In an industry accelerating towards change and challenges at every turn, and with growing recognition of shipping’s place in a holistic ocean and ‘Blue Economy’, the issue of how to marry business activity with the aims of developing an intelligent sector are becoming more relevant than ever before.
Speaking to ZeroNorth, Steffen Knodt, Head of the Sustainable Subsea Solutions Centre, Rostock, recently shared his thoughts on the Blue Economy and how so-called ‘purpose driven’ solutions have the potential to generate a tremendous impact not only in shipping, but also for our wider ocean and Blue Economies.
Read more about our discussion with Steffen, and the insights he shared in the latest video from our Compass Discovery Series.
Read more: Compass Discoveries: Preparing for Digital Transformation with Ibrahim Gokcen
A more intelligent industry
Currently, we are seeing an increasing number of collaborations and partnerships amongst maritime organisations, not only encouraging information sharing and fostering transparency, but also unifying the industry’s strategy to tackle some of our most significant challenges.
Is this symptomatic of shipping becoming a more ‘intelligent’ industry? Steffen says that there is an important distinction to be found between ‘smart’ sectors, and ‘intelligent’ industries. He argued that connectivity and streamlined operations may result on a more unified and level playing field, but that truly intelligent solutions come from thinking laterally and thinking at pace.
“We are still dependent on projects, we have a lack of practical use cases to test [new solutions], and when it comes to decarbonisation or climate change, we need to be part of these changes,” says Steffen. In short? “We need to be fast.
Lora Jakobsen, ZeroNorth’s Head of Marketing hosted the discussion, and raised the topic of the power of data in small industry. Lora highlighted that individual companies creating their own solutions isn’t enough — instead, a data platform which benefits the whole industry is vital.
Read more: ZeroNorth Launches BunkerAction Bunker Recommendation Software.
