I  DEEP DIVE INSIDER PROFILES 

Aquablu is building a workplace where people are expected to act on ideas early as the company works towards its mission to hydrate one billion people to thrive.

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Aquablu began with a question about something most people barely think about during the working day: water.

Friends Marnix Stokvis and Marc Van Zuylen saw an opportunity to rethink workplace hydration, creating smart water systems designed to make drinking water more accessible and enjoyable while reducing reliance on single-use plastic. Today, Aquablu serves more than 45,000 daily drinkers across Europe. Its systems have dispensed more than 44 million litres of water and helped save more than eight million plastic bottles.

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The company’s longer-term mission is much bigger. Aquablu wants to hydrate one billion people to thrive, using better access to water as a way to improve everyday wellbeing while reducing waste.

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Inside the business, that scale of ambition has produced a clear cultural belief: people should not need permission before they start making something better.

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Aquablu expects employees to notice what needs doing and feel able to act on it. Responsibility is given early, ideas are expected to travel regardless of where they originate, and people are encouraged to see the company as something they are actively building. The culture has grown around preserving that sense of momentum as Aquablu becomes larger.

“Great companies aren't built on strategy decks. They're built by people who refuse to wait for permission,” says co-founder Marc Van Zuylen. “What I love about this team is nobody hides behind their job title, they take the call, ship the fix, win the customer. That’s how we succeed.”

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That attitude makes ownership visible in everyday work. Someone who spots an issue with the customer experience is expected to help improve it. A person with an idea for the product can bring it forward. Internal processes are open to being questioned when the team sees a better way of doing something.

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Job titles still define areas of expertise, but they do not define the limits of somebody’s contribution. Aquablu has deliberately tried to keep the entrepreneurial behaviour that shaped the company in its earlier years, even as more people have joined.

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That suits employees who enjoy working inside a business that is still changing quickly. The company describes its team as a group of game changers, and much of that identity comes from being comfortable with problems that do not yet have an obvious answer.

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Co-founder and CEO Marnix Stokvis sees that response to difficulty as one of the clearest characteristics of the team. “The fastest way to get this team moving is to tell them a problem is too hard,” he says. “They're wired to chase the challenge, not avoid it. That's the whole culture, really. People who refuse to settle for the obvious answer.”

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The expectation is that employees will experiment their way towards better answers. A challenge in the product or an obstacle in the business can become something to investigate and improve, with people given enough freedom to find a route through it themselves.

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That sense of personal challenge extends beyond the work. Thirteen members of the Aquablu team recently chose to take part in an Ironman event in Sardinia. It did not begin as a company initiative. It came from the employees themselves and gradually became another example of the way people inside the company tend to approach difficult things.

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For Stokvis, that is part of what makes the team interesting. “The people here are obsessed. And not just with Aquablu. They push themselves outside the office as hard as they push themselves inside it.