs and he more openness, uh, and, and then it can go faster. But for the vast majority, it will still be the, the 14 whatever, plus, minus years until you reach a relevant volume.

Rhys:

Well, that's interesting, the idea that. The, the framework of crisis driven innovation is maybe applying more and more to the water sector, because of these changes.

Reinhard:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if, if you look at the, the cases where there's too much water or too little water and how it tilts between drought and flooding, um, I would call, call that a crisis to be honest.

Rhys:

Yeah. Yeah.

Cees:

But I also think the water sector has become less conservative in the last 20 years because there are so many examples of. Successes of new innovations. And before that time, there were many examples of disasters, of new innovations. So now people get more confidence in, in, in new innovation. But if you look at, uh, a large new biological technology, like for instance, the ro, the cranial anaerobic ledger, the USB reactor, you could still easily calculate it cost you 14 years because the first plant to build it and to grow the anaerobic search and takes you at least two years, then you have to show it at least for one year. So then it's already three years before you can even start marketing for your second plant. So then very quickly you can calculate, you come, always come to, to 14 years, but if your technical, uh, innovation, it can be done much faster. Then you're doubling time cost becomes faster too. Right? So it's, uh, and, and that's also what I'm wondering about the three cases today is, uh, the, the, the first question from Lee for the, the stepping stones you, you made, uh, uh, I'm, I'm wondering, are they are also technical? Are, are they only commercial stepping stones? Because it's clear, um, that if you solve all your technical problems, you still need to make the commercial steps. But in many cases, you see the second plant and the third plant, they, you also if, uh, improve your technology further. And that also could be part of the success of getting fed further.

Chris:

Yeah, definitely. I mean, you, you, they're both interlinked. Um, you hit your technical milestones, you have to prove it commercially, uh, in deployments that provides more, more data, more, more confidence in the customers to progress. Um, and I, I mean, back to your, your, your point around crisis, um, you know, what's really accelerating, um, adoption, and you could argue it's climate crisis, um, to a, to a degree in many markets. And that's certainly no more apparent than with Evo. You know, we're servicing the lithium sector and, you know, everybody understands the, the criticality of lithium supply. Um, to the energy transition. So there's a lot of pressure, uh, to, to develop, uh, lithium, uh, particularly, um, on a local level given the global supply pressure and politics. Um, so I, I, I think you're right. You know it in one sense or another. It's always crisis, which drives faster adoption rates of 10.

Cees:

we rewrite a book, I think we would change Crisis to pressure. That's words. Yeah.

Chris:

Yeah, yeah.

Cees:

Customer is under pressure. Then things happen.

Julius:

I would, I would, add just one note. I think there's two elements that could potentially also shift that timeline. Uh, one is I think we start to recognize the value of water more today than we used back in the day. And whenever you assign value to something, you typically have more capital go in and capital drives decisions and timelines. And the second part is that I think with today's tools and platforms available, this podcast being one of them, uh, I think information has the ability to flow, uh, quicker and cross pollinate between regions, between applications and make more informed decisions quicker that then can impact adoption rates. So I, I am, I'm very aware, uh, Paul, of the thesis that you wrote and the timelines, and we still see the, the challenges with that. But my hope is that we can compress that timeline with the available tools and infrastructure that we have today and the value that we assign to what we do.

Chris:

Yeah.

Cees:

Pressure. Pressure on the customer.

Julius:

Yeah, yeah.

Chris:

Yeah, I, I remember talking to Paul the first time he, he shared, um, that, that headline, and I said, please don't say that to any of our investor base. Um, and, uh, he then explained the, the process of, okay, now, now with that explanation, it's a valuable, uh, the, you know, thesis that they can buy into. But the headline, I mean, it frightens the life out of investors in

Cees:

I, that was also my main worry writing this book, that that would be the end of innovation.

Julius:

Um, no, but at the end you need to create that transparency. Otherwise you're creating mismatches. And if you have mismatches, then you have gaps of expectations and you know, that's also not healthy. Um, and you know, I just say one more point that just came to mind is I think also what we are seeing is that the private sector gets more and more involved. I think back, back in the day, it was predominantly municipal or government, right? And we just see the private sector taking a, a bigger and bigger part of reuse. We see in the European wastewater directive where that 800, um, billion dollars, whatever that figure is, that's gonna accumulate to 2045 has to get carried by, um, you know, by the private sector. So I think there's just more pressure for, yeah, for, for faster decision making.

