At last, an update

Life and work has kept me a bit busy. From here on I’m going to update much more frequently again.

2017 was a packed year. I spent five months as a visiting research fellow at the Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Tokyo. I brought my wife and two children with me and we stayed in a beautiful small house in Setagaya-ku (the picture above is from a “play-park” close to our house). My aim was to look into some interesting matter of concern in the Japanese maritime cluster. I had been reading about the organisation Maritime Innovation Japan Corporation (MIJAC) in international maritime press, and wanted to see how they were doing. Unfortunately, it closed the week we arrived! I still managed to interview quite a lot of people (around 30) in the cluster who had been working with MIJAC or related matters. Extremely interesting case, which will be the topic of an upcoming paper together with associate professor Yarime Masaru. Below is from a visit I did to Oshima Shipyard, on the west side of Kyushu.

I then spent the autumn writing up old material into papers, with teaching maritime energy issues at Chalmers and also of course with Sweship Energy. The innovation cluster funding we received in 2016 has now come to its end and we are awaiting a new funding process. I’ve also been part of the group discussing how the Swedish Shipowners’ Association should work towards 2045 foremost with the climate challenge.

I was going to visit shipyards in China for field research, but had to postpone to this year.

No papers published in 2017, but I did present at two conferences: the 2017 Conference of the International Association of Maritime Economists (IAME) in Kyoto, and at the 2017 Shipping in Changing Climates Conference in London.

I’ve recently submitted three different research applications, all to the Swedish Energy Agency. They are really pushing for more interdisciplinary and especially social science research which suits me perfectly. The first application concerns my own funding – I want to continue studying innovation in the process of ordering new ships. My present study concerns larger shipping companies with their own technical departments and resources for R&D. My suggested continuation project will concern how smaller companies without resources deal with these issues. The second concerns two PhD students on energy management practices, an application which I submitted together with professor Ulla Eriksson-Zetterquist at GRI and professor Patrik Thollander in Linköping. The third concerns a PhD student at Chalmers, Josefin Borg, who needs funding to continue her research on collaboration and knowledge-sharing in the maritime cluster. I was a co-applicant together with associate professor Anna Yström at the Department of Technology Management and Economics at Chalmers.

Next week I will finally begin my final case study in this project, the HERO-series of ships being ordered by Wallenius Marine in Stockholm.