Ocean Innovation:
Where to Look?
Your R&D team has probably piloted an ocean-derived input. It likely stalled before procurement ever reviewed it. A WEF survey of 850 ocean startups found that procurement pipelines are the barrier, not piloting. This brief identifies which ocean inputs have passed that gate, why standard investment approaches guarantee they never will, and what companies locking in supply access are doing differently.
The ocean covers 70% of the planet and holds some of the most commercially valuable biological and energetic resources on Earth. Most of it remains underutilized, not because the opportunity is unclear, but because the path from ocean-derived input to manufacturing line keeps breaking at the same three points.
This brief examines that gap through four lenses: which inputs have reached a self-sustaining capital cycle without subsidy; where corporate investment is currently misallocated and why procurement access is the structural fix; which regulatory developments have opened commercial pipelines that were legally blocked until recently; and what the sector-specific first move looks like for teams in Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), food and beverage, or natural resources.
Key Findings
1.
Chemistry is no longer the bottleneck.
The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) survey of 850+ ocean startups points to procurement, not lab performance, as the scale barrier. Pilots convert when procurement is involved before approval.
2.
Not all ocean segments are investable today, and the difference is structural.
The segments that attract capital without requiring public subsidies are the ones worth pursuing now. Certified sustainable seafood, near-shore aquaculture in optimal geographies, and specialty marine ingredients currently meet that bar. Others (cultivated seafood, open-ocean bioactives, deep-sea extraction) do not. The WEF procurement finding and the investability finding are separate: one explains why pilots stall, the other explains which segments to pilot in the first place.
3.
Corporate capital is aimed at the wrong outcome.
Consumer packaged goods (CPG) investments in ocean funds have been structured primarily around Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) goals, rather than to build supply chain capacity. A Joint Development Agreement (JDA) tends to be a more effective structure when the objective is commercial sourcing, as it links investment to a specific ingredient, material, or input that can reach a product line.
$1.3T → $2.6T
The ocean economy doubled over 25 years
(Source: OECD, 2025)
$175B/year
Annual investment required to meet ocean sustainability goals through 2030
(Source: Johansen & Vestvik, 2020)
150M+
People directly employed by the ocean economy.
(Source: UNCTAD, 2022)
9%
Share of total nature-based solution finance directed to marine solutions in 2022.
Source: UNEP, 2022
Who should own ocean innovation within your organization?
Ocean innovation initiatives are more likely to reach a product when the right internal stakeholders are involved from the start. In large companies, these initiatives are assigned to a single function, often sustainability or R&D, which limits both the budget available and the business case that gets made. A more effective approach brings C-suite leadership together with procurement, sustainability, and product development to evaluate the opportunity jointly. That structure allows the initiative to deliver value across multiple departments at once: a differentiated supply input, measurable progress toward ESG targets, and a material or ingredient that can reach a product or packaging line.
Martin Koehring
Head of the Centre for Private Finance in Development, ODI Global
Corporates often still treat the ocean primarily as an ESG or compliance issue, something addressed through campaigns, reporting, or visible sustainability initiatives. But that misses the deeper question: how should companies allocate capital and resources in ways that reduce ocean-related risks and create value across their supply chains?
Investability follows proximity to shore
The diagnostic question is whether a segment has reached a self-sustaining capital cycle without subsidies or policy support. The answer tracks with distance from shore.
Expert Commentary
Mark J. Spalding
President · The Ocean Foundation
Certified sustainable wild-caught seafood and conventional marine finfish aquaculture in optimal geographies are some of the most investable today. Alternative feeds, seaweed ingredients, and shellfish are viable, though some are still early stage. Cultivated seafood and anything in the open ocean are further out.
Where ocean innovation stalls
The following are three considerations worth examining before committing budget to an ocean innovation initiative. Each reflects a pattern that has consistently delayed or derailed promising projects in large product companies, not at the science stage, but afterward, when moving from pilot to procurement. Each is diagnosable before resources are committed, and each points to a different corrective action.
A new framework for ocean resource access
The Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Agreement introduced the first binding international rules governing access to marine genetic resources. Experts who track the agreement suggest it may offer companies a clearer path to compliance than previously existed, though the practical impact will depend on how implementation unfolds.
Expert Commentary
Martin Koehring
Head of the Centre for Private Finance in Development, ODI Global
Greater clarity around access, benefit-sharing and provenance can help reduce uncertainty for companies using marine genetic resources, but this remains an evolving regulatory area and should not be treated as fully settled.
