Water Is the Next Supply Chain: A Masterclass in Business Resilience

What does water have to do with your business?

More than you probably think.

In this episode, we’re going to show you how water is already shaping your costs, your supply chains, and your ability to grow—whether you’re paying attention to it or not.

Because the reality is:

The companies that understand water as a strategic issue early… are the ones that will be more resilient, more efficient, and better positioned for what’s coming next.

This episode is a little different.

Instead of a single conversation, we’ve pulled together some of the most valuable insights from past guests on The Resilience Report—leaders working across food, infrastructure, innovation, and strategy.

Think of this as a masterclass.

By the end, you’ll understand:

• Where water is showing up as a hidden risk in business
• How leading companies are turning that constraint into innovation
• And what it looks like to treat water not just as a resource—but as a competitive advantage

You’ll hear from Kendra MacDonald, CEO of the Canada's Ocean Supercluster, who breaks down how water underpins entire economic systems.

From Tatiana Estevez, founder of Permalution, who’s building technology to generate water in places where it doesn’t exist.

From Callie Giaccone, formerly from Lufa Farms, who’s rethinking how we grow food using closed-loop water systems.

And from Marie-Chantal Savoy, founder of Savoy Strategy, who brings the leadership lens—how trust and decision-making shape the systems behind it all.

What ties all of these conversations together is simple:

Water is no longer just a background input.

It’s becoming a constraint.
A catalyst.
And in many cases—a competitive advantage.

So as you listen, think about your own business.

Where are you exposed?
Where are you dependent?
And where might there be an opportunity hiding in that constraint?

Think of this as a masterclass. Not just in water—but in how constraints reshape industries. And how the companies that understand those constraints early…are the ones that end up defining what comes next. 

Let’s start by zooming out.

Kendra MacDonald: So when we talk about ocean economy or blue economy or sustainable blue economy. Now we're talking about the regenerative ocean economy, and it really is everything that is touching the ocean. So it is impacting jobs and livelihoods. It is the fishery. It is shipping. It's aquaculture. It's actually a big piece is actually ocean tourism globally is a big piece of the ocean economy. Shipbuilding. And so it is quite vast, and we tend to think about it. We think about, you know, shipping as part of transportation, or we think about ocean tourism as part of tourism, but those all fit into what is the blue economy or ocean economy.

We tend to think about water as local—what comes out of the tap, what falls from the sky. But at a systems level, it’s something much bigger.

It’s infrastructure. It’s economic. And it’s deeply interconnected. And increasingly, it’s also where innovation is happening.

Kendra MacDonald: What's exciting is a lot of our entrepreneurs, they want to also make the ocean better. And so there's a high level panel on sustainability that has a number of countries involved, and what they really look at is production, protection and prosperity. So really, how does ocean health and wealth come together?

And what's really exciting is a healthier ocean is actually a more productive ocean. So those 2 things are actually not at odds.

This is the first shift. Sustainability and performance are no longer trade-offs.

In many cases—they’re the same thing. And that becomes even more clear when water becomes constrained.

Because when access becomes unpredictable… when quality declines… when demand outpaces supply… For most businesses, that’s a risk.

For some, it’s the starting point for entirely new solutions.

Tatiana Estevez: We see it as a very central solution for all the trends that we see in climate, national security, and resource resilience. It’s a solution that can adapt to both environmental and socio-political challenges. One of the things that really resonates with people is how this mimics nature—like the redwoods in California that can grow so large partly because they capture fog.

What’s happening here is a shift from extraction… to regeneration. 

From centralized infrastructure… to decentralized systems.

Tatiana Estevez: We see this as part of a broader shift toward decentralizing water access. Rather than always relying on massive infrastructure projects or vulnerable sources like groundwater, we can now create localized water hubs that are more adaptable and climate-resilient.

Scarcity forces a different kind of thinking. You stop designing for abundance—and start designing for efficiency. And nowhere is that more visible than in how we produce food.

Callie Giaccone: Yeah, so we use a hydroponic closed-loop system for our greenhouses. So basically, what that means is our plants grow in a substrate that's not soil that basically just holds the roots, and the water is, we add nutrients to the water, which provides the nutrients that soil would normally provide to plants.

