P1: H., researcher
Most people look at new things and doing things in new ways. But I think a lot already exists, and that it’s more important to stop doing things. That’s the hardest part. Innovation is, in my view, really a behavioural change and an organisational change, where things like digitalisation can be a huge support. But all those actors do have to want to use current capabilities to do certain things better, smarter — and preferably stop doing some things. Because if you don’t do it anymore, you can’t make mistakes; it costs no money and no time. Most innovations are often incremental: very small improvements on the existing system.
P2: L., more F not really PM
We’re very good at saying ‘this isn’t working, let’s start something new’ instead of asking how we can improve things together.
P4: L., more F
What we saw very early on is that validation in a lab, a computer model, or on paper is simply not enough for public end users like water authorities and municipalities. They need to see things work in reality. That’s why we developed what we call a stepping-stone model — physical experimentation environments that bridge the gap between theory and real pilots. The translation piece is something the public sector is just not very good at. Policy documents are full of ambitious statements — ‘innovation is high on our agenda’, ‘30% of new buildings will be climate-adaptive’, ‘all water authorities will be CO2 neutral by 2050’ — but what does any of that actually mean in practice? I’ve worked with one water authority for 10 years that has had literally one innovation advisor for two days a week and never had a budget. And yet their first line is ‘innovation is high on our agenda.’ That just doesn’t match. With climate adaptation targets, nobody asks: where are we now, what does 30% even mean, how do you measure it? Everyone just nods along. If I said I’m going to run a marathon in April, you’d immediately know what that means for your daily life. But these kinds of policy ambitions — they require everyone to make different choices every day, and that translation simply never gets made.
P5: S., PM RWS
The distinction between collaboration and steering is important. Collaboration — internally and externally — is about getting an innovation further together. Steering is what you need when collaboration stalls. Those are two different things.
P6: M., PM Novum
The PM defines the goal of innovation in two ways: on the one hand, scaling up concrete solutions that improve operations; on the other, spreading the innovative way of working itself throughout the organisation. For him, innovation is never “finished”; it is not about a finish line of completed projects, but about a sustained movement towards more innovation and more implementation. In this regard, a proven solution is only successful if it actually lands in the regular organisation — otherwise the project has not achieved its goal.