The most important skill to learn in 2026

I think this is possibly the most important topic ocean founders need to learn in 2026: human behaviour.

Here are a few reasons why:

☑️ Social Licence: The oceans are the ultimate commons. They are fundamentally shared spaces. You can't just buy a plot and build a factory, or buy a server and build software. Ocean founders must contend with social licence in ways most other founders never face.

☑️ Future Proofing: AI will disrupt countless skills and business models, but one thing won't change: human psychology. Our brain is fundamentally the same as our prehistoric ancestors and won't evolve significantly over the next thousands of years. Understanding human behaviour is the ultimate future-proof skill in an AI-dominated world.

☑️ Influencing Behaviour Change: Ocean founders need to influence markets. It’s not just about finding product-market fit. Sometimes it’s about creating new markets, changing existing behaviours, and forming new habits. In order to influence how people make decisions, you need to understand why humans behave the way they do.

☑️ Awareness Gap: You're introducing something unfamiliar (novel ingredients, alternative products, complex solutions) that requires education and extra mental effort from customers/investors/partners to understand and care about.

☑️ Understanding Customer Psychology: sustainability and brilliant technical solutions don’t sell by themselves. You need to truly understand what your customers actually care about. Discover what drives their purchasing decision, regardless of whether you are direct to consumer or B2B.

☑️ The Ocean Space Is Underinvested: ocean startups are capital-intensive, hardware-heavy, with longer development timelines and regulatory complexity. Getting funded requires extra effort in understanding how investors make decisions and how to translate your solution into a story they want to be part of.

I might be wrong, but hey, this is what I feel I'm interested in and want to explore in more depth.

Want to join me? I'll be unpacking these topics in future posts.