Chris:

Yeah, I, I think as well for the three companies, one of the, the, the key differentiations, you know, we're not talking about, um, brand new, uh, installing systems. You know, that retrofit ability or bolt on ability, uh, to existing infrastructure is key. Um, otherwise you're waiting for planning permitting, um, uh, for, for, for new site, uh, applications. So.

Sean:

A point to to add just on the perceived value of water as well. When is water water infrastructure pollution not in the news these days? So the public awareness of the, you know, local or global water challenges is very clear now and. And that's sending a slow wave of pressure into, into private and utilities and to, okay, we can't keep doing things the way we used to do. Um, whether that's taking existing infrastructure and bolting on the new stuff to make it more efficient or more capacity. And I think that's also adding to maybe the acceleration of adoption of innovation across the sector.

Chris:

Yeah, I think the, the corporate reporting of power usage, efficiency and now water usage efficiency is really driving that. And, um, the access of consumers to that information obviously is very, very powerful and, and, and drives decision making, uh, right up and down the supply chain.

Lily:

That's actually a really nice segue to the next, uh, question about, ecosystem. Enablers. So we've looked on, uh, we've looked at investors, regulation. they all each play a role in these stories from Enterprise Ireland, uh, funding Forex early prototypes to evolve, uh, strategic partnerships, uh, in your opinion, which enables matter most today.

Reinhard:

I mean, I, I think you need to be, ev we need to be more collaborative in general. Uh, many startups. Try to do everything themselves. Um, and, uh, until you build up the knowhow and have gone through all the failures, uh, a lot of money has, uh, been burned and a lot of opportunities to progress have been postponed. If you partner up and, and like what Evolve has done, for example, uh, with established, uh, players who know more about this and can actually help you. Uh, then you don't just get the brand equity, uh, when you market this later on, you also get, um, a lot of help, technical help piloting, help, troubleshooting, help, manufacturing help. You can, you can make a long list out of this. Um, and all that speeds it up. And I mean, you all still made it a classic startup because your innovation is substantial, fundamental enough, uh, to make a startup type business model work. Many other things that are good ideas should never be a company. Uh, they should from the start, somehow be one or two people who collaborate with an established player who, who has the customer access, has the distribution network. Especially like if you sell like relatively small equipment or something. Um, you need somebody who has distributors all over the world already. If you want to build this from scratch, it's gonna take 10 years before you have the distributors. Find somebody who has this and collaborate and get a cut off the revenue or something like that. There, there, there is good players out there who in many cases could make it work. But if you try to do it all alone, it will not work just because you try to do it all alone. Um, and again, it depends a bit on how substantial your innovation is, what, what, what the solution space for you is, and also how big is the per per sale volume and what's the distribution channels do you need. So there's no, no one size fits all advice, but the general advice is partner more.

Lily:

Partnership. Yep. Partnership, strategic partnership, and, uh, collaboration. Um, what's your take? Uh, Paul.

Paul:

Well, I was marking like two of the technologies I think could trace their way back to university. Um, I think some of the fundamental research work for Evolv, correct me if I'm wrong, but it was sort of maybe the University of Manchester, Chris.

Chris:

well, when I, I joined the, the business, the company was trying to commercialize technology from the university of, uh, Southern Carolina.

Paul:

But, you know, Reinhardt, you made me think there when you said, uh, some things don't lend themselves to a startup. There are times when I think a university, for example, Wessis was able to co-develop, um, vag in collaboration with, I think Mira were involved. So there are times when the university can license something out and that's the best thing. You know, like you don't necessarily need it, just license that idea. Um. You know, NUIG Galway University, um, is where some of the fundamental theoretical research work came from that fed into the Vortex technology. So the key to success, we talked about the success factors. One is avoid failure. And so when we look at companies in Blue Tech, we look at the black box recorders of the crashed airplanes and we try and determine what are the failure nodes and how to avoid the failure nodes. And Chris, you mentioned that if, if we had set this timeline to your investors would scare the hell out of them and they'd run for the hills and cases worry was this would shut down all future investment in water. But one of the failure nodes that we think we're seeing, and it's part of the ongoing further research work here, is the investor. We think that a mismatching of the investor with the startup company very often coincides with. The company just being, you know, cut off funding, shut, the company's shut down. And I think that's where the honesty and the openness with the investor, to your point, Julius, being transparent with them and being able to show in a framework and explain how this works is, is better. Um,'cause we do have several examples where the mismatch can, can create the, the challenges down the road. I don't see that happening in the companies we have here today.

