Water-BOOST: Enabling Innovation for Future-Ready Cities

The report presents the Water-BOOST (Bridging Opportunities and Optimising Support Toolkit) framework, developed by the World Economic Forum and Imperial College London. It argues that water innovation fails to scale not due to a lack of technology, but because of fragmented 'enabling environments'—the networks of policies, financing, and partnerships connecting stakeholders. The framework identifies a 'minimal viable system' (MVS) consisting of four core stakeholder groups: public utilities/concessionaires, policy-makers/regulators, innovators/entrepreneurs, and investors/accelerators. Through case studies of six cities (San Francisco, Valencia, Singapore, Accra, Barcelona, and Bengaluru), the report demonstrates how the toolkit can diagnose systemic gaps and facilitate cross-city learning to adapt successful innovation mechanisms to different local contexts.

• Water innovation often fails to scale because of a 'valley of death' where promising technologies stall due to a lack of enabling environments, characterized by unclear rules, insufficient financing, and limited institutional support.
• The Water-BOOST framework is based on the concept of a Minimal Viable System (MVS), which is the essential configuration of enabling stakeholders and mechanisms required for a functional innovation ecosystem. If any core element is missing or poorly connected, the system cannot support innovation at scale.
• Successful water innovation ecosystems are structured across three levels: the Governance level (utilities and regulators), the Aquapreneurship level (innovators and investors), and the Supporting level (academia and civil society).
• In San Francisco, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) has driven innovation through regulatory mandates, such as the 2015 Non-Potable Water Ordinance requiring on-site water reuse for large developments.
• Singapore utilizes a state-led model where the Public Utilities Board (PUB) acts as both utility and regulator, providing 'Living Lab' testbeds that reduce adoption barriers for innovators like Wateroam.
• Accra's ecosystem is characterized by strong grassroots and NGO-led innovation, such as Pure Home Water's AfriClay filters, but it suffers from a critical lack of a structured investor and accelerator base.
• Valencia demonstrates strong private-sector leadership through Global Omnium and its spin-off Idrica, but this innovation remains largely confined to operational efficiency and lacks integration with public-sector transformation.
• Barcelona possesses strong public leadership and a unique multistakeholder cluster, the Catalan Water Partnership (CWP), but lacks the private investment depth needed to move ventures from pilot to market.
• Bengaluru's ecosystem is driven by vibrant bottom-up action and NGOs like WELL Labs and Paani Earth Foundation, but is severely hindered by institutional fragmentation and weak inter-agency coordination.
• The Water-BOOST framework enables 'strategic adaptation' where cities can identify and adopt specific functional enablers from peers; for example, Accra could adapt Bengaluru's investment mechanisms, while Bengaluru could learn from Accra's regulatory-to-utility alignment.

APA

World Economic Forum (2025). Water-BOOST: Enabling Innovation for Future-Ready Cities. https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Water_BOOST_Enabling_Innovation_for_Future_Ready_Cities_2025.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. Water-BOOST: Enabling Innovation for Future-Ready Cities. 2025. https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Water_BOOST_Enabling_Innovation_for_Future_Ready_Cities_2025.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=Water-BOOST: Enabling Innovation for Future-Ready Cities |date=October 2025 |url=https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Water_BOOST_Enabling_Innovation_for_Future_Ready_Cities_2025.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2025waterboost, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{Water-BOOST: Enabling Innovation for Future-Ready Cities}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2025}, month = oct, url = {https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Water_BOOST_Enabling_Innovation_for_Future_Ready_Cities_2025.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }