Reshmina William, Senior Project Manager, Isle Americas
Most startups fail, not because the technology is poor, but due to adoption hurdles.
In the UK, 60% of startups fail. In the US, that value rises to 80%. In the water sector and beyond, adoption hurdles – like risk-averse procurement, fragmented systems, infrastructure availability, and long timelines – can stall even proven solutions.
A well-designed proof-of-concept demonstration can help to remove some of these barriers. Technology demonstrations improve credibility by providing concrete evidence that a technology will work as intended. They also improve end-user engagement and buy-in, allowing for feedback and design iteration to meet evolving stakeholder needs while reducing costs for future implementations. From a technology up-take perspective, successful demonstrations increase the market awareness for new genres of innovative solutions, blazing a trail for other similar technologies to follow.
That’s where the Trial Reservoirs Initiative comes in. This flexible, repayable funding model derisks the path from demonstration to procurement for innovative technologies in the water sector. In doing so, we accelerate innovation by lowering the financial and logistical barriers for piloting and demonstration.
Nearly four years on, the pilots we’ve supported have achieved a more than 70% implementation success rate – nearly three times the industry average of 25%. As a global consultancy leading the environmental transition, we’re proud of the work we’ve done so far, but we know that to drive real change in the industry, the model needs to be scaled more widely. That’s why we’re calling on others to replicate the Trial Reservoirs Initiative approach.
I sat down with leaders within global water innovation, UK healthcare, and academia to learn more about how the Trial Reservoirs Initiative model has influenced the water industry and beyond.
How else are pilots being supported in the Water Industry?
Imagine H2O’s Water Innovation Pilot Fund seeks to overcome the early-stage financing and market barriers that hinder water technology scalability.
In many ways, the Fund is similar to the Trial Reservoirs Initiative. The Fund is made up of recoverable grants, designed to keep the funding pool financially sustainable. It also offers pilot design and implementation support to program beneficiaries.
However, the Fund also specifically supports three categories of pilots: early validation of novel technologies; solution development of new features and services; and market expansion into new segments and geographies. Unlike the Trial Reservoirs Initiative, the Fund is designed to target technologies that aren’t immediately ready for deployment.
From 2018 to 2023, Imagine H2O has supported 17 pilots in 23 countries, helping vendors scale technologies on topics ranging from workforce resilience to non-revenue water reduction. Imagine H2O hopes to scale their pilot fund to support over 40 projects by 2026.
…in Healthcare?
En Alan Birrell began working as a consultant for Health Innovation East two years ago, he quickly realized that the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) was fighting an uphill battle in adopting new technologies.
Part of the challenge, Alan explains, is that although there are a number of UK agencies that assess technologies, “they’re all relatively slow and risk averse.” That can make the timeline for roll-out excruciatingly long.
Then there’s the issue of regional siloing. The NHS is funded through hundreds of regional trusts that are linked together through Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) that are intended to standardize care and promote the transfer of innovation between hospitals. However, there are still nearly 50 ICBs in England alone, each with their own specific technology priorities. That fragmentation makes it especially difficult for new technologies or best practices to spread quickly or effectively.
Even within this divided system, Alan has clearly seen the benefits of proof-of-concept demonstrations. He recalls a relatively small pilot that demonstrated a freezer pack-like solution designed to maintain fridge temperatures during power outages, saving hospitals millions of pounds in wasted medications. Another pilot involved a portable MRI scanner that could allow better triaging to avoid helicopter transport.
Alan sees an opportunity for a Trial Reservoirs Initiative-like model to play an important role in this system by allowing the rapid deployment of technologies beyond a single hospital. “What you want,” he says, “is that once a trial is complete and successful, there’s implementation beyond just one site.”
The Trial Reservoirs Initiative helps to build out a roadmap for technology deployment by integrating the legwork for procurement as part of trial design. “Trial Reservoirs Initiative forces people to do the upfront work” of stakeholder engagement, Alan says, allowing managers to answer critical questions about implementation, scalability and feasibility. In other words, there’s a plan in place of what to do if the trial is successful, rather than just contingencies for failure.
