Innovation in the maritime sector: aligning strategy with outcomes

Abstract

Innovation is identified as one of the main avenues to maintain competitiveness and its importance is well established in business studies. Along maritime logistics chains, innovation is being increasingly recognized as a determinant of success. However, beyond the naval architecture literature, little attention has been given to the role that innovation plays in maritime business. Notwithstanding the increasing number of innovation efforts that can be traced in the industry, little is known of the processes and mechanisms that make innovation successful, with the result that initiatives are often uncoordinated, unfocused, poorly managed, and do not deliver the expected results. In order to improve innovation processes, better insight is needed into what motivates innovation along maritime supply chains, in particular for ocean carriers, (inland) terminal operators, port managers, and hinterland transport operators. To this end, the paper proposes an index-based approach using data collected for 59 innovation cases to capture the degree of alignment between innovation strategy and outcomes in various maritime logistics business sectors. Substantial misalignment exists between company strategies and innovation success, and efforts should be made to improve the strategic processes that lead to collaborative innovation in maritime supply chains.

Are the innovation processes in seaport terminal operations successful?

“…Among those innovation initiatives where success is not ranked equal to importance, are Tandem Lift and Carbon Footprint at port and terminals. This latter issue confirms that environmental innovations tend to obtain negative scores (as in Acciaro and Sys, 2016) because for being innovative it is just necessary to comply with regulation.…”

“…The methodology used in this paper is a combination of three different methodologies applied in the last years to the mentioned port terminal cases by some authors: the I-and H-index extensively discussed in Acciaro and Sys (2016), the System of Innovation Analysis (SIA) to port innovation, applied by Roumboutsos (2015) and Roumboutsos et al (2014), and the Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), performed by Vanelslander et al, (2016). Figure 1 shows the process logic driving the analysis: the three different techniques are complementary and they allow answering the main research questions of this study through triangulation (see for example Jick, 1979).…”

“…Thus, the first applied methodology is an extension of the method developed in Acciaro et al (2014a) and it is fully described in Acciaro and Sys (2016). It consists of the assessment of success of innovation based on the extent to which such innovation has contributed to the achievement of a certain set of objectives 2 .…”

“…Ideally, when the I-index takes a null value for an innovation or an objective, it implies that in general there is an identity between importance ranking and success ranking. When the value is positive, it indicates that the success ranking is lower than the importance ranking, and when the value is negative, it implies that the success ranking is higher than the importance ranking (Acciaro et al, 2014a;Acciaro and Sys, 2016).…”

Economic aspects of automation innovations in electronic transportation management systems

“…Over the last two decades, growing awareness of economic and environmental concerns related to the transport sector has led to the development of competitive and sustainable transport systems. Innovations are identified as one of the main avenues to maintain competitiveness along maritime logistics chains, and are being increasingly recognized as a determinant of success (Acciaro & Sys, 2020).…”