Making Money with Technology

You have a new idea. Your new idea involves using technology. You think you have an innovation on your hands. But wait… it’s only considered an innovation after it has successfully been implemented. And in the business world, if something is considered a success that means you have either increased your income, or managed to lower your costs after implementation.

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Our entrepreneurial genes endow us with an almost unlimited supply of ideas. But the ability to make money from our ideas is not always as evident. This is especially the case with technology, as it changes at the speed of light, and sometimes at the blink of an eye, we can miss out on an opportunity to make our ideas work for us. So we attended the work shop, Tech & Money, by Janne Vereijken of the Dutch-based consulting company, Spring Company, at the Connecting the Dots con ference held on October 22nd to 24th to learn more about how we can make money with our technology ideas.

Success Factors The key to a successful technological product or service venture, according to Vereijken, is to identify the ideas for products or services that are both commercially feasible, desirable and technically possible, all in one. If any of those three components are lacking, then your idea will never take off the ground. The initial questions to ask would be: Which client segments could benefit from the innova tion? How can technology solve this? How am I going to make money with this? Then, make sure your potential customers are ready and actually want this innovation. There are many ambitious innovative products that ended up without their predicted hype. The Segway, 3D television and Google Glasses for consumers are famous examples of prod ucts that were expected to become household items and ended up getting adopted by only a small few. They were commercially feasible and technically possible, but not sufficiently desirable. The other key component in your endeavor is to think about how you are going to make money from this. In other words, what is your business model or your earning model? Either you are trying to generate more income or lower your costs, whichever the case you need to come up with a way in which to build a framework that will allow you to make a profit.

ness models for different types of technology. Vereijken’s simple example explains this busi ness model concept. Take for instance a car: you can buy it, lease it, rent it, share it (SnappCar), take a taxi (Uber), and even let it drive itself (Google’s self-driving car). This list includes seven business models in which you can make money with one technol ogy. Vereijken calls this the Earning Model. For every idea that you want to launch, you need to assess which Earning Model you will use with the technology you will be implementing. During her workshop, Vereijken covered several earning models and examples of ways in which companies have used technology to create value and make money. • The Share Model: (Examples include: Airbnb,

SnappCar and Peerby). They all share their property to third parties. Airbnb is a company where homeowners are offering their homes to tourists on vacation. SnappCar shares a car ride when you’re going in the same direc tion. Peerby enables you to borrow the things you need from people in your neighborhood. Think: what desirable assets can be shared between people or businesses that can be fea sible using technology? • Platform Model: (Examples include: Uber,

Apple App Store, Facebook, Amazon). These companies open up their business to other companies. They use their platforms to sell for others. Some companies like Uber are platforms from the start, while others became platforms.

• Licensing to Consumers Model: some are paid, like for instance Windows while others, like Skype, give their services away for free, but you have to pay for permission to down load additional features (freemimum model) • Licensing to Competitors Model: Pixar devel oped amazing software to make its animated movies, then sold it to other competitors in the same business. This is a great way to earn back your investment. So maybe ask yourself: how can I get others to use my technology? • The Co-creation Model: (Examples of this model include: Threadless, Design Your Own Shoes, UltraMaker2 (3d printing) and Lego). Much of what they offer utilizes the creativ ity of their customers. These companies each built a community in which the customers upload great content, ideas and projects. That enables them to keep their own organization lean and low in costs. • The Do It Yourself Model: (Examples include:

Shopify, Wordpress, AppBuilder, Etsy and Blurb). You don’t need expensive consultants or other service companies, but software ena bles you to do things yourself. • The Access Model: A type of business whereby instead of owning something, you gain access to it. Some examples are Netflix,

Spotify and Bundles • The Help 2 Choose Model: (Examples include: booking.com and verzekeringssite. nl). These companies will list your options and help you choose the deals that best fit your needs, saving you time and money.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the internetworking of physical devices, vehicles (also referred to as “connected devices” and “smart devices”), build ings and other items—embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actu ators, and network connectivity that enable these objects to collect and exchange data. Source: Wikipedia

