Radical Thinking and Hands-On Sessions

In times of change looking in the rearview mirror may not give the best perspective on what’s coming, said Steinar Wasa Tverlid from Equnior as he led GCE Ocean Technology through our innovative process under Topplederforum.

GCE Ocean technology gathered leaders from the cluster this week to form the foundation for the clusters visions for 2030 and creating the roadmap to get there.

A strong cluster collaboration and commitment from partners and members is required for a cluster to succeed.

Moreover, to strengthening our ties to related clusters like NCE Maritime CleanTech, NCE Seafood Innovation Cluster and Ocean Hyway Cluster to mention a few.

Think Radically – Take Longer Steps

Steinar Tverlid works as an innovation specialist in Equinor lecturing about innovation and fasilitating many workshops yearly and he gave us an introcuction about how to systematically work with innovation, setting the scene for the workshops.

We should focus on identifying fundamental needs and opening up for radical thinking. A key take away is how radical thinking can help us make larger incremental steps in our everyday work.

For the Norwegian ocean industries to maintain their world-leading position they need to continue shaping the future and can not afford to wait for progress to happen, using the very interesting space between present- and new technology: Seeing opportunities and investing in new technology, which often is less efficient than the old is a challenging, but represents great future advantages.

The cluster’s board of directors and the management seeks to establish common technology and business development concepts and projects that will form the basis for growth, value creation, restructuring and international competitiveness.

From Radical Ideas to Concrete Work

While thinking radically- and long term on day one; day two was all about coming up with concrete cluster projects.

Finding minimum viable projects, gaining investment for a few mature ideas, but also with an eye on what could be the radical result in 2030. Developing technology in steps, which creates value along the way is essential.

Our partners and members generated, categorised, prioritised, sketched and shared ideas and the results with the other participants and we saw a lot of exiting new ideas come to life.

What is Next

The close dialogue and engaged involvement from our cluster partners and members during the forum and workshops has given us the tools to closely design our cluster strategy and services accordingly.

All this "input" is fundamentally important to further develop cluster activities to continue being relevant for the partners and members.

The results from this work will provide strong guidelines concerning how the resources in GCE Ocean Technology should be used in the future.

We are looking forward to seeing these radical ideas materialise in future cluster activities.