Chris:

Yeah, it's a really important point, uh, matching your investor base to the phase. Of the business, uh, and having investors who understand that cycle, you know, seen investors are highly unlikely to be be with you for the entire journey. Um, and at some point they will want an exit or they'll accept the dilution, which comes as the business scales once you get outside of their, you know, their, their fundable regime. So,

Cees:

I also think it's a, is, it's a very nice, uh, accelerator is that, uh, end users are going to call. Like, uh, in the Netherlands, the, the wastewater end users are cooperated in an association and they coordinate the testing of new technologies. So then it becomes much more efficient for small companies that their technologies are tested. They don't have to approach all these one by one and hope one will say yes, but you can go to the association and they will help you. And if it's a very big test, like we had this, uh, demo planned for, for bioplastic production, then five of these waterboard join together to, to get enough money together to do this big, the big test. And it's not just a risk of one. So that's, that is an, yeah. So if the end users would also help, eh, by, by joining that would also, uh, accelerate.

Chris:

Yeah, I think some of the accelerator programs that end users run a, uh, a, a fantastic, you know, a hundred plus, uh, accelerator program we've benefited hugely from, that's a be Coca-Cola, Unilever, Colgate, Palm, olive, um, SQM ran a lithium um, accelerator program, which we, we were on. Um, and a lot of the work that, uh, other organizations like imagine HDO do as well, so.

Paul:

Curious about the end user. So people often ask, are you better off to launch your beachhead market in the municipal sector and within that drinking water or wastewater or launch in the industrial sector? And Benedict once presented what he called the Benedict Square, and he described his beachhead market and how he moved from there in small scale. Developer led are up into wastewater. And then once he got into wastewater, he moved over to drinking water, which is where he felt was the, the highest risk, most competitive, the red ocean. But he wouldn't have started there. So he said, um, you know, low, low competition, um, in, in a relatively small market was where he chose to start. Um. Curious to hear your thoughts on this. I know that Sarah FinTech, you have references certainly, um, across the board. Um, Sean, you were kind of strategic. You moved into municipal first and then said, okay, let's go over now to industrial and see how we do there.

Sean:

Exactly Paul. Yeah, like that, that was from day one. Uh, municipal market is massive. This is the, a market that, that really needs our technology as well. So we, we said, okay, let's get our first deployment there and wave. And we knew that was gonna take time and going back to our, um, to our team and our shareholders as well. We managed expectations around that. But in parallel, we moved directly into industry.'cause the sales cycles are quicker and there's burning platform problems. You know, pla plants at capacity, equipment failing. Um. New regulation coming in, so things move quicker. So in tandem with a completely mixed municipal tank, we had completely mixed industrial oxidation ditches, industrial MBRs, industrial, and then we had 12 to 24 months of municipal data. And that combination then was powerful

Paul:

You

Julius:

would also say that.

Paul:

that you didn't take in a big investor to start with. You bootstrapped your company with non-diluted funding for the most part.

Sean:

along the journey as well. Yeah. Had CFD modeling we, that you mentioned earlier, Chris, um, was a revenue stream we used, uh, in the early days as well to bootstrap the company, but also to perform, uh, confidence, to provide confidence to our customers in how the solution worked as well. So that helped us, you know, in combination with all the reference site data and actually using that as a virtual pilot ahead of new projects. That was, that was powerful part of a combination. Yeah.

Julius:

I would also say, I think as Ronald said, you can't just be a little bit better and then make your case as a new technology and hope they take you right? You have to be massively better. So I think independent, whether you focus private or municipal or application one versus application B, you have to focus on where the biggest pain point is to be able to demonstrate this massively superior solution and um, and use that as your behead strategy.

