Maritime Makers

Nakul Malhotra is Vice President, open innovation, marine products for Wilhelmsen Ships Service. He is an advocate of applying an open innovation philosophy to solve the big challenges of the maritime industry. He believes in ecosystem thinking, and the ability to collaborate with what he calls permeable organizational boundaries. He has been in the marine industry for 25 years covering marine engineering, business management, and even actual seafaring experience. Nakul is an advisory board member for a number of maritime startups and a mentor in incubators and accelerators. 

We talk about open innovation and always being “in beta” - both as businesses and individuals. We delve into the mindset shifts that the accelerating pace of change requires for success. AI and Ml play an increasingly important role and we talk about how the maritime industry is, in a sense, a time machine - an opportunity for creative people to apply new technology and business models from other industries.

Carsten Bullemer is a serial entrepreneur and holds a diploma in logistics and computer science. He has started various companies in the field of digitalization and maritime operations, like vesseltracker.com, trusteddocks.com, searoutes.com and portcall.ai.

He also organizes conferences like seadevcon, and the AIS summit, gives talks and hold seminars to bring the ideas of the blue economy into shipping and maritime.

We talk about startups in the maritime industry, how hard it is to transfer learnings from one startup to the next. Carsten’s startups have successfully pivoted several times and we talk about the specific changes that were made. We also talk about Seadevcon, taking place September 22/23, 2021, in Hamburg, which will have a very exciting ‘startup night’ featuring famous sports stars. 

Sjoerd de Jager is managing director and co-founder of PortXchange. 

He has (co) founded several start-ups and worked for large corporations including Phillips and DSM before joining the Port of Rotterdam in 2017.

We talk about the huge potential and challenges of transforming the port industry, specifically just-in-time arrival (JIT) and how increased collaboration, AI and data sharing are necessary to harness future disruptions.

David Ansley is an entrepreneur and advisor with a strong focus on digital disruption. He is owner of Ansley and Associates and director of management consulting company ACG global.

He has coached more than 100 leaders on Digital Disruption and advised many startups and corporate commercialisation projects over the past 20 years.

He lives in Sydney, loves surfing, skiing and red wine. 

We talk about platform business models and how to build and exploit network effects. We discuss paradigm shifting for business operation in light of ever increasing variability that makes robustness a non-viable option.

Patrick Ryan is Senior Vice President of Engineering and Technology for ABS, one of the largest classification societies in our industry, whom he is leading through their digitalization.

He has authored seven U.S. and international patents on industrial augmented reality technology, and in 2017, Smart Industry Magazine named him one of the “Top 50” industrial innovators in Smart Technology.

We talk about digital transformation and machine learning in the classification industry. Specifically the work Patrick and ABS are doing on modelling and simulation to improve safety and sustainability in the maritime industry. We dig into the multi-physics simulation approach and the combination of machine learning with physical models using simulated data. 

Steen Brodsgaard Lund is the CEO of RightShip and has a wealth of experience in the maritime industry - including 21 years with AP Moeller, advisory roles on digital transformation and as a startup founder. He has also been CCO and CDO at Executive Ship Management.

We talk about several critical aspects and challenges of innovation, transformation and disruption in the maritime industry, the role of startups such as RightShip, and some major waves of disruption including AI and machine learning.