Intesa Sanpaolo Innovation Center at the Blue Economy Summit 2024

Presented the report: “Ocean – Nutrition, sustainability, technology”

On June 4, the Blue Economy Summit, the internationally significant conference organized by One Ocean Foundation, a foundation that invests in innovative research dedicated to the relationship between ocean ecosystems and the business world, was held in the Aula Magna of Bocconi University in Milan. The Summit aims to promote initiatives dedicated to the Blue Economy and foster the formation of partnerships to stimulate collaborations and innovative strategies, producing concrete solutions to safeguard the health of the ocean and marine ecosystems.

In the 2024 edition of the Blue Economy Summit, personalities from academia, industry, and government, moderated by journalists, presenters, and academics, discussed ocean-related challenges and in particular biodiversity loss, the importance of developing a robust Blue Capital Market, the evolution of innovative ocean technologies, and new opportunities within the blue economy.

Intesa Sanpaolo Innovation Center also participated, presenting in the talk dedicated to innovation to protect and restore the Ocean, the report “Ocean - Nutrition, sustainability, technology” which is part of the X-Plore series, monographs dedicated to phenomena of great relevance, produced in order to increase sensitivity and awareness on these issues.

The report is the result of the collaboration initiated in 2023 between One Ocean Foundation and Innovation Center, and the Links Foundation, an entity that works in applied research, innovation and technology transfer and with which Innovation Center has a long-standing partnership, also collaborated in the drafting.

The report “Ocean - Nutrition, Sustainability, Technology addresses the key role of the ocean with a holistic view, seeking to comprehensively represent the extreme complexity of its ecosystems and the inextricable link between its health and the survival of the Planet and the human race.

Applying this view, the analysis first explores the key role of the Ocean, the benefits both tangible and intangible that it brings, and the multiple pressures to which it is subjected as a result of human activity, both that directly exerted on it and that of an indirect nature arising from industries operating on land.

Attention is then brought to the ocean-food relationship, developing an in-depth examination of three industries: agriculture, fisheries and aquaculture.

Some promising new technologies in the Blue Economy are described at the end of the report.

Some of these startups, belonging to the Intesa Sanpaolo Innovation Center Portfolio, participated in the conference: we mention WSense, which offers technological solutions for underwater monitoring and communication, and Test 1, which has created a sponge that absorbs oils and hydrocarbons from the oceans and the sea.