Innovating Business Models

Innovating water sanitation and waste businesses

Innovating Business Models

Find guidance and inspiration to increase the impact, competitiveness and sustainability of you water-related business through innovation. 

As an entrepreneur, you will find sector-specific insights, hands-on knowledge and tools to improve your water, sanitation and waste management business through innovations in your operations and strategic positioning of your business model. Explore the innovation exercises and concrete strategies to save time, money and frustration on the journey to make your business models more viable. 

As a trainer, coach or staff of organisations supporting impact-oriented environmental businesses, you can explore the innovation approaches that start-ups from the Middle East and other parts of the world applied to increase the market success of their social enterprises. 

Use practical innovation exercises and guiding questions along the innovation process that help you think outside the box. Get inspired through the 20 innovation strategies and examples how these have been applied by 35 water, sanitation and waste related start-ups and enterprises. Explore the innovation factsheets and ask yourself: WHAT IF… you eliminated, reduced, raised or created ways to boost the impact, competitiveness and sustainability of your business model:

InnovatingBusinessModels desk15feb Infography Created with Sketch. What if you Reduced … investments into new infrastructure and instead made money from ensuring use of existing infrastructure? production or delivery costs by tapping resources that are abundantly available? efforts to detect problems through remote sensoring? costs to deliver on your value proposition by outsourcing parts of your value creation? your logistical costs by sourcing bigger volumes? What if you Raised … customer engagement to solve key logistical challenges? willingness to pay by selling convenience rather than basic services? your revenues by further refining your products? the added value for all through bundling products and services from different smaller businesses? your revenues by selling premium products to affluent customers to be able to reach the poor? your revenues by selling different parts of your offers to different customers? your impact and market share by scaling through franchisees? What if you Created … new solutions by using innovative technologies from other sectors? value by upcycling waste into valuable products? access to sustainable services through solutions that allow for gradual accquisition? additional offers that generate revenues by subsidizing your WASH business? solutions by letting nature work for you? What if you Eliminated … the most expensive step in your production or logistics? competitors by engaging them in cooperation instead of competing with them? bottlenecks in existing market systems to create value and accelerate local economies? negative environmental impacts of your operations? technological and service dependencies from international competitors through local and tailored value creation?
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Find guidance and inspiration to increase the impact, competitiveness and sustainability of you water-related business through innovation. 

As an entrepreneur, you will find sector-specific insights, hands-on knowledge and tools to improve your water, sanitation and waste management business through innovations in your operations and strategic positioning of your business model. Explore the innovation exercises and concrete strategies to save time, money and frustration on the journey to make your business models more viable. 

As a trainer, coach or staff of organisations supporting impact-oriented environmental businesses, you can explore the innovation approaches that start-ups from the Middle East and other parts of the world applied to increase the market success of their social enterprises. 

Use practical innovation exercises and guiding questions along the innovation process that help you think outside the box. Get inspired through the 20 innovation strategies and examples how these have been applied by 35 water, sanitation and waste related start-ups and enterprises. Explore the innovation factsheets and ask yourself: WHAT IF… you eliminated, reduced, raised or created ways to boost the impact, competitiveness and sustainability of your business model:

InnovatingBusinessModels desk15feb Infography Created with Sketch. What if you Reduced … investments into new infrastructure and instead made money from ensuring use of existing infrastructure? production or delivery costs by tapping resources that are abundantly available? efforts to detect problems through remote sensoring? costs to deliver on your value proposition by outsourcing parts of your value creation? your logistical costs by sourcing bigger volumes? What if you Raised … customer engagement to solve key logistical challenges? willingness to pay by selling convenience rather than basic services? your revenues by further refining your products? the added value for all through bundling products and services from different smaller businesses? your revenues by selling premium products to affluent customers to be able to reach the poor? your revenues by selling different parts of your offers to different customers? your impact and market share by scaling through franchisees? What if you Created … new solutions by using innovative technologies from other sectors? value by upcycling waste into valuable products? access to sustainable services through solutions that allow for gradual accquisition? additional offers that generate revenues by subsidizing your WASH business? solutions by letting nature work for you? What if you Eliminated … the most expensive step in your production or logistics? competitors by engaging them in cooperation instead of competing with them? bottlenecks in existing market systems to create value and accelerate local economies? negative environmental impacts of your operations? technological and service dependencies from international competitors through local and tailored value creation?
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Make your Customers Work

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Swim in Abundance

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Robin Hood

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Think Big

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The Lifeline Strategy

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Knock out Cost Drivers

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Technology Transfer

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Maintenance Mastery

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Make others work for You

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Take Money from Everybody

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Couch Potato

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Step Up your Game

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Don't be Mean be Green

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The Nature Effect

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Local Hero

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Building the future of water entrepreneurship in the Middle East

With this ambition, cewas set out to in 2013 to support environmental entrepreneurs in Middle East – a region where there are so many water issues, so many vulnerable groups waiting for water and other basic services. From this initial idea, it took a little while (and lots of coffee and talking) to make things happen, but with persistence and the generous support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) we rolled out the first incubation programmes, starting in Palestine, followed by Jordan and Lebanon, and ultimately Iraq.

Throughout this journey, we had the pleasure to work with a large number of marvellous, dedicated, highly creative and solution-oriented entrepreneurs. Many of them gradually developed innovative approaches to tackle challenges in different areas of their business model, ranging from product development via logistics to marketing or the overall positioning of their solutions.

The perspective 'Innovating Business Models' analyses and structures some the innovation strategies adapted by those entrepreneurs who lead the water-related entrepreneurs we have worked with throughout the Middle East. We have complemented these strategies with other innovative business approaches we encountered in other parts of the world to compile a comprehensive suite of strategies that is meant to inspire entrepreneurs who seek to achieve meaningful impact related to water, sanitation, hygiene, waste management and adjacent areas through sustainable business models.

The authors:

The development of this toolkit was led by cewas' Janek Hermann-Friede, who curated, conceptualized and coordinated the research around the presented innovation strategies. Aline Bussmann, Hannah Wuzel, Nashwan Dahir, Maisam Otoum and Cora Craigmile reseached specific cases, complemented first-hand insights from the Middle East and developed the Innovation strategy factsheets. Tandiwe Erlmann led the development of the suite of factsheets on 'Eco-Innovation: Tools and Processes'. We were inspired to develop this toolkit by the innovative solutions of the featured enterprises, who we admire for their courage to develop innovative solutions to tackle some of the key challenges around basic services: Safaa Group for Plumbing, Msabi, Envatechs, Plastic Bank, Organyclean, Live Love Recycle, Green Tech, Too Good To Waste, Eco Soap Bank, Saati, Spouts of Water, Compost Baladi, FabricAid, Benaa, Spring Health, Lootel Café, Innovating Green Technology (IGT), Drinkwell, Soil, Garv Toilets, Uduma, Sanergy, Clara Water, Washywash, Vetiver TT, Solvillion, Clear Water Farms, Cassa and Komodo Water.