Something old, something new, something borrowed, something cool. Wärtsilä went to Slush to find the right partner for taking digitalisation in the marine industry to a new level. It’s the darkest time of the year. Daylight ends around 4 o'clock, and the ground is not yet covered by snow that could reflect the little light there is. If there is snow, it’s of the wet kind that melts into slush within minutes. It’s dark and gloomy because there are a couple of weeks to go until people start fiddling with Christmas lights. You’d be inclined to think that not a single soul would voluntarily hop on a plane with slushy November Helsinki as the final destination.

Yet, for two days in the middle of the month, people flock in hoards to Helsinki to participate in what has become in recent years the place to be for the international start-up crowd. Entrepreneurs and investors pilgrim up north, closely followed by the crème de la crème of international tech bloggers and journalists. Politicians come and even royalty. Slush has grown from an intimate gathering – the first conference in 2008 drew 300 people – to one of the biggest in Europe; this year Slush attracted close to 15 000 people.

Loads of pitch talks

There are hundreds of pitch talks presented at Slush. Some of the companies on the stage are as young as three months. Others are considerably more seasoned with perhaps 4 years under their belts. And then enters a senior on the scene, 181-year old Wärtsilä. Tero Hottinen, General Manager, Business Innovation, takes the stage and presents a huge opportunity to hungry entrepreneurs: the Wärtsilä Marine Mastermind contest.

Digitalisation is disrupting also the marine industry, as digitalized concepts in Services can bring substantial benefits in terms of cost efficiency, improved performance, transparency and safety. While Wärtsilä's R&D team is hard at work developing new concepts and solutions, coming up with disruptive concepts is not the company's core competence.

“Coming up with new disruptive concepts is perhaps not in our DNA, but for start-ups, that’s a matter of life and death,” says Hottinen.

So that’s why Wärtsilä launched this contest inviting start-ups to collaborate in shaping the future of the marine industry. It’s a win-win situation; start-ups get a chance to showcase their innovations and test them in a corporate environment, and Wärtsilä gets new ideas.

Fruitful dialogue

The Marine Mastermind competition invites any start-up that has an idea about how to enhance the digitalised service offering in marine business. The solution can relate to commissioning and servicing of assets, or it could be tied to proactive and predictive maintenance, to virtual assistance, or to optimizing on-board operations through intelligent data analytics.

“The actual idea can be something new, something old, a big one, a small one – a weird one even – you name it. No matter, as long as it is can really be applied in the marine industry, either now or in the future,” said Hottinen during his pitch talk.
Source: Wärtsilä