Water BOOST Enabling Innovation for Future Ready Cities 2025

Water-BOOST’s second principle highlights that both stakeholders and enablers within a water innovation ecosystem are distributed across three structural levels, each with a distinct role in enabling innovation and shaping the ecosystem’s functionality: –Governance level: This includes public utilities and large private concessionaires (G1) and policy-makers and regulators (G2), who are responsible for service delivery, policy formulation and regulatory enforcement. –Aquapreneurship level: Comprising innovators and entrepreneurs (A1) alongside investors and accelerators (A2), this level drives solution development, testing and scaling – from early- stage technologies to commercialization and market integration. –Supporting level: Made up of academia and research institutions (S1), together with civil society organizations (S2), these stakeholders contribute through technical expertise, advocacy, public engagement and capacity- building. While not directly responsible for implementation, they play a critical enabling role. Innovation ecosystem elements operate at governance, aquapreneurship and supporting levelsPrinciple 2 Water-BOOST Principle 2: Structural map of the water innovation ecosystem across governance, aquapreneurship and supporting levelsFIGURE 6 Source: World Economic ForumPolicy-makers and regulators (G2)Gover nance enablers (E1)Supporting enablers (SE2) Aquapr eneurship enablers (E3)Cross-level enablers (E2)Public utilities and large private concessionair es (G1) Multistakeholder enablers (E5) Investors and accelerators (A2)Innovators and entrepreneurs (A1) Minimal viable system (MVS) Supporting enablers (SE1)Academia and resear ch institutions (S1) Civil society (NGOs, professional associations and community groups) (S2)Supporting enablers (SE3)Cross-level enablers (E4) Governance level Aquapreneurship level Supporting level Water-BOOST: Enabling Innovation for Future-Ready Cities 19