Maritime Entrepreneurship: Navigating Opportunities and Challenges in the Blue Economy

Punita Bhatt*

Maritime entrepreneurship has emerged as a vital catalyst within the Blue Economy, fostering sustainable development across ocean-based sectors such as marine renewable energy, aquaculture, port logistics, and eco-tourism. This study systematically reviews the existing literature to identify the key opportunities and challenges facing maritime entrepreneurs in the evolving global marine landscape. Employing the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) methodology, a structured search was conducted across databases including Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. A total of 28 peer-reviewed articles published between 2010 and 2024 were analyzed based on thematic coding and content synthesis. The review highlights that while maritime entrepreneurship presents vast opportunities for innovation, job creation, and sustainability, it is constrained by regulatory complexity, limited access to finance, infrastructural deficits, and skill gaps. The study concludes by identifying major research gaps and recommending policy interventions, capacity-building initiatives, and innovation ecosystems to foster inclusive and resilient maritime entrepreneurial activity aligned with the Blue Economy.

Keywords: Maritime Entrepreneurship, Blue Economy, Sustainable Marine Innovation, Ocean-Based Startups, Coastal Economic Development, Marine Resource Management.

*Hayden Green Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, University of Nottingham, UK; punita.bhatt@nottingham.ac.uk
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