Ten Years of Building What Nobody Sees

Ten years ago, I was frustrated. My background in transport planning had taught me something uncomfortable: if you want to improve rail through traditional means, you need enormous capital investment and years or planning process to deliver physical upgrades.

Yet many passenger pain points weren't infrastructure problems at all. Better information, smarter digital tools, and more effective use of data could remove friction far more quickly. Technology looked like a faster route to improved customer experience.

So I started exploring emerging technology suppliers trying to work with rail and discovered a strange mismatch.

Some companies offered products labelled as 'innovation' that weren't especially innovative. Others had genuinely interesting ideas but had completely underestimated the barriers inside a complex, regulated industry. Procurement rules, organisational silos, safety processes, and long decision cycles created obstacles many technology firms hadn't anticipated.

Meanwhile, people inside the railway genuinely wanted to try new approaches but lacked a clear mechanism to engage with technology companies without immediately triggering procurement or commercial dynamics.

I created the Rail Innovation Group to bridge that gap, not through workshops or guidance documents, but through sustained community. What ten years has taught me challenges most of what the industry believes about innovation.

The collision nobody talks about

Small technology companies would repeatedly try to sell products directly to train operating companies, assuming the operator would be the natural buyer. After all, it was the operator's brand on the train.

Then they'd discover the situation was more complicated.

Under the franchising model, many operators didn't actually own the trains they were running. The rolling stock was owned by leasing companies - ROSCOs - and operators rented it under fixed agreements. A technology company could spend months developing a proposal, only to discover the operator had no authority to modify the asset. The decision sat somewhere else in the system.

Similarly, many technology firms assumed train companies behaved like normal commercial businesses with freedom to adopt products if they saw value. In reality, operators ran services under detailed contracts with the government. Their incentives, budgets, and risk appetite were shaped by those agreements.

Learning to see the dynamic from both sides, it became clear that neither side was being unreasonable: Technology companies were approaching the railway as they would any other market. Railway organisations were operating within a governance and commercial structure that made decisions far more constrained than outsiders realised.

The startup thought it had found the right door. The operator assumed the supplier understood the system. Only after several conversations did it become clear they were talking about completely different versions of how the industry worked.

Information is not the same as understanding

The misunderstandings kept happening even after people had explained them. You could tell a technology company how franchising worked, who owned the trains, what the approval process looked like. They'd understand it intellectually. But that didn't necessarily help them build the relationships needed to move an idea forward.

The issue was the absence of a shared environment where people could gradually learn how each other worked.

My experience in transport planning had already shown me the value of that kind of environment. At Transport for London, delivering change in a complex system meant building communities around issues: bringing together people affected by a problem repeatedly over time so they could develop trust, shared language, and a better understanding of each other's constraints.

What I was seeing between startups and rail organisations wasn't just a knowledge gap: it was two groups who rarely encountered each other outside formal commercial settings. When the only interaction happens inside procurement exercises or sales meetings, both sides behave defensively; nobody admits uncertainty or explores problems openly.

A community creates a different dynamic, it allows people to meet before commercial stakes are involved: operators can talk candidly about problems, and tech companies can ask questions without commercial risk. Over time those interactions build familiarity and shared vocabulary.

When words mean different things

One word that regularly caused confusion was 'pilot.'

In the technology world, a pilot means a small, fast experiment - deploy a prototype, learn quickly, iterate, and decide whether to scale or abandon. The environment tolerates imperfection because the purpose is to discover what works.

In the railway, the same word carries very different implications: equipment on the network must meet engineering and safety standards meaning any changes require formal approval which takes time, and must demonstrate its satisfactoryness before it’s had a chance to be trialed. In fact, for a small pilot, staff training, safety assurance, and asset permissions may all come into play, increasing both time and money on the trial.

A startup would propose running a pilot to test an idea, seeing it as a way to reduce risk and learn quickly. The operator would see a limited trial that could trigger governance and safety considerations the startup hadn't anticipated.

Neither side was using the word incorrectly. They were just using it inside different institutional frameworks.

Another example: 'SME.' SME can mean ‘small or medium enterprise’ or it can mean ‘subject matter expert’. You could sit in a meeting where a discussion was happening about the need to bring SMEs into the process - which could reasonably be assumed to mean a person or a small company!

These gaps sound trivial, but they reveal that words that feel obvious in one sector carry very different meanings in another. Until those differences are surfaced, it's surprisingly easy for conversations to drift whilst both sides believe they're talking about the same thing.

Engineering permission

In the early days we were deliberate about the signals we sent through the environment and format of gatherings. If we'd simply recreated a standard industry meeting, operators would behave as organisational representatives, suppliers would behave like vendors, and the conversation would quickly become performative.

We avoided traditional rail venues. Instead we held gatherings in coworking spaces or charity offices. Rail professionals spend most of their time in fairly formal environments. Moving people into a different setting subtly changes how they think and behave. People become more open to exploring ideas rather than defending institutional positions.

Many technology companies we wanted to involve were small startups working out of coworking spaces themselves. By hosting events in that environment, we met them on their own ground, levelling the power dynamic between small companies and large rail organisations.

We used comic-book imagery and fonts in graphics and materials – a conscious signal that this wasn't another traditional industry body. Even small details mattered: Monster Munch and Curly Wurlys were, and still are, the snacks of choice! 

