SIP4Water – Tapping into Student Ideas for Water
How might we widen the net to capture more student-led innovative ideas for the water sector? How might this encourage graduates to consider a career in the water sector?
We want to develop a pipeline of innovations for NWL and the wider water sector that could be advanced through Spring, OFWAT Innovation Competition and other resources. This should enhance the sector’s reputation for innovation to meet public health protection, environmental improvements and net zero challenges. It will also raise profile of the sector with students as potential employees and leverage some of the funding available at universities for water innovation activities. Finally, the programme will help support regional economies through local universities research and innovation activity.
In this fast-paced one-day session, we will:
- Develop ideas of how students can be encouraged to innovate for water
- Define what innovation competitions at local universities could look like
- Describe who the student audience might be
- Explore what makes a career in the water sector attractive
- Identify approaches to co-operation with universities
- Explore funding models for student engagement for innovation
Participants will engage in a series of structured design sessions and technical deep-dives, including:
- Landscape mapping of current co-operation with universities
- Prioritisation exercises to identify what types of innovation could students new to the sector deliver
By the end of the day, we will deliver:
- A list of potential innovation competition formats for individual universities and utilities
- Headline innovation topics that would benefit from an external view
- Identify a vanguard of utility companies to develop the competition further
- Produce a list of potential stakeholders to be engaged, e.g trade associations, water investment funds
- Innovation professionals, looking for more ideas form rapid implementation
- Undergraduate and postgraduate students, seeking fulfilling careers with prurpose
- University Knowledge Transfer teams , exploring faster insight generation
- Water sector HR teams, raising the profile of the sector as an attractive career option