What is Ideas in Transit?
Our five-year project began in October 2007 and is supported by three major sponsors of
transport research under the Future Intelligent Transport Systems initiative.
Ideas in Transit takes the 'bottom up' approach to discovering and promoting innovation
in transport. We follow the trend in co-operative and collaborative approaches to create innovative new products and services with users of transport; our "User Innovators".
Why Ideas in Transit?
'User Innovation' recognises that consumers are no longer passive recipients but are adaptors, inventors and innovators
(as recognised by von Hippel & Leadbeater). We witness this in co-creation in software, leisure fields, public services
and journalism. And the opportunity for user innovation to engage the masses is vastly improved via the trends in online
communities and mobile communications. Already this global connectivity has spawned user-generated content through
conduits such as wikis and blogs.
Work that looks at Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) typically follows a top-down approach, from companies
(like satellite navigation systems) or from government.
Ideas in Transit asserts that there may be significant, but largely over-looked, sources of innovation too - particularly
where transport users innovate upon existing forms of information or communications technologies.
Perhaps in a different way than their creators intended.
Hence a bottom-up approach. By engaging with these 'User Innovators' Ideas in Transit unlocks new opportunities
for existing technologies to address challenges facing transport systems and users.
Our Goals
- to study the creativity and innovation of users and understand how this may be harnessed to advance Intelligent Transport Systems;
- to use a mixed method approach to work out how user innovation related to ICTs can be searched for, identified,
understood and potentially exploited;
- to develop a Wiki portal to catalogue instances of innovation and enable cross-comparison of case studies;
- to take a selected number of innovations as sub-projects and support them towards commercial exploitation via incubator funding; and
- to promote our findings in the ITS field.
Our Mixed Method Approach
There are two key elements to the project - an ITS Observatory and a reserved budget for sub-projects
and scoping studies.
The ITS Observatory looks at both the problem space (like dealing with mobility issues or inefficiencies in service)
and the users context (like time pressured knowledge workers) to identify and understand user innovations.
The Observatory approach has so far produced a multi-disciplinary literature review and the Innovations Portal
wiki to which innovators can now contribute. Looking ahead, we are now in the process of using a number of methods -
such as: interviewing; focus groups; creativity workshops; participatory design in the wild; ethnography; cyber
ethnography; and competitions - to build up further insights.
Incubator funding is administered by the project team under the guidance of our Assessment team (experts in Transport, Charity and Design sectors).
Combined, we're creating an engine for innovation on transport. We'd love you to contribute.
Visit our
Innovations Portal or contact us.
If you'd like something to take away about the project or to pass on to others please download
our Ideas in Transit Briefing Sheet [PDF].
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