Planning A Blue Economy Innovation Cluster

The oceans are at once an e xploited and under-developed resource, a mysterious territory put to use with the most primitive of technologies. As part of our growing partnership with Boston-based bluetech startup platform SeaAhead, we worked with the University of Southern Mississippi and the City of Gulfport to develop a strategic narrative for a regional applied science and technology cluster on the state’s Gulf Coast. Our work identified three key elements of this narrative:

• supporting new ventures based on novel R&D in focused areas of cross-sector convergence;

• encouraging the outsourcing of technical services for the growing global blue economy into the region; and,

• developing the region as a world-class test bed for blue economy technologies, with test ranges encompassing a full set of maritime, littoral, and aerospace settings.

Download the report here.