The ‘Captain going down with the ship’ is held up as a great tradition by mariners and land-lubbers alike. This tradition is in fact so ingrained in the psyche of society, that it is arguably almost the unquestioned expectation. Numerous movies have glamorised the valour shown by Captains, as the last person standing on the sinking ship, after evacuating all passengers and crew, or going down with the ship trying to do so. At one point, the Captain on the Ship while being hig

The shipping industry is a well-oiled machinery for moving global trade. To understand its staggering size and impact, one must know what it's transportation market share is. It is estimated that roughly 90% of cargo around the planet is moved on ships. So significant is its contribution to the world, that many do not realise if the shipping industry were to stop suddenly, supermarkets shelves would be empty in 3 days. In comparison if one looks at aviation, air-cargo account

As technology evolves around us, we see more and more jobs are automated or certain jobs are delegated to smart machines or robots. This removes the human from the scene, although we have always found alternate work for ourselves or reinvent how we provide value. Despite popular sentiments, to most businesses, employees are mostly pure liability. If a company could operate without employees, it certainly would. Robots are ideal because once programmed they are: obedient and c

The world is rapidly transforming around us. Technology is getting smarter and faster. It is impacting every industry, sector and area on the planet. In an increasingly digitalized world, no organisation can ignore data and information. Whether it is manually generated data or data from smart sensors and devices, any perceived competitive advantage that a company may have had, can very quickly vanish and be overtaken by a company that uses mathematical models and algorithms t

In the shipping industry one thing that is broadly apparent is the inherent resistance to change, lack of major innovation and the almost absent drive for disruption. For a long time, this lethargy was attributed to the industry being strongly steeped in tradition and by nature being extremely conservative. After being in numerous meetings with several companies of all sizes, some being current partners, customers or investors and others being prospective partners, customers

I was recently asked to comment on unmanned ships and autonomous ships. To me, an unmanned ship is one with no people on board. Hence, we can equate it to a remote-controlled ship operated from ashore. With current developments in technology there are companies that already claim to do just that. On the other hand, autonomous ships, as the name suggests, among other things is required to be intelligent, self-sufficient, independent and more importantly without human interfere