Examples of IoT: The Apple Watch, Amazon Dash Button, anything con necting your (home) appliances remotely. The Internet of Things (IoT) is the in ternetworking of physical devices, vehicles (also referred to as “connect ed devices” and “smart devices”), buildings and other items—embedded with electronics, software, sensors, ac tuators, and network connectivity that enable these objects to collect and exchange data. Source: Wikipedia

There are also endless ways to use technology to lower costs. UPS, for example, uses big data for route optimization, planning and to figure out the most efficient way to pack their pack ages in their delivery vans. Predictive maintenance through the use of sensors and other IoT (see inset box) is also booming.

Do’s and Dont’s Making money from technology can be tricky. Here are some of Vereijken’s tips for smoother sailing: • DO put your customer’s needs up front. • Generate lots of ideas. DON’T stop at your first great idea because this may stop you from seeing even greater opportunities. • DO prototype quickly - technology evolves quickly. Start testing as soon as possible and don’t wait until you have perfected things. • Test your business case; as soon as your prod uct is out there you can test it in a low-key setting before you expand and increase your expenditure. That way you can start making improvements based on actual feedback from your real clients. This will avoid unnecessary time, money and effort, and you will make changes based on your customers’ feedback.

Definitely Not a Waste of Time Wastewater

What is wastewater? Yes, there’s poop in there, but besides flushing the toilet, we also produce wastewater domestically when we take a shower or wash our dishes and cars. Outside of the household, it’s produced from industrial site drainage, agricultural run-off and even the residues that come from roads, sidewalks and roofs when it rains, just to name a few sources. Wastewater typically includes human waste, soaps, solvents, pharmaceuticals and other chemicals, such as fertilizers you may use in your own yard. Wastewater from industry can include germs, pesticides and even radioactive materials – all of which is largely pumped into our oceans.

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Wastewater should end up in a treatment plant before it’s discharged into bodies of water, but more often than not, this doesn’t hap pen. Christopher Corbin, Program Officer for Pollution, Caribbean Environment Program, speaking at the Wastewater Conference Curaçao 2016, stated that in developing countries, more than 80% of wastewater is dis charged into the waterways because the infrastructure is either inadequate or non-existent. We end up relying on our oceans as the world’s largest wastewater treatment plant. It causes numerous problems globally, most often a threat to human health. Each year, 1.8 million children die due to diarrhea-related diseases worldwide. It’s also destroying aquatic envi ronments, contributing to dead zones - aquatic environments almost completely devoid of life. Some of this destruction is evident right here in the waters surrounding Curaçao.

A Valuable Resource Ironically, wastewater can be a valuable resource. When properly managed, wastewater

can be used in agriculture, reducing the need for scarce and expensive fresh water and expensive fertilizers. Wastewater sludge can be used to manufacture construction materials and generate biogas and biofuels. One high school student, Nurul MohdReza, was able to generate energy with wastewater by developing a prototype of a specialized, single-celled microbial fuel cell.

At the Wastewater Conference, Mike Gosselin, manager of wastewater treatment for the City of Kelowna, in Canada, spoke about how the Kelowna treatment facility is managing and reusing its wastewater. The facility uses 55% of it’s wastewater in agriculture, in part produc ing Ogogrow – a soil amendment that gives a nutrient boost to the soil, as well as amending the soil’s water absorption. It uses wastewater in heat recovery systems, a local college currently using it for cooling its facility. Wastewater in Kelowna is also used to create ponds for wildlife and provides enough energy to power 40 homes per year.

Commercial sites around the world are already using wastewater to their advantage. Gosslin mentioned that in its first year of using wastewa ter in place of water for non-potable needs, Le Sport Resort in St. Lucia saved 3.8 million liters (or 1 million gallons) of water with significant cost savings.

