Maritime Innovation: My 10 Secrets for Success
Leonardo da Vinci's impression of a flying ship
December 14, 2016
In my role as innovation manager I have often sought to solve internal problems by exploring solutions together with external parties. Personally, I am a believer in collaboration. But I am the first to recognize that collaborative work is actually not that easy. It requires a whole lot of specific skills, structure and not least governance, to really be successful. And so I would hereby like to share with you my 10 top secrets for how to succeed with your innovation efforts in the maritime industry.
1. Start with a compelling problem, not with a solution
So often I see things starting off at the wrong end; an inventor comes knocking on the door to push his gadget to the market. It can be a fuel additive, a performance monitor, a new hull paint, etc. In my mind, in such a situation, you are already too late. You should have started with the question, not with the answer. Because that answer will not likely be the right answer to your problem!
2. Identify the mutual value drivers, and how to create win-win
It is great to have partnerships. It feels good, and it looks good too. Signing that Memorandum of Understanding feels like a huge milestone, worth celebrating. All too often however, the underlying value drivers are not fully acknowledged or understood by all parties, and the collaboration stalls. It can easily revert into something on glossy paper only; something for the marketing and communications department to make a nice story about, however not actually creating any real underlying value.
3. Make sure you know who the real sponsor is
Here’s one for you: The project team has super high morale, everybody is working hard and all, however small, successes on the way are celebrated. Then you all suddenly sink through the floor because someone higher up in the organization has decided things are not progressing as intended and wants to stop it all. What was it that happened there, really? Were you all not doing great? What you probably had forgotten, or not thought enough about, was who your real sponsor is. This person might be your CEO, or a VP from a neighboring department, or even a person in the company you are collaborating with. Make sure you know.
4. Recognize what capabilities are needed at every stage of your innovation process
Shipping is not Google. The shipping environment is highly operational and for that reason any innovation activity will have to – if not support – so at least not obstruct, the daily operations. This requires careful assessment of how to use operational resources (which you often need for validating and improving initial ideas), as well as assessing what competencies you need to bring in from the outside. Be these competencies either from a consultant or from your collaboration partner. The same resource is typically not needed at every stage of your innovation process, and this needs to be properly planned. Make sure your innovation activity is not disruptive to your organization, unless that is indeed your scope!
5. Don’t go to your neighbor just because it is convenient
I am often surprised about how stale the collaboration environment in the maritime industry actually is. It is always that same university collaborating with that same maker or owner; it is the same professor reaching out to the same connection point in the organization. Very often there is no formal strategy behind turning to that collaboration partner – it’s just handy. Because you know who to call. The question you must ask yourself here is really what your main driver is, and what your ambition is. Maybe it’s OK to always reach out to the same guy, because you know that work will be done. But if you do that, then don’t expect that the results will be much different from what you have always received before.
6. If you are expected to create change, make sure that is also your mandate
This might be a bit controversial, but I often find that innovation activities are not really meant to go all the way. After the initial benefit case has been concluded, the next gate decision will often be taken by someone else, and you may not be part of that onward journey. More so, in a depressed market, innovation activities struggle to receive sufficient support. Whenever you start any ambitious innovation activities, make sure you know what your mandate is to bring about change. Maybe you are not up for walking that extra mile if you know that the next gate is a closed one.
7. Don’t chase that funding unless you are sure you really need it
If you take a look around, there are actually a lot of funding opportunities out there to support your innovation activities. There is EU money to get hold of, there are regional and local funds to chase. But lo and behold, maybe they are not worth the effort! There are always certain criteria to fulfill in order to be eligible for any public or private funding, and these criteria may put barriers to your objectives, or skew, delay or blur them. Make sure you have done your assessment fully, and that you are clear why you opt for this funding at all.
8. Collaboration is difficult - Make sure to set the foundation right
When you start strategic collaboration with a partner, you will discover that you often don’t work in a seamless manner; you have your ways, systems and structures that you follow, and the other party has hers. These differences can be dealt with, in a smart way so to both support and bridge each other’s differences and to not cause disturbances elsewhere in the organization. It requires however that you agree on a way of working together from day 1, and that you make sure that both organizations have necessary management support to do so.
9. There is little value in having a huge idea pipeline: Focus on the hard questions, and to solve those
Successful innovation has a lot to do with having a healthy innovation culture in your organization, and a steady pipeline of ideas. Often however, my experience is that this is casually translated into “let’s come up with as many ideas as possible”, and “let’s invite as many as possible to an ideation session, because this will build culture!” As you may have guessed, I’m not a big believer of this approach. In the shipping and maritime industry today, the challenges are so complex, that a scratching on the surface by suggesting e.g. “put solar panels on deck”, essentially holds minimal value. What you should instead spend your time on, is to find the hard questions. With a compelling problem statement, you are on the right track to potentially come up with something new. But don’t work with too many problems at the same time - that will only exhaust everyone, including yourself.
10. Agree what success looks like, and celebrate clever failures
If innovation was easy, everybody would be doing it, and doing it well. Many in the maritime industry have, in my opinion, unclear expectations about what innovation activities can give them, and what good looks like. Think about this for a second: You walk into a room with no furniture, and you are asked to furnish it with something new, that no-one has even seen before. You have a budget, and a timeline, but you don’t know who to pose your questions to. The new furniture hasn’t been invented yet. So you need to go out and find some hints and clues, to give you answers on how you can furnish this room. It doesn’t sound very easy, does it? It’s not. But what can make it even more brain-wrecking, is that when you, cheerfully, come back with that see-through floating recyclable sofa, your customer says it should have been black and furry. And you realize you didn’t really agree up front what success looks like. Until expectations are clear, and reasonable too, I’m afraid that innovation will continue to be marginal in this mature but exciting industry.