Ofwat’s bid to boost innovation in the water sector as part of PR19 went live on YouTube today with the launch of its new campaign Spark!.
Featuring its chief executive Rachel Fletcher, the digital drive includes a series of videos aimed at encouraging companies to “fully embrace” innovation and the opportunities it brings.
Fletcher said while companies broadly seem alert to operational and information technology as enablers of innovation, other forms of innovation, using “new commercial deals and new business models’, are “quite often overlooked”.
She suggested this may be because they are not as “tangible” as technology-driven innovation.
She said: ‘The thing that can perhaps be learned from other sectors, other industries, about how to structure deals, how to form partnerships, in order to address the challenges that the sector has coming, are some really interesting and exciting opportunities for innovation just now.’
Plans for the Spark! channel, which went live this morning, were first announced at Utility Week’s Water Customer Conference in Birmingham last month by Ofwat’s senior director of strategy and policy John Russell.
It will run two programmes a week over a four-week period, with each focusing on a different innovation theme, including; the benefits of innovation; creating a culture of creative thinking; the positives of collaborating with others and discussing how the water sector can keep pace in a “rapidly changing and increasingly dynamic world”.
Spark! features experts from a range of sectors and organisations including BT, Microsoft and Bio-Bean, all sharing their insights on the “power and necessity” of innovation. The interviews are designed to help water companies think about what might be possible in their sector.
John Russell told Utility Week: “Innovation is happening all around us; disruptive technologies and new ways of doing things are having a profound impact on our lives, our interactions with one another and our expectations as customers.
“In the face of this change, water companies must not only keep pace with the exciting new innovations going on all around them, they must fully embrace them.
“Through this campaign, we are aiming to lead by example as the regulator, using digital channels to help water companies to learn from other sectors and to challenge themselves to think big about new and innovative ways of doing things, to ensure they are delivering the very best for their customers now and in the future.”
Watch the Spark! video here