Financial Impact One in four jobs in the Caribbean are related to the fishing industry or tourism; both are directly impacted by the health of the sea. According to Corbin, the Caribbean Sea gen erates more than US $3 billion annually from

tourism and fisheries. The estimated value of shoreline protection services provided by Caribbean reefs is between US $700 million and US $2.2 billion per year. Net benefits derived from tourism, fisheries and shoreline protection could be reduced due to coral degra dation by an estimated US $350 - $870 million per year if nothing is done to stop it. Within the next 50 years, coral degradation and death could lead to losses totaling US $140 million to US $420 million annually.1

Health care costs related to cholera, gastroenteritis and hepatitis are exorbitant. Approximately $260 billion per year is lost to diseases related to poor sanitation.2 The lack of proper waste disposal creates the spread of germs that cause disease. This includes risk of exposure to disease-causing toxins from wastewater that is dumped into the oceans, making people sick from consuming seafood that lives in these polluted environments, drinking inadequately treated water, and even from water recreation such as swimming, snorkeling and diving.

According to Corbin, “Lack of money is not always a valid excuse; there is a need to develop an opportunistic mind. There are ways to look at the return on using wastewater effectively: investors looking for a return, governments looking to avoid paying subsidies and the pub lic wanting to pay lower bills. Money talks – there is money to be saved and made from new revenue mindsets. Innovative approaches con sumer outreach and private sector involvement to educate people to change local perceptions of waste is crucial for maximum impact and to ensure wise investments.”

Wastewater Conference Curaçao 2016

The Bedrijvenplatform Milieu (BPM), or the Curaçao Business Council for Sustainable Development, recently hosted the confer ence: Intelligent reuse of wastewater, safeguarding our coastal waters and marine life for future generations. This two-day confer ence, which also included pre-conference training sessions, covered a variety of topics related to the effects of wastewater. Topics ranged from: the financial burden and economic opportunity in the Caribbean; develop ments in wastewater management on Curaçao and the reuse of treated water to sustain the environment; to the impact wastewater is currently having on our coral reefs and how a city in Canada is using it’s wastewater in effective and economic ways; with many more topics to fill the informative two days.

With speakers from the Caribbean and Canada, the conference was informative and en lightening, broadening the view of the attendees as to the importance of wastewater, its global impact and the financial and environmental repercussions on the world population.

For more information about this conference, as well as other conferences hosted by BPM, check out their website: www.bpmcuracao.com or send an email to: info@bpmcuracao.com.

Wastewater Facilities in Curaçao Ursel Cordilia, the project leader at Public Works Curaçao, spoke about wastewater man agement and facilities on the island. There are four sewage treatment plants (STP), managed by Public Works Curaçao, on the island: Klein Kwartier, Abbattoir, Klein Hofje and Tera Kora. Future costs for renovating and updating of the facilities and operations are projected to cost the island around 37,200,000 NAF. This includes a much-needed renovation of (STP) Klein Hofje, renovation of the downtown sewer system and other projects.

Currently, only around 33% of the island’s residents are connected to the sewage system because there are no regulations requiring it. According to Cordilia, “Protecting the envi ronment and public health is the responsibility of the government.” The Ministry of Traffic, Transport and Spatial Planning recognizes the need to take action and it has a short-term and long-term water management plan for the island. In the next five years, the minis try plans to work out concrete measures for tackling five pilot areas – Rif, Spanish Water, Zapateer, Piscadera Bay and Lagoon Jan Thiel. In the long-term (the next 15 years), the plan is to develop a policy on sustainable water man agement covering the entire ground water cycle on Curaçao, including rainwater, groundwater, wastewater, lagoons, waterways, dams, etc. Preventing wastewater from polluting the envi ronment is easier and cheaper than dealing with the consequences of the pollution it creates. We can increase our wastewater treatment capacity, create better infrastructure to better manage storm water run off, changing our practices at home and at work to reduce the amount and toxicity of wastewater, as well as safely reuse wastewater rather than flush it away. If we manage wastewater properly, we can turn a harmful pollutant into a valuable resource. As Corbin so eloquently put it, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel, there are plenty of resources and reports available – just get started!

For more information, you can browse these websites: www.gefcrew.org, www.cep.unep.org.

1http://www.cep.unep.org/factsheets/ 2https://www.ted.com/talks/rose_george_let_s_talk_ crap_seriously#t-400588