The key problem of focus is the fact that however the Dutch water-industry has a leading position with respect to know-how in their sector there isn’t worldwide diffusion and implementation of this knowledge. The Netherlands has many state owned knowledge institutions which perform a lot of basic as well as applied research.

The indication of the time lag between the knowledge level of Dutch institutions and foreign industries is hard to do. Main incentives for Dutch innovation in this industry initiated from historical events and geographical – & economical situation. Therefore living with water is “embedded in our vessels” during the years one could argue.

Indicators for the time lag could therefore include:
-Historical water related events;
-Geographical and economic situation;
-R&D / innovative expenditures in relation to generated profits, patents, new products, new processes (output efficiency);
-Position in the water innovation-network (e.g. knowledge generator, provider or requestor) ;
-Patents generated and cited;
-Number of firms in perspective of country’s population;
-Consultancy activities.

Precisely defining the time-lag is impossible due to the absent of data on the most indicators On the other hand one can only answer this question in perspective of each national water industry. The first 2 indicators give a good indication of the urge to innovate in the industry; the rest gives an indication of the experience and progress that have been made.
We argue although there do exist some recent innovations once can general say that the time-lag varies between 20 – 40 years. Especially the urge to innovate and the countries attitude are an important determinant for the former.