INNOWATER

INNOWATER is a public-private partnership coordinated by the European Water Partnership, and supported by the European Commission – DG Enterprise. INNOWATER consists of 15 public innovation agencies, water associations, technology specialists, innovation experts and eco-innovative cluster organisations from Belgium, Denmark, Cyprus, Spain, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands aspiring to develop and test new and better innovation support tools for innovative SME’s and first user industries in the water sector to promote the market uptake of new technologies. INNOWATER started on 1 February 2010 and will run for three years.

Addressing Europe’s water challenges requires innovative solutions

The global water crisis is one of the most fundamental challenges the world will face in the 21st Century. Currently, over 1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water and over 2.5 billion people lack access to safe sanitation. Whilst large parts of Europe still have an abundant water supply throughout most of the year, water scarcity, droughts, floods, ageing infrastructure, increasing energy demand and pollution are growing concerns in countries all over the continent. Technologies are being developed to address these challenges, but they face difficulties reaching the market, as innovation support for the water sector is relatively underdeveloped in most countries.

The INNOWATER partnership has been set up to address these challenges and to facilitate innovative water technologies to reach the market. The overall objective of INNOWATER is to establish and implement a water innovation partnership that develops and tests new and better innovation support tools and delivery mechanisms for innovative SMEs and first-user industries. This will be accomplished through: the development and testing of the most promising methods and tools to facilitate technology and knowledge transfer; the promotion of innovative water technologies with first-user SMEs; the development and testing of first-user tools in industry sectors facing water issues; the pro-active involvement of key clusters and industry associations; and the development of user-friendly innovation support delivery schemes in the forms of vouchers and business support programmes.

Specific objectives:

To identify key institutions and support programmes for water technology, service and knowledge transfer in the target countries;
To identify, review, develop and test the most promising:

Methods and tools to facilitate technology and knowledge transfer;
Practical business support tools for innovative water-related SMEs;
Internationalisation tools for SMEs in order to facilitate international market penetration.

To promote innovative water technologies with first-users;
To participate in key clusters and sectors in the industrial water sector;
To design, develop and test user-friendly innovation support delivery schemes in the forms of vouchers and business support programmes that will facilitate knowledge and technology transfer.

More information on INNOWATER and its recent activities can be found at the Europe INNOVA website, via this link (www.europe-innova.eu/innowater)