Those touches reinforced that the space was intentionally informal. People relaxed more quickly. Conversations became more candid.

None of this was about gimmicks. The aim was to lower the institutional barriers that normally shape industry interactions.

The gradual thaw

The shift was gradual and organic. We were careful not to put rail professionals in positions where they felt exposed. The aim wasn't to create a stage where someone had to publicly admit uncertainty.

Instead, the shift showed up in small signals. You could hear people picking up terminology from the startup side. Rail professionals might ask how a startup funded its development or how a company decided what features to prioritise - questions that don't normally appear in formal supplier meetings.

Tech companies would start asking more grounded questions. Instead of presenting finished products, they'd ask how decisions were actually made inside train operating companies, how long approvals took, or how different parts of the industry were structured.

Those exchanges showed that people had moved beyond scripted interactions. The conversation was no longer just a pitch and polite evaluation. It had become a shared exploration of how each side worked.

What ten years actually teaches you

Early on, I believed that if you simply created the space for these conversations, the right outcomes would follow quickly. My assumption was that barriers were largely about awareness. Once people understood how each other worked, good ideas would flow.

Ten years has shown me the process is slower and more structural.

Community building isn't about individual moments of connection. It's about continuity.

The same people encountering each other repeatedly over time, building familiarity, and gradually developing trust needed to move from conversation to collaboration. Without that continuity, most interactions remain interesting but ultimately inconsequential.

Neutrality matters more than I initially appreciated. If a space is perceived as belonging to one organisation or serving a particular commercial agenda, people behave differently. A neutral platform allows operators, startups, suppliers, and investors to participate without feeling they're entering someone else's territory.

Communities work best when curated rather than completely open. The quality of conversation depends on who's in the room and whether they have a genuine interest in solving problems rather than simply promoting themselves.

Perhaps the biggest shift: communities shouldn't be measured like events or programmes. In the first year it's easy to focus on visible indicators (attendance numbers, introductions made, energy in the room). Over a longer period you realise the more important outcomes are often indirect. People who met in one context reconnect years later when timing is right. An idea that seemed premature resurfaces once the industry environment changes.

The value of outsiders

Bringing in people from outside the rail sector prevents the conversation from becoming trapped inside the industry's existing assumptions.

Every sector develops its own way of describing problems. Over time that vocabulary becomes so familiar that people stop questioning it. Someone from outside often approaches the conversation differently, asking questions that reveal a problem that has been framed in a very specific way for historical reasons rather than because it's the only way to understand it.

We've deliberately invited people from other fields, from venture capital investors and lawyers, to professionals from the nuclear power and aviation sectors. Each brings a different perspective on how complex industries manage risk, funding, technology adoption, and regulation.

Those exchanges often produce a useful reality check. When people from other sectors describe their challenges in regulation, procurement, safety assurance, and integrating new technology into legacy systems it becomes clear that rail isn't uniquely difficult. Many industries working with critical infrastructure navigate similar tensions between innovation and operational stability.

Why neutrality is not negotiable

The value of community comes from trust. Once that trust becomes entangled with commercial incentives, the dynamic changes very quickly.

From the beginning, the aim was to create a space where people could speak openly about problems. That only works if participants are confident the conversation won't immediately turn into a sales opportunity or procurement conversation.

Neutrality protects that balance.

The Rail Innovation Group doesn't operate as a consultancy for participating organisations. That separation removes the suspicion that the platform exists to funnel commercial work toward one party or another. People are therefore more willing to discuss genuine operational challenges.

The moment a community becomes a commercial intermediary, it distorts the incentives. Participants begin to ask who benefits financially from introductions, who's being prioritised, and whether certain voices carry more weight because they're paying clients. Those questions quietly undermine credibility and I hope we’ve avoided that risk.

By staying neutral, the group can focus on convening and translating rather than brokering deals. Commercial relationships still emerge between members - I’d say this is one of the signs the community is working – but those relationships develop independently of the platform itself.

The infrastructure nobody celebrates

The industry celebrates innovation labs, accelerator programmes, and big partnership announcements but the invisibility or community building is part of the point: it nurtures the grassroots communities that feed into the more high profile initiatives. 

I like people, so I like running the group. I enjoy introducing people I think are well matched and seeing the results. Community building is long-term infrastructure, not a quarterly KPI. It doesn't produce immediate results or generate press releases. It doesn't fit neatly into innovation metrics or accelerator timelines.

What ten years has taught me is that the most important work in innovation is often the least visible. It's the repeated conversations that build trust. The shared vocabulary that develops over time. The neutral spaces where people can admit what they don't know. The continuity that allows relationships to mature at their own pace.

But it's the foundation that everything else is built on.

The rail industry faces significant structural challenges to innovation. These aren't problems solved with a single workshop or partnership announcement. They require sustained engagement, patient relationship-building, and the kind of trust that only develops when people encounter each other repeatedly over time in a neutral environment.

Community isn't a programme you run. It's the infrastructure you build. It's not measured in events attended or introductions made. It's measured in the quality of relationships that develop, the vocabulary that emerges, and the trust that allows people to explore problems honestly.

The most important infrastructure is often the kind nobody sees.