Like many innovators, Dean Cameron has an eclectic background, a desire to prove the experts wrong and, most importantly, a readiness to see that when experiments go awry, you may be staring innovation in the face.

In the case of Mr. Cameron, winner of this year's Asian Innovation Awards for his Biowater water-treatment system, what was staring back was a flush toilet. Trying to produce methane by leeching organic acids from human waste, he couldn't understand why the process wasn't working. The process is anaerobic, meaning it excludes oxygen, and Mr. Cameron thought his system was airtight. The container was welded down; there was no oxygen leaking in as far as he could see; but there wasn't enough methane being produced to even combust.

When he looked more closely, he found enough air embedded in the waste to keep the system partially aerobic. And while that prevented methane from being produced, Mr. Cameron says his interest was piqued by the aerobic organisms like beetles and fly larvae he observed.

"Whenever you find something surprising like that," he says, "it's worth thinking it over, because it's outside your expectation and therefore [there is] something really important you might learn from it."

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