A Railway Innovation Strategy April 2022
OVERCOMING BARRIERS TO ENABLE INNOVATION Key Ask 3: Lead a concerted cross-industry effort to identify and overcome barriers to successful adoption. Innovations need a clear path to market, and rollout is often prevented by policy, procurement, cultural or industry issues which are beyond the control of private sector innovators and investors. Enabling a stronger collaboration with a shared goal will give confidence to private sector to invest in skills, facilities, supply chain, and product/ service development. The complex railway ecosystem is prohibitive to new entrants from outside the sector, with barriers present in policy, procurement, culture, and process, where misaligned costs and benefits prevent the justification of investment. A clear path to market with a simple benefit and reward structure will stimulate private sector investment in skills and facilities. There are already some initiatives underway to enable innovation by addressing barriers, and some more have been suggested by RIA members to further help overcome them. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, but personnel at all levels should be coached to understand the value of, and how to enable, innovation. To help the railway industry understand and overcome barriers to innovation, RIA works with partners, including Network Rail and UKRRIN, to deliver our award-winning Unlocking Innovation15 programme. As part of this programme RIA has conducted two Innovation Perception Surveys16 in July 2019 and July 2021, to determine how the railway sector perceives itself in innovation terms.
When asked which policies and processes had the greatest impact on innovation in rail, respondents said procurement was the main issue in both 2019 and 2021. However, industry sponsorship and champions had risen by 7% over the two surveys. When it came to facilities and resources, respondents said the availability of innovation funding was the key factor, yet those responding this way had dropped 5% points from 2019 to 2021. The availability of testing and trialling facilities, however, had increased as a factor, rising 7% points from 2019 to 2021. It is important to remember that this is a survey result and therefore only indicative. As respondents were asked to pick the ‘main barrier’ they may have experienced in each case, there may have been other barriers they had not yet faced. Additionally, their perceived barrier may not have been the reason each innovator was unable to achieve a path to market – it is only a perception. An example, it may be a product that ‘couldn’t get access to test facilities’, but this may have been for a legitimate reason such as that product being unsuitable for the test, or having an incomplete safety case, so ‘availability of innovation advice’ would have overcome this. Each barrier, therefore, should not be taken in isolation. Nevertheless, as the results show relatively good consensus, it is perhaps sensible to target resources at the largest perceived blockers. Throughout 2021, representatives of the cross-industry Technical Leadership Group, Innovation Leadership Group, supply chain, and clients joined a series of RIA-led workshops to share the results of the survey and identify barriers to innovation, as well as opportunities and initiatives to overcome them. The workshops considered barriers and initiatives under two separate categories: those already completed, underway, committed to, or funded, and those which require further work, or even initiating, before becoming ‘business as usual’.
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