The Irish Maritime and Energy Resource Cluster (IMERC) hosted a very stimulating and successful conference on Enabling Ireland’s Maritime Economic Development on October 7th 2013, at the National Maritime College of Ireland, in Cork.
The aim of this year’s conference was to learn from international and national case studies of best practice by focusing on real-world stories and highlighting practical issues around maritime economic development, as well as to stocktake the current state of play and national capacity to deliver maritime growth.
The theme of the conference was Disruptive Innovation, which is innovation that disrupts, improves and replaces an existing product, process, approach or idea – over time and in unexpected ways. It is increasingly considered that new ways of support for organisations approaching social and economic problems in order to create scalable, sustainable solutions is far more effective than investment in organisations that are fixated on current solutions, delivery methods and recipients. The Keynote Speaker for the conference was Chris Roche, UKI Regional Director for Greenplum, the Big Data Division of EMC – internationally renowned as a thought leader in innovation, who offered his insights into disruptive technologies in the context of maritime opportunities.
For conference notes and presentations, go to www.imerc.ie.
For further information on disruptive technologies, visit www.christenseninstitute.org
The conference also included presentation of the inaugural IMERC Innovator of the Year Award – to reward innovation in the national maritime and energy sphere – which went to a start-up company called SeaFi Marine Data Communication Ltd, for development of cutting-edge digital radio technology, providing high-speed data networks in the marine environment.
For more information, go to www.seafi.eu.