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Barriers to Innovation in Urban Wastewater Utilities: Attitudes of Managers in California

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Abstract

In many regions of the world, urban water systems will need to transition into fundamentally different forms to address current stressors and meet impending challenges—faster innovation will need to be part of these transitions. To assess the innovation deficit in urban water organizations and to identify means for supporting innovation, we surveyed wastewater utility managers in California. Our results reveal insights about the attitudes towards innovation among decision makers, and how perceptions at the level of individual managers might create disincentives for experimentation. Although managers reported feeling relatively unhindered organizationally, they also spend less time on innovation than they feel they should. The most frequently reported barriers to innovation included cost and financing; risk and risk aversion; and regulatory compliance. Considering these results in the context of prior research on innovation systems, we conclude that collective action may be required to address underinvestment in innovation.

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Acknowledgments

We thank survey respondents, who remain anonymous in accordance with UC Berkeley’s Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects. We are grateful to Bobbi Larson and Adam Link for feedback and help with implementing the survey. Gary Darling, Bob Whitley, Kevin Hardy, and Mike Connor provided useful input. Amie Simmons and Luke Sherman provided capable research assistance. Partial funding was provided by National Science Foundation Grant 28139880-50542-C to the ReNUWIt Engineering Research Center, by the Swiss NSF, and by the Wheeler Water Institute.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wheeler Water Institute, School of Law, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Michael Kiparsky

  2. Stanford Law School and Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Barton H. Thompson Jr.

  3. Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Christian Binz

  4. Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    David L. Sedlak

  5. Utrecht School of Governance, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Lars Tummers

  6. Department of Public Administration, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Lars Tummers

  7. Environmental Social Science Department, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag), Dubendorf, Switzerland

    Bernhard Truffer

  8. Faculty of Geosciences, University of Utrecht, Heidelberglaan 2, 3584 CS,  Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Bernhard Truffer

  9. Engineering Research Center for Re-Inventing the Nation’s Urban Water Infrastructure (ReNUWIt), National Science Foundation, Stanford, CA, USA

    Michael Kiparsky, Barton H. Thompson Jr., Christian Binz, David L. Sedlak & Bernhard Truffer

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  1. Michael Kiparsky
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Correspondence to Michael Kiparsky.

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Kiparsky, M., Thompson, B.H., Binz, C. et al. Barriers to Innovation in Urban Wastewater Utilities: Attitudes of Managers in California. Environmental Management 57, 1204–1216 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-016-0685-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-016-0685-3

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