CREATING INITIAL THOUGHTS
ON MARITIME TECH
In this article I read recently, Yurii Biriukov describes the maritime industry as positioned to undergo a remarkable transformation into an interconnected digital ecosystem. Reading it, I had the sense of something more than a technological layer bolted onto the top of an industry: an opening to use this moment of receptiveness to technological intervention to improve the underlying human/technical (or socio-technical) systems, on behalf of the people already working in them.
But this raises the question: what are the actual paths that avoid simply piling tech into the vortex of initial conditions and path dependencies, and instead deliver on the promise of a profoundly improved industry? What can entrepreneurs, technologists, and domain operators actually do to make this happen?
Here, humbly offered, is how I, a systems-thinking industry outsider, would use my position to realize this vision, were I a leader in the space:
1. Double and triple down on designing by observing and mapping end-to-end functions and experiences, so that what I build matches the system that actually exists rather than old ways of thinking.
- Design for cognitive and behavioral realities, not ideals; e.g. the bridge officer who tunes out a console crying wolf fifty times a watch, where the gain is attenuating the noise until the alarm that matters lands, not bolting on another screen that begs to be watched.
- Partner with institutional researchers; a maritime academy studying how seafarers actually retain safety and certification training between renewals, for example, knows things you could never learn on a product timeline.
- Find technological interventions, not just applications. Say certificates keep lapsing mid-voyage: the fix may live upstream in how voyages are crewed, not in one more expiry-reminder app.
2. Engineer adaptive systems and products. The ecosystem's magic is in its ability to evolve, proliferate, and speciate.
- Build platforms and infrastructure that enable rather than lock in or merely vertically integrate: e.g. an open API that training and certification providers can plug straight into, rather than a walled garden they have to work around.
- Pay close attention to the layers below when designing the layer above. Set an AI to build crew assignments, for instance, on top of certification and hours records nobody has reconciled, and it will confidently roster someone whose ticket lapsed last week.
- Capture the data you generate in forms other people can actually use, and lower the barriers to sharing it wherever the commercial and liability lines allow. Picture a scoped, anonymized slice a class society or P&I club could actually learn from.
3. Create incentives that realistically reward long-term, generative activity, not short-term or easily manipulated metrics.
- Measure what is meaningful to the active human actors in the system; e.g. whether seafarers' wages land correctly and on time, something the crew feel immediately, and almost never the count of dashboard logins.
- Hold a defined strategy for the health and longevity of the organization as a system; something distinct from individual health or simple economic measurements. Watch, for example, whether the shadow spreadsheets people kept as insurance quietly disappear, and whether new vessels go onto the system by default, not just this quarter's license revenue.
- Price the product on the outcome it creates, not the seats it fills; e.g. tie the fee to fewer compliance findings at port-state inspection, and you only win when the customer does.
Let's not be naive: I am not a domain expert, and none of these are easy to do in any context, but you don't need to take my word for it: these patterns have the power to deeply improve the system, (e.g. Toyota's role in rethinking socio-technical production systems) and those who can accomplish them will have a remarkable position in the future of the industry. So if you find yourself in some part responsible for building the next wave of technological transformation in maritime, here are the tools a systemic perspective can offer.