New York City may very well become a nexus for new ideas in shipping, if one driven individual's dream comes true.
For the past 17 months, SUNY Maritime College professor Christopher Clott has been on a mission to get the New York Maritime Innovation Center (NYMIC) off the ground in downtown Manhattan.
"The mission is to elevate the marine industry as an engine for innovation and technology," he says from his office in the city's Bronx borough.
"With an entrepreneurial focus, the centre can spur development and serve as a bridge between the tech, maritime, logistics and finance sectors to connect start-ups to maritime supply chain interests globally."
Global interest
He says a meeting space near the Grand Central Terminal rail hub would be ideal for attracting overseas interests to a city that provides the perfect environment for innovation.
"You have in this maritime capital the maritime shipping industry, the finance piece, the insurance piece and a big chunk of the logistics industry," he says.
"You also have the liner side, Port of New York/New Jersey, the shipowner piece, the bankers, the charterers. You’ve got everybody here so you can access this and globally that’s huge."
Clott and his fellow engineering professor Richard Burke co-founded the centre in October 2017 after Finland’s Entrepreneurship Exchange (EEX) proposed launching a start-up accelerator.
WHAT: More than 100 tech designers, developers and domain experts will gather for 36 hours of building prototypes and rapid-fire market validations for newest technology innovations in shipping. Winners will receive cash prizes and chance to partake in NYMIC Bootcamp Accelerator. The event is being held by R1 Labs and the New York Maritime Innovation Center (NYMIC).
WHERE: Company, 335 Madison Avenue, New York, NY
WHEN: 29 to 31 March
FOR INFO: Email Carleen Pan at events@r1labs.com
EEX backed out of the idea but Clott and Burke ran with it as shipping began to embrace digital innovation as a way to stay profitable in the face of major changes such as IMO 2020.
"The maritime industry was always very slow to adopt new technologies," Clott says.
Investment opportunities
At the same time, hedge funds are finally beginning to see investment opportunities in a very opaque, fragmented industry that is difficult for outsiders to understand, he says.
"So, we saw this innovation center as a place that would be a match point where developers and entrepreneurs could work with venture capitalists and the maritime industry in a neutral setting and really create a network," he says.
"That network today is not there."
The school has put $70,000 toward the centre, which today consists of just Clott and a student worker and is guided by the SUNY Research Foundation.
Clott says he has attended many shipping conferences around the world seeking buy-in from outsiders.
Changing the world
That footwork, he says, seems to have paid off as a LinkedIn post about NYMIC received 7,000 hits over two weeks in January.
"Start-ups are finding us," he says.
Shipping's digitalisation offers plenty of investment opportunities for start-ups and angel investors, from blockchain to cyber security to artificial intelligence, he says,
"All of these aspects are changing the world," Clott says.
"What we’re trying to figure out is how can this be introduced, how can we foster that, how can we catalyse these ideas?"
