Our Bluewave innovation team have been focussing on finding innovative ways to stop leakage, at the Northumbrian Water Innovation Festival 2023.
The team sponsored and led a ‘sprint’ – a five-day event bringing together a dynamic group from inside and outside the water sector. The group worked together to develop solutions to reduce leakage across our communities.
Everyone taking part gave 100% of their energy and enthusiasm and shared some incredible ideas on how to tackle leakage. They were also joined by inspiring guest speakers and entrepreneurs with some ground-breaking innovations for reducing leakage, including a small robot that tracks leaks in the home via an app, a toilet leak alarm, and a dashboard for alerting about leaks across a whole community.
After five intense days, the team made fantastic connections, developed promising ideas and even have their sights set on submitting at least one idea as part of a bid to the Ofwat Innovation Fund. They managed to take part in some great talks and games, and they were also thrilled to donate unused sprint materials to local schools and charities, where they can continue to be enjoyed.
The sprints are creative, time-focussed events, that follow a process of identifying problems, opening up the potential for a wide range of possible solutions, before focussing on creating and testing the best solutions to take forwards. The idea is to make rapid progress towards solving a specific challenge, to achieve ‘a year’s worth of work in a week’, according to the innovation festival’s organisers.
The festival is the largest innovation event in the sector, bringing together more than 2,500 people from 650+ global organisations to work together to solve challenges facing the sector. The event is set up like a British summertime festival, enabling an atmosphere that encourages collaboration, creativity and freedom.
The team is excited to take forward the ideas developed during the sprint, so watch this space for what comes next! If you’d like to know more or wish to get involved next year, drop the team a line as they’d love to chat: [email protected].