Chris:

Yeah, I, I, I think from an investor perspective, um, you know, going to them and saying, part of our plan is a three year regulatory approval process. Uh, w with no guarantee of success. Um, but the market's massive. It's not investible. Um, and, um, you know, we've, we've specifically targeted, um, industrial, uh, water treatment for that reason. Um, we're gonna start there. We'll be there for the next three years. Um, and as the, the, the business, um, starts to generate enough cash to drive the approval processes, look to enter the, you know, the drinking water market and food and beverage markets where our products have very, very strong value propositions, but it, it will be completely irresponsible to, to go after those markets today. Uh, we've gotta, we've gotta stick to what we're, where we're getting traction and build the business out.

Julius:

I want to echo one point too, I think, I think it really supports this early adoption strategy here that is so central to this point. It's the partnerships, right? We, we talked about this earlier, and the partner centricity is so vital for an early adoption strategy because you can't do it alone. Alone, and you have to find. Early adoption, embracing partners who believe in the vision that you believe in, who are as excited about the technology. They see the business case and they take you under their wing and they shepherd it forward, right? And because the market is so highly fragmented and you have to prove yourself over again in every region, in every application till you get a critical mass in each of these segments, you have to find and work closely with these partners who help you get that critical mass in every of those domains. Um, and you can't underestimate the importance of that. And, uh, you should really terrace those partners that are sharing the journey with you.

Sean:

Absolutely. I must just add to that as well. In the, in the early days, we worked closely with a, a contractor, local contractor integrator, that saw the value in the technology from a value engineering point of view. So these are the, the entities that are engaging the customers with tenders and, and new projects and utilities. So the value that we were offering to the contractor was with rack. And we work closely with them to get our units out there. But also was mentioned Enterprise Ireland earlier, identifying the partners within the end user organization. So Enterprise Ireland were able to connect us with the innovation champion, uh, that, that then also recognized the innovation and wanted to pull that technology into their organization. So, so again, as, as you, as you all say, there's a spectrum of partners and, and networks and people that you need to connect with in, in the early days to, to get up and go. Yeah.

Rhys:

I think that's right. Yeah. We, there's the network effect. It's, you know, we, we all, uh, agree. I think it's important to have that outreach to, to collaborate as much as possible with as many partners as possible. Uh, I'm interested in going back to something you

Cees:

I have, uh, I have one. If I look at the companies at Vets, there are several of them that swear that they have to start commercial with commercial companies because. They're the only ones that want to take the big risks, and with the public companies, they, they don't dare to do that, so, so there is also a line of thinking that if you really want to start something really new, then you have to start with the industry.

Rhys:

Uh, yeah, I mean, I think that, yeah, it, it's, it's context dependent. It depends on the individual circumstance, but yeah, I've, I've heard people before say, you know, I, as a technology provider, I prefer talk with the small firms where decisions happen quicker, uh, at the, at the beginning. But, uh, case earlier you said something about, um, you know, rather than crisis, you were wondering if you should have talked in the book about pressure. On the customer. Um, so that's kind of the other end of this, almost the opposite, really. What, and what, what, I was wondering if there's anything else you'd like to revisit in the book. Two years later, having seen all this data and these stories, you know, what would you change? Now

Cees:

Well, that, that is a very difficult question. I, I, uh, I don't, I think, I think, uh, uh, a crisis will create pressure for the people that have to be in, are in the crisis. But the problem is, uh, these days everything is a crisis in, in the Netherlands, we have now, I believe, already seven or eight crisises. So everybody calls everything a crisis now. But, uh, when, when I was at Park in, in, uh, 30 years ago, then we were talking about customers in pain. So customers that were with the back against the wall, they really had to do something and there was no technology available. So the only thing they could choose was our new technology. And that's of course, what you would like the most. They, the customer is in a crisis, but you can also say it's under very high pressure. So, uh, that's maybe a better word than guys, but I do not want to change too much about the book. It's not that old.

Rhys:

Yeah, that's true.

