Looking towards the future of Dutch shipbuilding, the maritime industry identified five important common points of attention to remain successful.
In 2008, VNSI (Dutch Shipbuilding industry association) and HME (Holland Marine Equipment) joined forces. Together, they started the association of Shipbuilding Netherlands, the predecessor of the current association Netherlands Maritime Technology. De Ruijter Strategy was asked guide the new association towards a joint vision for 2015.
In 2005, VNSI and HME had separately formulated a vision for the long term future. HME created “Innovation 2020”, from which 7 different innovation processes for the maritime supply industry emerged. Simultaneously, VNSI published “Dutch LeaderSHIP 2015”, in collaboration with De Ruijter Strategy. In this vision 5 success factors and 18 action points for the future of Dutch shipbuilding were elaborated. After the merger in early 2008 into the new association, later known as Netherlands Maritime Technology, there was a need for a joint, new vision. For the realization of this vision, De Ruijter Strategy designed, guided and reported a bottom-up process that deduced and described the most important 5 themes for the next 7 years, through interviews and theme sessions with a wide variety of members.
Five challenges
A decade later, in 2015, the world of Dutch shipbuilding was a complete different one. Business was doing so well that there was a shortage of qualified workers to do all the work. The shipbuilding cluster had worked hard in the years before on cooperation within the cluster and wanted to continue this development. Looking to the future, the industry identified five important common points of attention:
- Competing through talent
- Sustainability and innovation
- Strengthen synergy in the cluster
- Collaboration with the government
- International branding of the Dutch shipbuilding cluster
The vision of Dutch Shipbuilding on these 5 themes was used for the association’s own policy agenda and also provided input for the update of the European ‘LeaderSHIP 2015’ by CESA and the European Commission.
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