Water BOOST Enabling Innovation for Future Ready Cities 2025

Water-BOOST Principle 3: An example of how enablers and stakeholder roles within the MVS can be compared and adapted across cities FIGURE 7 Source: World Economic Forum This principle frames innovation as a learning process across ecosystems. Rather than encouraging direct replication, Water-BOOST enables stakeholders to ask what works elsewhere, why it works and how it can be adapted to fit the institutional and governance context. By viewing cities not as isolated cases but as part of a broader community of practice, the framework supports local adaptation of enabling environments to better promote innovation, coordination and resilience. Together, these three principles form the operational logic of Water-BOOST: –Principles 1 and 2 guide the mapping and assessment of local ecosystems. –Principle 3 supports adaptation, scaling and strategic transformation.Section 3 demonstrates Principles 1 and 2 in practice – applying Water-BOOST across six cities to visualize their enabling environments and highlight focus areas for strengthening water innovation systems. These insights set the stage for cross-city comparison and adaptive strategy design (Principle 3) in section 4.Case study 1 (CS1) Case study 2 (CS2) A2G2 E3 E2G1 E5 A1A1E1 E4Water-BOOST compar es CS1 and CS2 and adapts a functional enabler (E4) from CS1 to address a missing enabler in CS2 A2G2 E3 E2G1 E5 A1A1E1 Missing enabler Water-BOOST: Enabling Innovation for Future-Ready Cities 21