Cees:

And, uh, what what would be nice, of course, is to, to rewrite it and add many more stories to it, and also, uh, uh, elaborate more on the factors, how you could reduce the 14 years. So the, so, so I think there are, you can also write, uh, uh, you can also find examples who did it faster and understand why some can do it faster and some cannot do it faster. And like I already said, the doubling time of a technology is, is a very important, uh, factor. And the other thing that Paul is dreaming about, uh, is that we can use this model to make it predictive which companies are going to be successful and which are not. It's, uh, so that would also be a nice addition.

Julius:

I wanna say one quick point to this, 14 years because it's so frowned up upon to look at these long timelines. But everything has two coins, right? If you have a long timeline of anything new to be emerged, then you also don't have a new shiny thing come in from the left court that you didn't expect. It's like you're sitting on a MySpace, but there's no Facebook coming. That's just not happening. So I think in some form from an investment perspective, you have better ability to predict what the future might be.'cause you don't have these black swan events of something new coming in and just completely pull the rug under you.

Cees:

Your your spark, uh, your spark. Uh, my big teacher of course, always said, uh, you have potato business and apple business and the potato you put in the soil and a half year later you have more potatoes. And on apple, you have to grow an apple tree for 10 years. And then you have, uh, so we are in the apple business and, but the next one, we want to make the same Apples needs to grow to apple tree also 10 years.

Julius:

yeah,

Reinhard:

And, and in case the next generation will associate the phone with Apple and not something you eat anymore. So

Paul:

But.

Reinhard:

then we have a totally different Apple business. I, think it's, it is not it, it is also, it's also the people and that's difficult to assess. If you have the right team, you can also be faster. Um, and very often the people who have the idea and found a business are not the ones who can actually commercialize it. Because they are way too technical and not commercially enough. So, so the team aspect plays a major role and there's nothing wrong with it. It's, but it is a fact. Uh, and very often that adds multiple years, uh, to the journey. Three, four or five years could have probably been cut short if you, if you had a different team set up and, and, and, and, and that, that, that's what, that, that's hard to predict. So that will be the piece that, that you cannot easily predict.

Rhys:

Well, talking about prediction, Paul, you know, if you are, if you were thinking about a sequel to the book, uh, maybe in 14 years, what, uh, what would you put in, you know, uh, what would you like to add, do you think at that?

Paul:

Well, like, as Kay said, one of the things we're working on is expanding on it and building like a machine learning algorithm. It's a current project we we're working on, um, in combination with some of the wet research team actually, um, where we think that if we can identify these analogs, a certain events or circumstances or criteria that tend to coalesce together and are correlated significantly with certain outcomes, that could be really, really interesting because then we could, it could be used as a tool for investors, utility corporate partnerships to say, Hey, if you're interested in, uh, this type of timeline with this type of risk profile and this type of potential return, maybe you should be looking more closely at these types of innovations. And I think one of the surprises for me are the three stories we're looking at here today. They're all, um, mainly market taking and value driven, and they've moved really steadily, right? Relatively low risk. I mean, in, in the sense that they're successfully moving their way through the market. Um, I mean, I've been watching the ceramics journey, Julie, to your point, for well over 10 years now. And it's been like a train. You could anticipate its arrival. You could quite, you know, well track it. Um, there were some stops and starts along the way where people had to figure out, you know, where this really worked and get scale up and costs down. But, um, I think a key surprise for me is that the investible opportunities, maybe not where people always assume that it is, people always assume that it will be a disruptive, crisis driven, pressure driven innovations. The vast majority of the successes may well be market taking, easy integration, incremental improvement. Though what could be fascinating, Julius, from the perspective of ceramics. There could be a crisis could arrive that could rapidly increase the rate of adoption. If the European Union were to move to put a restriction on the use of PVDF membranes because concerns over p FFAs and at BlueTech, we think this is quite likely to happen. Um, then suddenly this could change the game. So your ideal scenario is probably you've got a very strong value proposition, market creating, and then maybe something happens that you know, but you don't need it to happen. You, you can, you can go along without it. Um, and

Reinhard:

That's one point we didn't cover. Regulation. Regulation can make or kill a technology, and very good technologies have been developed that were killed by regulation just because they never got approval, for example, on the recycling recovery space. So many nice phosphorus recovery technologies have in many countries never gotten approval for the recovered phosphorus to be used as a fertilizer. And then it's, you have a great technology that would economically be super. Successful, possibly. If it's not permitted, what can you do?

