Tech Tuesday: Rebooting Infrastructures in Water Management & Publishing

This week we are featuring @takadu and @scribd  two start-ups that are tackling some very wicked problems from two very different industries: Water Management and Publishing. Both are industries that have been traditionally heavily dependent on old pre-existing infrastructures. (You didn't think I would be able to make a link between the two, did you?)

Sometimes when the current systems break down, we need to have innovative entrepreneurs come in and offer solutions and that's what the Technology Pioneer Programme is all about.

 

Tech Tuesday is an on-going series profiling the Forum’s Technology Pioneers. The Tech Pioneers are companies that have been recognized by the Forum for ground-breaking and innovative approaches in tackling some of the world’s most wicked problems. Each week leading up to the Annual Meeting in Davos, we will be showcasing some of the 2011 Tech Pioneers. You can learn more about the Technology Pioneer Program on the Forum's website.

 

1.    Energy and Environment:  Water Scarcity

The Wicked Problem:

Water scarcity is one of the biggest issues facing the world. There is not only not enough clean drinking water to go around, the world loses much of what it does have through leaks in ageing water networks. More than four and a half billion gallons of water are lost in transit every day in the United States, according to the US Geological Survey, and 25% to 35% of water is lost every year worldwide, according to the World Bank.

 

The Tech Pioneer: Takadu

 
Location: Yehud, Israel
Number of employees: 20
Year Founded: 2009
Origins: Entrepreneurial start-up

 

 

The Wicked Solution: 

TaKaDu is tackling the multibillion dollar problem by bringing a smart grid approach to the water sector.
the company's software-as-a-service solution provides real-time alerts, reports and network views to utility personnel via a Web interface as well as SMS and e-mail notifications, without the need for any physical changes to the network or capital expenditure. TaKaDu’s smart data analysis software can be used to detect leaks, bursts, inefficiencies and equipment failures, enabling utilities to quickly respond
to breaks and minimize water loss and repair costs, and increase their efficiency so they can reduce energy consumption.

By combining smart IT and software-as-a-service, TaKaDu is radically improving the efficiency of water networks, significantly increasing the world’s water supply. It is also reducing energy consumption since water production and distribution require a lot of energy, so preventing water loss also prevents this waste.

 

 

2.    Information Technologies and New Media:

The Wicked Problem: 

Those who want to circulate their ideas often face challenging barriers by the publishing industry that makes it difficult to distribute material. Even traditional offline self-publishing is limited by physical proximity and availaiblity. How can we leverage the power of the web to empower people to widely share their ideas quickly and easily?

 

 

The Tech Pioneer: Scribd

Location: San Francisco, CA, USA
Number of employees: 45
Year Founded: 2007
Origins: Entrepreneurial start-up

The Wicked Solution:

 Scribd is a Web 2.0 document-sharing site that aims to make it easy for anyone to publish original work on the Web and find a readership. Scribd is today the largest social reading and publishing site in the world, attracting more than 50 million people a month. The site offers an eclectic collection of works,
including academic and research papers, short stories, sheet music, recipes, reports, books, magazines, comics and architectural diagrams. Scribd documents are accessible and shareable on any PC, reading or mobile device with a Web browser.

The company earns money from advertising, offering premium services and by taking a percentage of the sales of content sold from the site. It recently converted its entire collection, equalling billions of pages, to the HTML5 standard allowing it to take any form of written content in its original formatting and make it part of the content of the Web.

 

 

Know an innovative start-up that’s solving a wicked problem? Nominate them.