A holistic approach gives better innovations

Smart data, new digital opportunities, and focus on innovating with sustainability are central if the offshore and maritime industry is to be competitive in the future.

Article originally published in the Energy Insight Yearbook 2020.

Smart data can help the industry accelerate the common goal of, for example, reducing C02 emissions, but this will require new ways of working, states Creative Director and digital innovation expert Katja Egmose. Real value-creation require more agile and closer collaboration across the company's departments.

Clarifying the goals

Together with Espen Jørgensen, Head of Ocean and Paal Holter, CXO and industry expert on digital innovation, Katja Egmose is heading EGGS Design's services to the offshore and energy sectors.

"A good start would be to ask questions to clarify what the goal is, whether it is ways to optimise the current workflows, and perhaps reduce cost?", recommends Katja Egmose. "Or perhaps to explore new ways of working to ensure a more sustainable service, and potentially expand the relevance and reach of your business?"

Leveraging on external perspectives

"We are the most experienced innovation consultancy in the field, having helped leading clients within their fields such as Aker BP, Maersk Tankers, ABB, Siemens and Kongsberg succeed with digital transformations for over a decade.", shares Espen Jørgensen. "We experience that companies benefit from external perspectives and support for their technological business development and implementation of new ways of working."

Kongsberg Maritime (former Rolls-Royce Marine): Vessel Performance is an example of successful digitalisation. While vessels are becoming connected, making large amounts of data available in on-shore locations, Kongsberg has increased their focus on new digital services. This application helps asset owners optimise their fuel consumption.

Digitalisation process with measurable impact

"The past ten years we've developed a holistic approach to secure the right focus through a complex digitalisation process and help align and define measurable impacts", Paal Holter explains.

"People-orientation and design-thinking methodologies will help you through exploration, concept development and testing. Technology and data can help the offshore industry achieve cost reduction through innovation. We advocate that companies include ambitions for a cleaner, healthier and safer future. But to succeed with innovation, the corporate organisation must also cater for the adoption of working with new services and products."

EGGS is involved in Aker BP's innovation initiative Eureka. It’s a portfolio of projects, that aims to identify ways of liberating and utilising Aker BP's vast amounts of data, such as process diagrams, work orders, seismic information, sensor data, and data related to their production processes. The goal is to create digital innovation without compromising on safe, efficient operations.

Users, organisational change and open-mindedness

The three designers sum up three aspects that companies succeeding with digitalisation within the offshore sector are ensuring:

They involve their professional users and future customers applying real user insight into their innovation processes.
They consider what organisational transformation is needed and cater for this for successful implementation of their innovations.
They are open-minded and discuss a wide selection of potential value additions that can contribute to their innovation processes and culture.