1. ALL SHOOK UP: TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION IN RESTRUCTURED INFRASTRUCTURE INDUSTRIES Katherine Lovell*, Roderick A. Smith *Future Railways Research Centre, Room 760, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Imperial College London. T: 020 7594 7108 E: k.lovell@imperial.ac.uk INNOVATION IN THE UK PASSENGER RAILWAY INDUSTRY Infrastructure industries, like the railways, provide an unusual environment for technological innovation. In addition many have undergone privatisation and restructuring. How can innovation processes for infrastructure environments respond? It is proposed that organisational and technological structures of these industries need to match (Künnecke (2008)). How do the industries and their technological development options respond when these structures are mismatched? Competitive Collective AN ELECTRIC IDEA • The story from the electricity industry (Künnecke (2008)) Organisation of technology ? ? Re-centralising? Distributed generation? Technology • A pattern repeated in the UK railways Organisation of technology Where and how to innovate? EARLY VEHICLES END OF FIRST FRANCHISES CENTRAL PROCUREMENT In many cases, TOCs took the lead in creating the vehicle performance specification for vehicles purchased soon after privatisation. • ROSCO’s had some resulting problems: • Cascading vehicles • Alteration problems • ROSCOs now stress the whole life and whole network performance of a vehicle in their input to vehicle specifications. This input reduces the TOCs competitive control Recently the Intercity Express Programme performance specification, based on industry consultation and requirements, was put together by DfT Rail. ? Disposable train? Technology • These industries provide cases to model the behaviour of infrastructure industries ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Discussions were conducted a series of senior engineers based in different types of organisations in the industry. This research is part of Rail Research UK, project B7. Central images are from www.freefoto.com REFERENCES Competition Commission (2008), “Rolling stock leasing market investigation: Provisional findings report”, 7th August 2008. Interviews with senior engineers: conducted 2007-2009. Künnecke (2008) “Institutional reform and technological practice: the case of electricity” Industrial and Corporate Change, Vol. 17, No. 2, pp. 233-265 www.qinetiq.com www.agilitytrains.com