As a proud Small Business Sunday winner, I never quite expected one day to be writing that I’ve been invited to be a Dragon myself.
While I suspect the resemblance to Theo Paphitis ends somewhere around the suit budget and television audience, I am delighted to have been selected to sit on the Dragons’ Den panel at the IDCORE Symposium 2026, hosted by the University of Edinburgh.
The event brings together some of the UK’s brightest engineering researchers working on the future of offshore renewable energy, with the Dragons’ Den session challenging teams to pitch their concepts and defend their proposals in front of an industry panel.
My role will be to help assess the ideas from an industry and delivery perspective; looking beyond the theory and asking the practical questions:
Can it actually be built?
Can it be installed offshore?
Can it be maintained?
And perhaps most importantly… who is paying when it all goes wrong?
Joking aside, it is a genuine privilege to be invited to contribute to an event of this calibre.
For Terra Mechanica Maris Ltd, a small independent engineering business built on practical offshore and marine experience, being recognised and invited to sit alongside respected industry figures is something I am immensely proud of.
It reflects the fact that practical engineering experience still matters, and that the insight gained from years of delivering real projects in challenging environments has value when shaping the next generation of technology and talent.
At Terra, we have always believed innovation must go beyond theory. A concept is only as good as its ability to survive real-world engineering, offshore conditions, commercial pressures, and operational constraints.
That is the lens I will be bringing to the panel.
A huge thank you to the IDCORE team for the invitation. I look forward to playing my small part in supporting the next generation of offshore energy innovators.
And Theo; if you are reading this; I suspect my Dragon credentials still have some way to go, but it’s a start.
Kind regards
Garry McGowan
