Maritime Blue Year Resolutions - 2023

Maritime Blue is entering its 5th year of operations, four years since the release of Washington State’s Strategy for the Blue Economy in January 2019.? We have responded to the clarion call of the multi-stakeholder process. It has charged us to create the mechanisms for sustainable growth and help our ecosystem be accountable to the vision, goals, and objectives established by our region’s maritime and ocean leaders.?

Along with our members and leaders, our team has been a catalyst for collaboration, developed programs, supported projects, led initiatives, provided services, and tested models which have put Blue at the forefront of a rapidly changing industry. We’ve gathered and gained significant resources and capacity to accomplish our mission and be responsive to our member’s needs. All while remaining a “thought leader” and a “model builder” for this type of work? - an Innovation Cluster Organization

It's time for us now, as an organization and a community, to take a deep-dive look into our business models and strategic decision-making processes. It’s time to maintain sustainable growth as the demands for ocean-based solutions and our collective leadership increase every day.??

?This we KNOW

Ocean-based solutions and the Blue Economy are critical for addressing the climate crisis while supporting thriving and equitable communities with significant economic opportunities.

HOW we do it:

Ocean/Maritime Innovation Clusters activate and catalyze public/private/philanthropic capacity to accelerate innovation, investment, and community development. We are a strategic alliance that works together to drive innovation, pursue market opportunities, and identify and solve challenges to address environmental, economic, and equity issues.?

Our BLUE Year Resolutions

As we begin another turn around the sun on this blue planet, we are committed to learning together, advancing new models, fostering leadership, and accepting feedback.

A Commitment to Equity and Social Justice

Washington Maritime Blue is committed to creating a diverse, equitable, and inclusive Blue Economy and modeling these values, skills, and actions within our own workplace. This includes addressing institutional racism, sexism, ableism, and other forms of systemic oppression and individual prejudice. We seek to lead by example including hiring a diverse staff and building a team and a workplace culture that fosters equity, inclusion, and a sense of belonging. This work is ongoing and continually adapted to meet the needs of our members, stakeholders, partners, and staff. We seek to support our partners and employees to think critically about their own cultural lens, communicate, and engage effectively with people of different backgrounds and abilities.?

Maritime Blue works to institutionalize this commitment in each of our strategic goals and objectives in order to operationalize practices that increase opportunities and participation as well as decrease negative environmental and economic impacts that disproportionately affect certain communities.

?Double Down on Convening Collaboration

We are inherent “dot connectors”. Our relationships and our systems thinking are where the value is for our members. This is how we accelerate innovation and creative change. Our goal is to bring together the right people at the right time, ask the right questions, and give them the right tools. This is where we add value. Whether it's identifying potential partners for a demonstration project or convening a group of stakeholders on a strategic initiative and feasibility study; it's the collaboration, creating a shared vision, and commitment to the triple-bottom-line that drives our work. Our commitment is to start with collaboration.

Invest in our Innovators

One of the most exhilarating things I’ve seen as a cluster manager is witnessing the dedication and zeal of the startup founders in our Accelerator and Incubator programs. So many of them have been successful because their raw passion and commitment to their ideas are drawn from something beyond the ordinary. The risks and the investments in their lives, their livelihoods they are willing to make are extraordinary. They come to Maritime Blue in search of any number of advantages as they compete and create their own marketplaces: access to expertise, capital, opportunities for demonstration, and connections to potential partners. But more than that, they receive deeper relationships with themselves and one another. Our programs bring out and support our founder's “whole selves”. What they have invested in themselves, we want to invest back in them. Even as the startup ecosystem for the Blue Economy is increasing rapidly, access to early-stage capital is still extremely scarce.??

If we are going to give these amazing founders a fighting chance - we need to make sure they can make it to the next leg of their journey. We need to ensure that they know not only how to access capital, but where to access capital. For us, that means building deeper partnerships, investigating organizational and fund structures, attracting new investors into this space, and being willing to make some investments ourselves.

Grow Sustainably and Responsibly

Innovation, Passion, Collaboration, Equity! All the things we need to usher in a true Blue Year in 2023. But none of this happens without the organizational infrastructure, capacity, strategy, and sustainable business model necessary to make it happen over the long term. Maritime Blue has been very successful in seeking and being awarded grants, contracts, and sponsorships to quickly rise as a nationally leading, globally connected innovation cluster organization. We’ve tested and proven our program models. We’ve built and maintained trusted partnerships and relationships. We’ve had a significant impact and impressive metrics. We are proud and humbled by the trust and commitment of our Board and funders.

?However, we are still a startup. We are still learning which business models provide returns at the right time of value to our customers. We are still identifying and seeking new markets and new investors. We are learning to manage cash flow and build a financial model that works for the long term so that we can have the capacity, tools, and resources on hand to provide impact and value when and where it's needed. We need to lean on our leadership and partners, ask for help, and maintain transparency. This way - not only are we better able to provide value for our members and our mission but living our own values as we support and build the greatest team ever.

So, THANK YOU to those that put your trust and support towards us in our first four years. We are looking forward and energized to working with each and every one of you in the year ahead. We are truly better together. Let’s go out and get S#%t done!

Cheers to a Happy, Healthy, and Thriving New BLUE Year!?

Warmest Regards,

-Joshua Berger