Expert Commentary
Adam de Sola Pool
Independent Investor in Ocean Technology
The BBNJ Treaty is a great addition to our policy framework because it gives policy certainty. If you have a strong secretariat, they will set that regulatory certainty for the BBNJ. If you have a weak secretariat, it will keep floundering around and not get the certainty that everyone who would like to use the open ocean needs.
Act now / track closely / wait / avoid
Each segment below has been assessed against the Three Considerations. Act Now segments have passed all three. Sector tags indicate primary commercial relevance.
Expert Commentary
Ronald Tardiff
Head of Ocean Innovation · World Economic Forum
My universal advice to startups is to avoid entirely trying to develop pilots directly with large companies. The process with those companies will kill those companies. We see much better reception and much faster timelines with mid-cap companies, family businesses, regional scaled companies.
Ocean innovation is ready. Procurement is not.
The Three Considerations are not theoretical risks. They are active failure patterns in current pipelines at large product companies. Build a procurement readiness structure before the next pilot is greenlighted. Map the ocean-derived inputs already sitting in your cost structure. The companies that close the procurement gap first will set the sourcing terms for everyone that follows.
Immediate Action
Map ocean-derived inputs already in your cost structure across R&D, packaging, and food ingredients. Most companies cannot answer this question from their own procurement data. Closing that gap is a low-cost, high-value preparatory step.
This Year
Build one JDA with a named ocean supplier in an Act Now segment. That structure becomes the template for every sourcing relationship that follows. Exclusivity windows are closing.
Decision Brief Authors
Daniel Morales, PhD
Technical Director, CPG
Leads consumer packaged goods practice. PhD in Chemical Engineering from NC State University. Has led over 100 projects spanning innovation strategy, product development, sustainability, and technology trends across the CPG industry.
Garreth Wheaton, PhD
Senior PA, F&B and CPG
PhD in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from NC State University. Specializes in packaging innovation and sustainability across food and beverage and consumer goods verticals.
Gareth Armanious, PhD
Technical Director, F&B
He built and leads the F&B team, architecting systems and services that shaped company-wide execution. His expertise spans food, beverage, and life sciences, rooted in a research background in membrane protein biochemistry and prior coordination roles in oncology research.
Christian Salles
Technical Director, NR&E
Technical Director for Energy Strategy with over 20 years of experience managing complex assets. Expert in secondary recovery implementation, infrastructure debottlenecking, and industrial project de-risking globally.
Contributing Experts
Martin Koehring
Head of the Centre for Private Finance in Development, ODI Global
Martin Koehring is Head of the Centre for Private Finance in Development at ODI Global, a think tank focused on sustainable development policy and finance. He previously led blue finance work at UNEP FI, where he focused on how banks, insurers, and investors can understand and price risk across ocean sectors, including aquaculture, fisheries, and marine transport. Before that, he spent several years at The Economist Group heading the World Ocean Initiative, one of the largest ocean-focused platforms globally, where he co-led the World Ocean Summit. His work sits at the intersection of financial materiality and ocean governance.
Mark J. Spalding
President · The Ocean Foundation
Mark J. Spalding is President of The Ocean Foundation, where he has led the organization for over 20 years. The Foundation operates across 40 countries on six continents, with work spanning blue carbon restoration, plastic pollution, marine science capacity building, and ocean economy investment. Spalding advises three public equity portfolios and approximately 14 private equity firms at various stages of capital maturity. He is trained as an attorney and has held academic appointments in international relations. He also leads proprietary work on corporate KPI frameworks and blue economy taxonomy for institutional investment clients.
Ronald Tardiff
Head of Ocean Innovation · World Economic Forum
Ronald Tardiff is based in Geneva at the World Economic Forum, where he leads all ocean innovation work. In that role he also serves as executive for 1000 Ocean Startups, a coalition of 67 member organizations supporting over 850 ocean impact companies worldwide. The coalition spans the full investment pipeline from early-stage venture studios to established family offices and VCs. His work at the Forum covers both broad blue economy strategy and specific innovation areas including pollution remediation and nature-positive transitions for corporates.
Adam de Sola Pool
Independent Investor
Adam de Sola Pool is a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based investor in ocean technology. He built and led what became the largest wind and solar developer in Central Europe, exiting the business for more than 2 billion euros. Since then, he has focused on ocean tech investing, mentoring startups through MIT and Harvard, and backing companies including Ocean Rainforest, a kelp farming operation with sites in the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Santa Barbara, and Mexico. His investment focus spans marine ingredients, seaweed-derived products, and alternative feeds.