Innovation occurs most efficiently through serendipity and need. A vexing problem sits in front of you and a random idea or a tangential conversation sparks a thought on how to approach a solution in a different, more efficient, more effective way.
NB: This is a viewpoint from Will Phillipson, co-founder and president of SilverRail Technologies
Methodically building well understood and predictable solutions may be progress, but it is not innovation.
Keeping innovation alive requires constant stretching of the mind: discussion, collaboration, exploration. It’s important to get out, to listen to your market and search for stimuli. There is value in seeking answers from other industries and observing how they have introduced technology to solve similar challenges.
Pushing the limits of your own technology is key to demonstrating the possibilities and doing the things partners have not yet dreamt up.
SilverRail is a B2B technology company looking to transform a low tech space – rail and transportation. When we started our business we focused on building a GDS product for rail. However, we have evolved and now our ambition is to establish the digital infrastructure for an entire industry.
Rail is a hot space right now as seen by major announcements in recent months. The Trainline’s acquisition of Captain Train, Expedia’s move into selling rail globally, Google’s move to present train results among flight searches – these are all great things for rail technology and the consumer.
We are at an interesting point in our development. There are plenty of projects requiring methodical progress which demand our attention and our development schedules are full, so how do we encourage the business to stay creative and keep innovative thinking at the heart of all we do?
Our answer has been to build innovation into the DNA of our business, into our values and work practices. There are three key areas where we put particular focus:
Agile is the bedrock
- An Agile development culture is key to innovation in three respects –
Our work units are smaller, meaning we can rapidly sense when we are doing the wrong things and we can stop quickly; not continue on blindly towards a futile project completion.
- If, and when, something innovative becomes clear, it’s easier, and swifter, to inject it into the next development sprint.
- Time can be dedicated, in sprints, for people to experiment with things - new technologies, new approaches, attending seminars or conferences.
Valuing the playfulDistraction can be the key to lateral thinking.
We have a company full of brilliant minds that we want to keep engaged and motivated. Great, playful ideas bubble up when we challenge our teams to play with existing functionality, whether it’s split ticketing tools or data visualisation of transport flows and demand.
There is, frankly, much scope for problem solving in rail – awful ticketing experience, little congestion tracking, often zero visibility on where actual trains are.
Being known as a company which respects the playful, the distraction and incubates ideas, also helps with recruiting sought-after bright sparks.
Engage with the outside world
“Hackathons” - events where software developers and brands come together to intensively create new programmes or applications to solve specific problems – are a great stimulus.
We’ve been involved in Tnooz THacks in Boston, where our teams have acted as mentors, allowing the participants to throw their energy into developing new booking sites, apps or solving real consumer problems.
We are also big supporters of HackTrain in the UK. The last was in November; an epic event, opened by Minister for Transport, Andrew Jones, and attended by more than 120 software developers, who spent a weekend traveling around the UK solving rail problems through smart use of tech.
Big rail issues were all tackled head on by developers, with train disruption, overcrowding and ticketing all being addressed. We made our APIs available and acted as mentors throughout.
Rail companies are familiar with tech projects being seven or eight figure sums, so the idea that people do cool stuff for free over the course of a weekend is extremely powerful in challenging that perception.
Some of the exciting concepts to come from the weekend were:
Trainlicious – addressing overcrowding and passenger distribution through the innovative use of existing CCTV infrastructure, for face recognition to count numbers on the platform and on trains.
Ticket – scanning your current train ticket with your smartphone camera to determine its validity on other services, the estimated arrival time and any delays.
Disruption Feed – creating structured data and a visual display of disruption (using our ‘Darwin’ API data) that can integrate with existing booking services.
SilverRail is trying to convince a low tech industry that technology, data, and a sound digital infrastructure are things to be embraced. Any collaboration with start-ups, developers and innovators who think the same way takes it from being a company mission to a movement.
Our team gets a shot in the arm from events like these; the energy is high, the buzz continues, networks of like-minded people are built. It feels good to match-make, and stay close to the emerging talent.
We’ve just agreed to support HackTrain for another year. We plan to enter participants from our Brisbane, Boston, Stockholm offices, as well as onboard mentors.
Rail and transportation are industries that are ripe for addressing old real world problems in creative new ways – we’re excited to be amongst it.
NB: This is a viewpoint from Will Phillipson, co-founder and president of SilverRail Technologies
NB2: Rail image via Shutterstock