Water bites back in 2022Systemic failures in the water sector led to big challenges to economic development, business growth, ecosystems and civ...
Published on by Water Network Research, Official research team of The Water Network
Systemic failures in the water sector led to big challenges to economic development, business growth, ecosystems and civil society during 2022.
By Will Sarni
This is the time of year to look back and to look ahead.
This essay focuses on looking back at my predictions for 2022, published in the Jan. 7 Liquid Assets column, "The year ahead for water: The Roaring '20s and creative destruction." I believe I was mostly right. (Feel free to challenge this when I post to GreenBiz and LinkedIn!)
The theme for that article was that we are in the Roaring '20s for innovation and witnessing the "creative destruction" of how we extract water, transport it and treat it. I proposed that technology innovation would be a primary driver for creative destruction of existing business models, as the global economy emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic.
First a recap about the concept of creative destruction. As I mentioned last year, in the early 20th century, economist Joseph Schumpeter described the dynamic pattern in which innovative entrepreneurs unseat established firms through a process he called "creative destruction." According to Schumpeter, and discussed in detail in "The Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction," the entrepreneur not only creates invention but also creates competition from a new commodity, new technology, new source of supply and a new type of organization. This innovation propels the economy with "gales of creative destruction," which "incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one."
FULL ARTICLE: https://www.greenbiz.com/article/water-bites-back-2022