Health Innovation East was in ongoing discussions with Anglian Water about a potential pilot that would leverage water systems at large hospitals for onsite heat and waste recovery. Although the idea fell through due to a lack of funding, Alan remains hopeful.
“Trial Reservoirs Initiative is a new way to get innovation into a system,” he says. “It does require more upfront work… if you believe you’re going to do something, then you need to do the proper due diligence, but also plan for when this is successful.” Only with that upfront work can a technology move beyond trialing to effective implementation that can have a concrete impact on society.
…in the Arts?
As Dean of Enterprise and Commercialization at the University of Arts London (UAL), Gavin Clark has first-hand experience of the value of a robust commercialization pipeline for the Arts.
UAL students have a strong entrepreneurial spirit: UAL boasts twice the number of student start-ups of any other British university. Of those start-ups, roughly 30% could be classified as social ventures or tech-adjacent.
As Gavin explains, “We have six art Colleges across London which combine into our University, but they do a lot more than fine art and painting. They do industrial design. They do creative computing. And there’s a fashion school and a fashion business school looking at sustainability.” With fashion contributing to nearly 10% of global carbon emissions, finding innovative new textiles and dyes is increasingly important to helping reduce humanity’s carbon footprint. It’s a challenge that UAL’s students are trained and willing to enthusiastically tackle.
For these young entrepreneurs, the critical question is not one of proof-of-concept, but rather “proof-of-market”. Which new ventures have scale-up potential? Do they have a scalable customer base? What is the value proposition of the new technology?
UAL’s graduates need to quickly evaluate all of these questions to ensure long-term financial sustainability. However, the funds needed to conduct the requisite stakeholder engagement, voice of the customer, and market analysis can sometimes be lacking.
When it comes to utilizing the Trial Reservoirs Initiative model, UAL’s status as an academic charitable institution causes legal challenges around leveraging corporate funds for commercial ventures. For example, a recent UK government report recommended that universities have no more than a 10% stake in early-stage spinouts.
Gavin explains that the UAL’s unique mission can also mean that donors tend to fund certain types of projects over others. Speaking about an earlier pilot at UAL, he comments: “[We think that sponsors] deliberately were looking to donate to a charitable project. So when they see donating to entrepreneurial ventures with high growth prospects, it doesn’t really fit their criteria. It doesn’t meet their mindset.”
With all this in mind, UAL has opted to pivot to an alternative funding model that leverages its extensive alumni donor network to sponsor graduate internship placement at existing spinouts. Rather than a loan repayment, program beneficiaries make a non-binding pledge to pay it forward by donating back to the program at some point in the future.
Although the initiative hasn’t launched yet, Gavin has already seen the beneficial impact that pilots can have on UAL’s students – and on society. Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI): Future-Proofing Your Workforce was a one-year project funded by a UKRI grant. It paired film-making students with partners from Foundation Industries such as glass, steel, and cement manufacturing to develop bespoke EDI training and coaching for employees. Gavin hopes that UAL’s future plans for donor-linked graduate internships will help many more opportunities like this to scale-up their impact.
Trial Reservoirs Initiative wasn’t the appropriate financial model for UAL – however, it did help to spark their innovative new pilot program. “It provided the inspiration,” says Gavin. “The idea and the exact expression has been a lesson in starting simple… With the goal that over time, [the program’s success] becomes part of our UAL story.”
Steal this model!
The Trial Reservoirs Initiative’s flexibility, scalability, and simplicity make it uniquely adaptable to many different sectors and contexts. Its technology-agnostic, forward-looking, and results-driven approach has unlocked support both within and beyond the water industry.
Do you have a pilot program that you think could benefit from a similar funding approach? We encourage you to adapt the Trial Reservoirs Initiative model to allow it to fit your needs. If you would like to collaborate, please contact Dr Jo Burgess, Director of the Trial Reservoirs Initiative ([email protected]).
This is the first blog in a three-part series on replicating the Trial Reservoirs Initiative to accelerate technology adoption in the water sector and beyond. Stay tuned for the next blog: the bottlenecks that derail water tech trials – and how to avoid them.