Grey suits, grey ties, grey hair. Oh what a grey day.
I’ve just come back from the Subsea Expo in Aberdeen. I was heartened to hear some thoughts I agree with expressed during the plenary session. Without pointing fingers, I heard that the UK regulator was keen to get operators to engage quickly with innovations coming from the supply chain (and saw the time-delays for making a decision, and taking action, as a major obstacle).
I also heard from a number of suppliers who were re-branding as “underwater engineering” so that they could engage with more proactive industries such as offshore wind – where their services and expertise were welcomed and where contracts were signed quickly.
I’ve had a bee in my bonnet for a while. It’s set-off by the general demographics of our industry which seems to get in the way of innovation being adopted.
Below are some images that I’ve shamelessly nicked from Google to illustrate my point. I put in the search term “Technology Innovation Team”, “Hackathon” and “Technology creatives”. Here are some results:
Now compare the demographics to our industry. No more comment required.
It’s not the OGTC’s fault – they’re trying really hard and succeeding, but we’ve just got to become more fun!.
What are you going to do to innovate in 2019? Who do you need? Where are they coming from? How are you going to access new ideas?
