Designing for Big Transformations and Collaborating for a Sustainable Future in Ocean Industries
Designing for significant transformations in complex industries such as the maritime and ocean industries is challenging but essential for achieving ecological and sustainability goals. A shift towards creative and innovative thinking is required, where new technologies and business opportunities are considered, and completely different ways of solving challenges are experimented with.
The design process for significant transformations involves collaboration, stakeholder involvement, comprehensive task flow analysis, emotional aspects, and prototyping. Co-creation processes are critical, where considerable expertise comes together to achieve a shared mental model of what needs to be achieved. Introducing design processes to an engineering and industrial mindset requires education, exposure, and alignment with the vision.
Collaboration is crucial for achieving a sustainable and inclusive future in ocean industries. Many stakeholders are involved, and systemic challenges require systemic solutions. Incentives can come from different places, such as changing regulations, reward-based incentives, or governmental initiatives. Companies must be ecosystem-centric to create meaningful impacts.
Companies should work together to solve challenges in ocean industries, such as agriculture, energy, coastal ports, and ships, that significantly impact the world. Regulations must be carefully created to avoid unintended consequences, and strategic partnerships and understanding the ecosystem of companies they need to work with are becoming increasingly important.
Projects that involve collaboration, prototyping experimentation, and aligning the goals of everyone that contributes are dream projects for designing a sustainable and inclusive future in ocean industries. By adopting a human-centric approach, working together, and creating real commercial enterprises, we can design for a better future.
Reflections:
It was interesting talking with Paal Holter about how the industry can shift from an engineering mindset to an exploratory one. To face the challenges of industry transformation required for all to have a healthy and safe future, we cannot just optimize our practices today - we must experiment and invent the future methods of ocean industry business models. It was also interesting that developmental clusters were pointed out as one way to demo those new business models and test innovation in ecosystem development among the many interdependent companies and sectors in the ocean space today.
