In this seminar, Jean-Michel Herrewyn, former CEO of Veolia Water, the world’s largest water company, will draw on his deep experience in the industry to offer some reflections on the role of private operators in providing water services. Water is a sector that incorporates the complexity of global trends with issues created by local needs, context and culture, creating an opportunity for the private sector to raise efficiency by introducing technical and managerial expertise but also raising challenges. As a result, private involvement has been highly controversial with both visible successes and striking failures and new models of private involvement are needed to meet social and environmental criteria. Urbanization, social and environmental responsibility and digitalisation are issues which are set to have a massive impact on the sector. Continued urbanisation will drive decentralised, modular solutions, while digitalisation promises to bring changes to the relationship between the utility and the customer and the way that infrastructure is planned and managed. The talk considers how the private sector can play its part in taking forward innovation in these areas.