Ocyan received the Open Innovation Highlight Company award from CRIOS-UFRJ (Reference Center for Innovation for Sustainable Operations). This was the 3rd edition of the Entrepreneurial Challenge, promoted by Startup Macaé in partnership with Abstartups (Brazilian Association of Startups). Ocyan has made great strides in this area and in 2019 has devoted its efforts to expanding the use of technology with the launch of the Ocyan Waves innovation platform, which seeks to make work in all areas of the company more dynamic, diverse and competitive. Petrobras, Aker and Subsea7 also competed for the award.

Ocyan Waves coordinator Fernanda Brandão (pictured right) participated in the panel The Importance of the Startup Community for Large Companies during the event that chose the winners. She explained the platform's foundation and the company's challenges for deploying the solutions offered by the selected startups, noting that networking generated from the challenge is critical to renewing and keeping the company increasingly sustainable.

"We provoke our leaders to raise real day-to-day challenges so that we can get to know and hear the startup ecosystem, with the support of InnoScience consulting, and seek innovative, dynamic, technological and especially efficient solutions," she says.

Ocyan waves 

The Ocyan Waves Innovation Platform launched its first program, the Ocyan Waves Challenge, in March 2019, in which it internally selected eight support and operational challenges to address the startup ecosystem for solutions. In total, 123 entrepreneurial companies from all over Brazil signed up for the process and six were selected to carry out pilot projects. By 2020, the approved ones will implement the solutions and become Ocyan's suppliers.