Developing T-Shaped Water Professionals: Building Capacity in Collaboration, Learning, and Leadership to Drive Innovation

As we progress into the 21st century, change is an increasingly central theme for water professionals and for professionals in sectors where water plays a central role. Building the capacity of professionals in water and closely related sectors to lead such change will be an essential component of the response to global water challenges this century. This paper provides a contribution by critically developing a concept, the T-shaped water professional, as a framework for the design of curricula for educational programs to build the capacity of water professionals to stimulate and drive processes of innovation and change. The T-shaped water professional concept integrates insights from leadership, organizational management, learning theory, collaboration, critical thinking, and praxis. In doing so, the concept provides a response to two basic questions - (i) what skills what skills and knowledge do water professionals need to stimulate and lead change, and; (ii) how can we develop them?