MARKET FACING iNNOVATION
Innovation is often an overused word, a rhetorical call to arms.
Meaningful market facing innovation is a clear marriage of market insight, brand DNA, and brand ambition. All of these factors require an intimate understanding of the customer and market needs.
A total focus on the customer.
I often liken the superpowers arms race with an illustration to the advantage of innovation. The West, with the benefit of a free market, were subject to the full frontal force of competitive innovation, while the East relied on state industry hindered by a narrow breadth of uncompetitive thinking. The outcome is written in history.
Innovation is not a luxury, nor is it a necessity, it is a culture to be embedded rather than something that needs to be done “when we have time”.
Theory tells us that only 2.5% of any population are innovators. That includes our workforce.
These 2.5% are the people who, if you leave them in an empty room, would create something amazing. They need to be found, nurtured, enabled and guided to be market facing. They are present in every company, even if unseen.
Throughout my career innovation has been a constant. It has provided a compass to the future even in times of market uncertainty.
Via hindsight and reflection, it is innovation that has laid the foundation of future progress, growth and business advantage. Enabling this innovation and delivering it to market via creative business development and marketing has been at the heart of my work.
Here I present some of the more significant innovation projects which I either seeded, driven to market, or been involved with as part of a multi-talented team of collaborators.
go electric
Modern yachts are often over specified. Analysis of how they are used in the real world would suggest they have far greater autonomy than they actually need. All of this unused capability comes with a footprint. After exploring the concept of modal emission free operation, the e-Hybrid system was conceived.
Further insights can be found at the following links ;
LIFE PLATFORM
Innovation is often not about inventing new things, it is about bringing together ideas, technologies and challenging conventional thinking.
Juxta positioned to traditional motor yacht design, the LIFE platform leverages a virtuous circle of length, volume, weight and displacement to deliver class leading efficiency. Coupled with an innovative hybrid propulsion system resulting in a single tier engine room design. In turn enabling greater utilisation of space on board to the yachts primary purpose.
Further insights can be found at the following links ;
FIVE HULLS!
I began my commercial career focused on high-speed transoceanic freight, a modal shift for time sensitive cargo from air freight to high speed sea transport.
How do you make a 30,000 tonne ship do 30 knots yet be economically viable? This was an exciting time, with some significant R&D budgets. Many many hours were spent in the model tanks in Trondheim in Norway exploring all manner of design thinking.
The outcome was the Pentamaran, a novel form of stabilised monohull with enhanced efficiency over a conventional trimaran configuration.
Beyond high speed freight, transport applications were explored, even foiling versions! Following a focus on defence after 9-11, research into application for future frigates, naval sea lift and other military applications.
Further insights can be found at the following link ;
BLACK PEARL
If there was ever a project that embodied what can be achieved through effective collaboration it is the award-winning sailing yacht Black Pearl.
With a regenerative propulsion train the yacht has the ability to convert kinetic energy generated under sail to potential energy stored in her on board battery bank, negating the need under optimum conditions to run any house generators.
Further insights can be found at the following link ;
X-craft
Following 9-11 there was a refocus in naval forces from capital ships deployed in deep oceans, to fast craft that could operate in the littoral zone, yet reposition themselves across oceanic distances. This new breed of combat ship needed to be fast, highly mission flexible and have a wide operational envelope.
An excellent example of innovation driven by demanding user requirements, the X-Craft was the result of research into marrying the low drag characteristics of advanced catamarans, with the seakeeping ability of a SWATH hull form.
The outcome was truly awesome, 80m and 55 knots powered by twin gas turbine CODOG propulsion trains, each delivering around 22MW of power through waterjets. Equipped with twin landing spots for MH60 helicopters, and a multi modular mission bay with overhead gantry crane system. A deployable ramp at the stern allows the launch and recovery of a large assault craft whilst underway.
In addition to the research and development needed to establish and prove the concept, our scope ultimately extended to the full detailed production engineering.
Further insights can be found at the following links ;
HYDROGEN AND FUTUROLOGY
AQUA utilises 100% alternative fuels to present a technically audacious view of a zero emissions future. With a length overall of 112m and a GT of 3,530, AQUA has been developed around a hydrogen-electric propulsion and energy system architecture.
Following extensive research and development into numerous alternative fuel options, Lateral selected a 28 tonne capacity liquid hydrogen system powering proton exchange membrane fuel cells. Additionally, an innovative propulsion system integrating a central gondola with a contra rotating propeller (CRP), together with twin vertical axis propellers (VSP) is proposed.
energy transition
One subject I hated at school was chemistry, yet I now find myself dealing with the challenge of carbon reduction and feel like I am back in the lab.
Achieving net-zero is a complex subject, and the route to doing that at scale will take a long time. The Energy Transition Platform was conceived as a way to future proof a high value asset such as a superyacht, which through its lifetime will need to avoid obsolescence as technologies and alternative fuels develop; the energy transition.
Further insights can be found at the following links ;
InNOVATION THINKING
Innovation is not just in the execution, it is about a way of thinking. At a time when the advancement of technology is accelerating and a greater spectrum of choice is available to our clients, how do we guide them to make the right choices. Is there even a right choice? We need to give them innovative frameworks to enable them to be innovators themselves, or at least early adopters. If we don’t do this then the paradox of choice will often lead them to revert to known and safe options, all of which can slow down advancement.
Further insights can be found at the following links ;
The Transitioning Role of The Naval Architect
PAST MEETS Future
The inspiration for Tuhura’s technical underpinnings are driven by the DNA that is inherent in the design narrative. A design inspired by the early Polynesian canoe, a naturally efficient hull with low overall resistance, good seakeeping and excellent manoeuvrability.
However the canoe form does not naturally complement the integration of a conventional twin screw propulsion system, but rather a single screw solution lends itself to capitalising on the natural efficiency of the hull form. This in turn suggests leveraging further efficiencies by utilising a contra rotating propeller (CRP) system.
Through this sequence of naturally complementary factors, the use of a hybrid CRP system is perfectly suited to the canoe form. There is a very pure synergy between the efficiency of the hull form, and that of the propulsion system, leading to a yacht which marries an evolutionary simple hull with an evolutionary advanced propulsion system..
AND now for something completely different
Following a highly innovative yacht project that did not proceed to build, I was inspired to take the essence of the clients brief, “A piece of floating real estate that could be moved between nice locations” and play with the idea free from any of the other constraints that limited that project. The result was project Utopia.
Visions of the future are often constrained by familiarity with the present or reflection on the past. Project Utopia is an avant‐garde vision of a future concept free from such restricted thought.
Much is made in today’s design community of starting with a blank sheet of paper. Yet many if not all yacht concepts revert back to that traditional form; the perception that a yacht should be a form of transport becomes an immediate constraint.
Utopia is not an object to travel in, it is a place to be, an island established for anyone who has the vision to create such a place. Measuring 100m in length and breadth, and spanning over 11 decks with the equivalent volume of a present‐day cruise liner there is enough space to create an entire micronation.
In today’s context Project Utopia might be viewed as a folly, an extravagant expression of architecture and form based on a perception of the future. The visionary will however, be able to grasp the paradigm shift and see the future as being totally unconstrained.
