Sam MacAulay

Making Innovation Happen in a Megaproject: London's Crossrail Suburban Railway System

Isolated pockets of innovation can be found in projects–-such as the novel solution used to redesign the Velodrome roof during the London 2012 Olympics–-but there have been few, if any, systematic efforts to manage innovation in a megaproject. This paper presents the initial findings of an ongoing three-year (2012–2014) action research project between Crossrail and researchers at Imperial College London and University College London. Action research is well suited to a setting where an intervention is required to diagnose and solve an organizational problem and produce scientific findings (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Van de Ven, 2007). Undertaken in collaboration with practitioners, the aim of action research is to transform the research setting through a process of critical inquiry and action. Our engagement with Crossrail aimed to formulate and implement an innovation strategy to improve the performance and outcomes of the project. We identified four stages–-or windows of opportunity–-to intervene to generate, discover, and implement innovation in a megaproject: (1) the bridging window during the front-end when ideas, learning, and practices from other projects and industries can be used to create an innovative project process, organization, and governance structure; (2) the engaging window, when tendering and contractual processes can be used by the client to encourage contractors and suppliers to develop novel ideas and innovative solutions; (3) the leveraging window, when all the parties involved–-clients, delivery partners, and suppliers–-are mobilized to develop novel ideas, new technologies, and organizational practices to improve performance; and (4) the exchanging window at the back-end, when ideas and resources for innovation can be (re) combined with those of other projects in the wider innovation ecosystem to improve performance. The first two stages had largely occurred when we became involved in the Crossrail project in 2012. Our intervention addressed the final two stages, when we assisted in the development and implementation of an innovation strategy. Core to this strategy was a coordinated mobilization of the innovative capabilities across the project supply chain. Though, to be successful, this approach had to be open enough to span organizational boundaries beyond the supply chain, reaching into the broader ecosystem. The four windows provide a valuable new heuristic for organizing innovation in megaprojects, pointing to areas where project managers can craft targeted innovation interventions and compare their efforts with those of others.

Small worlds: the best network structure for innovation?

The properties of social networks have been used to explain the behaviour and performance of diverse economic and social systems. Recently, attention has been given to a class of network structures identified as ‘small‐worlds’, due to their apparent efficiency in connecting different actors through short path lengths within a relatively sparse network. Intuitively, such network structures should also be conducive for innovation due to better flows of information and the possibility of new connections between skills and ideas. While there is some evidence for this hypothesis, we urge caution in interpreting the results of small‐world studies of innovation and suggest future improvements for empirical research.

The past, present and future of social network analysis in the study of innovation

Many years ago Joseph Schumpeter, the founder of the economics of innovation, described innovation as the process of searching for and recombining knowledge. Even this most fundamental model of innovation implies a process of finding the right connections through search and then consolidating those connections.

A survey on information sources used by academic researchers to evaluate scientific instruments

Most scientific research is fueled by research equipment (instruments); typically hardware purchased to suit a particular research question. Examples range from 17th century microscopes to modern particle colliders and high-throughput sequencers. Here, we studied the information sources used by academic researchers to assess scientific instruments, and reveal evidence of a worrying confluence of incentives similar to those that drove the biopharmaceutical industry to adopt controversial practices such as ghostwriting and hidden sponsorship. Our findings suggest there are little understood incentives against disclosure in the peer-reviewed literature on scientific instruments; constituting an underappreciated threat to scientific standards of trustworthiness and transparency. We believe that a public debate and subsequent editorial policy action are urgently required.