Innovation
The solutions to the railway’s problems Liam Henderson, the founder of the Rail Innovation Group, on the major role for smaller companies in bringing about innovation
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iam Henderson is helping to inspire the rail sector to embrace new cultures to bring diversity to its supply chains. It was in 2016 that he founded the Rail Innovation Group, formed to develop an ecosystem of start-up tech companies in rail. In the last four years he has built relationships across the industry to promote the need to engage smaller suppliers in project development. “There’s always a risk that people within established industries start to think that innovation is being done to them, not for them,” he said. “But the last few months during the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted the important role these start-ups have to play for them. “I have been very impressed with how quick they have been to pivot to respond to the COVID challenge, which proves that smaller agile companies are the future for the rail supply chain.” Metaphorical door The Rail Innovation Group has built partnerships and helped traditional organisations understand and attract digital talent to support their service development. It has proved to be the ideal metaphorical door for several companies, particularly during the pandemic. He said: “Innovation is essential, particularly at the moment as we’ve got to change our working practices. Although I don’t think you should label all technological change as innovation, the term should be expanded to apply to developing different partnerships for delivering workstreams or bringing in new stakeholders to solve a challenge. Often it creates a more efficient way of doing business as usual. A lot of the smaller companies we engage with have solutions that can overcome immediate problems. We have one
We need to be comfortable with bringing people from other sectors to help bring new awareness and ideas
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member who happened to be in the right place in the right time offering track monitoring without a member of staff needing to be out there doing the monitoring.” It is these sorts of doors that the group has opened for several groups, and although they can answer the calls for immediate problems, there is also a longer lasting benefit. “There’s no reason why these technologies, products and innovations won’t be relevant in the longer term,” said Liam. “A couple of members have got together to build a product that maps and predicts national rail demand so you can tell who is on the network at any one moment. “Because COVID came along there was an urgent need to know who was on
which train and whether this was going to exceed crowding. “COVID has meant that change has had to be accelerated in some areas. I don’t think that anything developed in response to the COVID challenge will be wasted as this great work will have a legacy.” Liam also believes that during the pandemic it has been easier to engage with people across the industry. “It is one of the more positive aspects about the way we are doing things at the moment,” he said. “With most people working at home I’ve found their barriers are a little bit softer. “I think a lot of the frustration with innovative practices not moving forward at the pace that the industry would like is that you’d get an innovation project, it would be proven to December 2020 | 53