Paul:

What can you do, right? I mean, and that's like a blocker. It's not even that it's a requir you to do it. It's the fact that it just allows you to do it right. And that's the other side of regulation. Now we are seeing regulations becoming more aspirational. So if there's a flywheel effect in water, I see the flywheel playing out within every one of these companies where it's a brick, another brick, another brick, steadily improving. Gen one, gen two is better than gen one. Gen three is better than gen one, et cetera. But also the whole market is like a flywheel. We, we've seen the evolution Reinhardt, like from 10 or 12 years ago. People understand the sector better, the public get it. The storytelling's helping that informs the policy makers. The policymaker now are willing to be a bit more, bolshy, a bit more moxie and say, in France, will go to reuse in Germany, will allow reuse the European wastewater treatment directive, quaternary treatment. That's aspirational. You're talking about removing low levels of micro pollutants. So I, I'm seeing that policy is moving and evolving as well in this kind of flywheel effect. One of the other things I'd love to work on is an innovation curriculum. I feel that when I started in this sector as a young, you know, biochemical process engineer, I became fascinated what, what we're talking about. But I'd never learned it anywhere. And I think if we could take some of these findings and even this podcast and webinar and if you were to make this available to the Warden Burkes, the systems integrators, the contractors, the utilities. They would then get a better understanding of this component, element of this process, which could be really helpful. So as much as anything, it's amplification. And then for sure we can go back and revise, build an algorithm, maybe build in more policy, more storytelling. And indeed, the leadership component of it was something we only touched on at the very end of, of the first phase of the book and the research work. But I think there's a lot to be said about that too.

Rhys:

There is a lot to be said. Um, and on that note, we've been here for almost an hour, so, uh, unfortunately we have to, uh, bring it to a close. Um, but thank you to everybody today, all our speakers, and thanks to everyone who's joined us. Um. What, what, what we've been hearing. It's, you know, as, as I just said, it's a glimpse into a much larger body of work. So if you want to go deeper and, and spend more time on, these patterns and timelines, uh, the dynamics of water innovation is the best place to start. Uh, it does bring together, you know, a lot of research over many years and provides a framework for hopefully understanding these kinds of innovation journeys.

Lily:

And I would like to add to that. I see it from a very hands-on perspective. So every time a book gets ordered, um, ab been the one packing and shipping those books, and it's been amazing to see where they end up. Um, to give you one example, just a couple weeks back in Amsterdam, uh, there's this event from, uh, momentum Global, ventures, um, everyone attending that, uh, that event, they actually walked away with a copy after Paul, uh, gave a keynote there. So yeah, it's a brilliant, uh, use case. Um, but we also, see, many organizations are looking for something meaningful to share with their teams, um, partners, clients, something that reflects purpose, you know, uh, something that says, oh, we are committed to innovation and to something this sector, to move the sector forward. So. Yeah, the book is now on, its, uh, third print edition, and we're opening it up, just for these couple of months for bulk orders. Um, that could be like 10 copies or a hundred. And just one final note. several organizations and universities have asked whether Paul delivers workshops or guest lectures based on the book, and the answer is yes. So Paul regularly works with corporate teams, accelerators and academic, programs, to translate this WATA model, uh, the adoption timelines and real case studies into practical learning. Um, so everyone here, if your team or students would benefit from a deeper structured, uh, session, we are more than happy to arrange that. So yeah,

Cees:

So Paul wants to be a professor.

Lily:

yeah, absolutely. I mean. If today's discussion resonated, and I'm sure it did. Um, if you're thinking ahead of team gatherings or strategy retreats or year end events, I mean, the book is a powerful way to keep the conversation going. Um, reach out to us, uh, spread the word and I mean, uh, why not host another podcast for this?

Rhys:

And, uh, yeah, on that note, if anybody wants to revisit this session, it will be available on Blue Tech's, uh, book club podcast. And we'll make sure to drop the links to download the articles we've been discussing and, and tour the book in the show notes of, of the podcast. So yeah, thanks again to everybody today. Thanks you all for doing discussion. It's very interesting and uh, we will see you next time. Bye-bye.

Julius:

Bye-bye.

Lily:

Cheers. Bye-bye.