Water

Desalination is not rocket science, it's something that people have been doing for hundreds of years, maybe thousands. Of course when it is done on a larger scale, it is done differently that in diy solutions but both approaches have one common problem (regardless of the the technic used, distillation or reverse osmosis): they are energy intensive.

The innovation that this collaboration created is in relation to the specific problem that this process has. The improvement is that not only they used solar power for this process but they actually eliminated the need for batteries. This means that they came up with a solution that tackles the actual problem desalination has. Apart from that they, they successfully tested it in the real world and it looks like they are launching a company in the next months, so it will be available to those who need it.