The Silicon Valley of Water Technology

The future belongs to those individuals and organizations that have the desire and capacity to innovate by learning from the world.  Water is a key area where global problems and constraints have produced global pockets of solutions, ideas, and innovations.

The base layer for innovation is knowledge - - any competitive advantage is primarily based on knowledge.  Not just knowledge, but global knowledge.  Not all the knowledge a global company needs to prosper is to be found in one place; instead, it is increasingly scattered around the world.  Typically three levels of competition in the global knowledge economy exist - - (1) Sensing at the Top Level - - Identifying and accessing new competences, innovative technologies, and lead market knowledge, (2) Mobilizing at the Middle Level - - Integrating scattered capabilities and emerging market opportunities to pioneer new products and services, and (3) Operators at the Lower Level - - Optimizing the size and configuration of operations for efficiency, flexibility, and financial discipline.

Israel is a world leader in the "Blue-Tech" area - - the Silicon Valley of water technology.  Many reasons have produced this - - from a world class STEM workforce, to an entrepreneurial culture, to a desperate shortage of fresh water.  Israel provides a clear path for "Blue-Tech" - - it's not the water that is scarce, but innovation.

Keep an eye on the following Israeli firms in the area of water technology:

• The Chinese people drink a lot of tea, and their taps emit a lot of undrinkable water.  Strauss, Israel's second-largest food and drinks firm has come up with a high-tech purifier that not only filters water but also heats it to exactly the right temperature for making tea.
• Aqwise is a firm that provides equipment and expertise to build wastewater treatment plants.  Facilities based on the firm's technologies feature what it calls "biomass carriers", thimble-sized plastic structures with a large surface area.  This allows microorganisms more space to grow allowing for greater consumption of organic material and nutrients. 
• Emefcy, a start-up, is also in the wastewater business.  It aims to reduce the energy required to clean water, which currently consumes approximately 2% of the world's power-generating capacity.  One of its products uses special "electrogenic" bacteria to turn wastewater treatment into batteries of sorts.  If they work as planned, they could generate more electricity than is needed to treat the wastewater (look for a future goal of "net-zero" wastewater treatment facilities).
• The goal of TaKaDu is to discover leaks in a water supply distribution system - - sometimes before they happen.  It does this by sifting through the data generated by the network's sensors to look for anomalies.  Even a 1% change in the flow rate, if persistent, can point to a leak.  TaKaDu's detection engine is now monitoring water supply systems in a dozen places, including London and Jerusalem.  I have a previous post on TaKaDu - - Our Networked World - - The Pipes.
• Another area of concentration is associated with irrigation.  Netafim got its start on a kibbutz in the Negev desert with a focus on drip irrigation.  Today it boasts annual sales of over $600 million and a global workforce of 2,800 employees.
• White Water has products that monitor water quality.

In 2006 the Israeli government launched a program to support water companies, for instance by helping them to market their projects around the globe.  It also created (and later privatised) Kinrot Ventures, the world's only start-up incubator specializing in water technologies (look at their list of U.S. partners).

Tracking the world of "Blue-Tech" will be increasingly important as water sustainability interests and realities gain global traction.  The knowledge that a global company needs to win is becoming dispersed around the world.  As with any product or technology, as things get more complex, the relevant sources of knowledge needed to design, market, and deliver them to customers becomes more dispersed.  The canons of global knowledge sensing and mobilizing in "Blue-Tech" will focus on knowledge discovery, integration of knowledge, external connectivity, geographic configuration for dynamic efficiency, influence flows to knowledge entrepreneurs, and joint innovation.

Water technology is a great business sector and example of engineering and organizations learning to "Learn from the World" - - with the goal of creating a global water map of innovation and creativity.