Norwegian industry cluster NCE Maritime CleanTech and Seattle-based cluster Washington Maritime Blue signed an agreement on June 4, 2019, to strengthen their collaboration on sustainable maritime solutions. The agreement follows the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding on May 16, 2019, for cooperation regarding green maritime technology between Innovation Norway, which is Norway’s national economic development agency, and the Washington State Department of Commerce in Seattle.
The main goal of the new partnership is to provide the member companies the competitive advantage derived from collaborating with each other. A cluster can accelerate innovation by bringing key partners together to share knowledge, start innovative processes and develop new value chains.
The partnership is also based on a belief that cluster-to-cluster-partnerships result in the early notification of new developments, according to Joshua Berger, Washington State Governor’s Maritime Sector lead and Washington Maritime Blue’s chair. “Using resources from both groups will give our members first-hand knowledge about new technologies for maritime applications,” Berger explains. “We have also seen that sharing knowledge about new technologies can often lead to substantial reductions in implementation timeframes.”