And this is a closed-loop system, so we add the nutrients, and then the water cycles through the plants, and the plants absorb what they need, and then it goes back into the tanks, filters, and continues.

So, we filter about 90% of our water. So, it's a really good system in terms of water conservation, because as you said, it's a very precious resource.

And other industries truly are jumping on the new opportunities just being discovered:

Kendra MacDonald: And I think the other maybe piece that's exciting to that when we talk about human health is, there is so much of the biodiversity in the ocean that is new. We're finding new things all the time. And so if you take pharmaceuticals, for example, and new antibiotics and new drugs. There's solutions that we can find in the ocean. And equally, if you look at fashion, the fashion, industry, and beauty products are increasingly as they're looking to have more nature-based ingredients, they are also looking to the ocean for those.

Instead of extracting more, these systems reuse.

Instead of relying on distance, they collapse it.

Instead of treating water as expendable, they optimize it.

And in doing so—they don’t just reduce risk. They redesign the system.

But here’s where it gets more complex.

Because solving for water isn’t just a technical problem.

It’s a coordination problem.

It’s a trust problem.

Kendra MacDonald: So they now have their ships covered in sensors, sensors for everything but that is collecting huge amounts of data. And they're still needing the insights from that data. And so that's where we are trying to figure out how to collect the data. And then what is the information that we're actually getting that makes our businesses better as well as our use of the ocean less impactful.

More data. More technology. More solutions.

But that alone isn’t enough.

Marie-Chantal Savoy: The reality is many of these solutions that we need, whether for water, for clean energy, for sustainability have been here for years. These technologies are tried, they're tested. They've already been proven in the field, yet they remain underutilized or not fully adopted. And in today's rapid, evolving environmental landscape, these technologies are really essential to achieving a meaningful impact.

So despite the availability of this technology, despite the fact that we have more and more clean startups, that there's more funding, we continue to fall behind. And that's even more predominant in the water sector, water infrastructure or water resource management. So technology itself is not enough. As you said, it's trust you need to build trust with your customers. So you need to go beyond the technical spec. The technical feature you need to create a collaboration. As I was saying earlier, really working with your customers, so that there is a shared goal.

This is where water stops being an operational issue…

And becomes a leadership one.

Marie-Chantal Savoy: Water is ultimately the foundation of resiliency. No company, no matter its industry, no matter its size, no matter its ambition, can operate, grow, or even exist without water. I mean, it's the invisible force powering every factory, every supply chain, every data center, every employee's life and every community. Water and climate. They're inseparable. I mean climate change is primarily a water crisis, and unfortunately, water is too often invisible until there's a crisis that people start to think about it.

And that’s the risk.

Because by the time water becomes visible; it’s already a problem.

Marie-Chantal Savoy: In the last 50 years, the world has witnessed an explosion in water-related crisis. I mean, you know, real disaster, climate disaster. These events now strike 5 times more often than they did in the seventies. So what was once a rare event is almost routine now. I mean, across the world every single day on the planet a community faces catastrophic floods, storm droughts. I mean, if you look at the month of July, just that we just passed 31% of the US experienced severe extreme drought. That's significant. That's a 3rd of the US. So we need as organizations, we need to adopt climate-smart water solutions. Companies need to focus on water by using less, by recycling more, by trying to restore nature's waters. They need to identify the risk for their own organizations. They need to manage the risk. And this is not about saving money, because it actually, they can do this and create new opportunities for their organization. Again: there are these risks. If I take these risks and start looking at them, they could become new opportunities for us.

So the question isn’t whether water will impact your business.

It already does.

The real question is—how are you responding to it?

Tatiana Estevez: We want to impact five million people in the next five years. If we translate that into our water harvesting objectives, we aim to be collecting 100 million tons of water around the world. We want to introduce and democratize this new water source. That’s our vision for Permalution—to become the point of reference globally for cloud and fog water collection technology.

What you’re seeing across all of these examples is a pattern.

Water is no longer just a resource to manage.

It’s becoming: A constraint. A catalyst. And a competitive advantage.

So as you think about your own business—

Where are you exposed?
 Where are you dependent?
 And where might there be opportunity hiding in that constraint?

Because the companies that figure this out early…

Are the ones that will define what comes next.