UKWIR – Water Talkers.

Sector: Utilities

Our brief: Can water companies innovate with their customers using open innovation?

What we did: 100%Open helped UK Water Industry Research to explore crowdsourcing at an industry level to find new ways to encourage consumers to use less water and be more careful about waste disposal. We used our Social Listening service to create insights and created a crowdsourcing site called Water Talkers to look outside of the conventional water R&D community for fresh ideas.

What happened: Water Talkers was a collaboration with 8 water companies that in 6 weeks found over 500 new insights and ideas and developed 14 innovation concepts for further prototyping and investment. There was a measurable positive engagement around water-related issues with 5546 comments on the site and many consumers reporting that they had changed their attitudes and behaviours.