This episode of the Lloyd’s List podcast is brought to you by Lloyd’s Register and Columbia Shipmanagement 

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THE wave of techno-optimism that began to spread in the wake of pandemic-related breakthroughs should be visible by now.

Forced to embrace digitisation out of remote working necessity, firms outlined juicy research-and-development plans and governments promised to spend big on science.

While it would be a stretch to say that the pandemic-fuelled optimism, it certainly catalysed investment in technology research across sectors, and crucially coincided with an innovation arms race that was already escalating between China and the US.

The principal project of the era, decarbonisation, spawned hundreds of funded technology projects, with as many again in the pipeline.

And then of course there is AI. If some in the sector were to be believed, AI should have revolutionised shipping and everything else by now.

All things considered, we should be living through a golden age of innovation.

And yet it is often hard to see the evidence for that in shipping.

Where are the breakthroughs? What do the great leap forwards looks like? There is no single unifying answer here and that’s part of the problem, but it’s also a huge opportunity.

Joining Richard on the podcast this week are:

• Alexander Saverys, chief executive of CMB.Tech

• Søren Meyer, chief executive of ZeroNorth

• Richard Buckley, chief executive of Ninety Percent of Everything

• Eman Abdalla, global operations director at Cargill Ocean Transportation

• Saskia Mureau, digital director at the Port of Rotterdam Authority

• Chakib Abi-Saab, chief technology officer at Lloyd’s Register