Wilhelmsen have joined forces with Hafnia, Anglo American, RightShip, Rio Tinto, and Thome Group to launch Maritime Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) Innovation Lab 2022, according to the company's release.
The innovation lab is an open competition for interested participants (individuals, institutions, companies, students etc.) to submit their ideas on addressing DEI in the maritime industry.
Shortlisted teams will participate in the innovation lab to hone their pitches in preparation for a ‘Dragon’s Den’ session with industry leaders. The winning team and their idea will be brought to life with collaboration and funding from the partner organizations involved.
With women representing only 1.2% of the global seafarer workforce (BIMCO/ICS 2021 Seafarer Workforce Report), and a significant lack of ethnic and female representation in senior roles (Diversity Study Group 2021), the maritime sector lags when it comes to attracting and retaining the talent required to succeed in the face of increasing uncertainty and complexity.
The aim of the innovation lab is to uncover powerful ideas through crowdsourcing and applying rapid and agile methodology from ideation through to product development.
This year’s competition follows the Women in Maritime Lab 2020, which resulted in the creation of SeaCode, a platform offering peer to peer support to seafarers whilst gathering and aggregating industry data. Recently, SeaCode was incorporated within the ISWAN organisation.
Anyone interested in driving change in the maritime industry can submit their ideas through the dedicated Maritime DEI Innovation Lab website
The partners, Wilhelmsen, Hafnia, Anglo American, RightShip, Rio Tinto and Thome Group, will hold an open kick-off webinar on Thursday, 18 August 2022.