Public Transport is going through a transformation phase. There is increasing competition from other modes of transport. On the other hand, the ridership has not fully recovered. Public transport operators should provide safe and reliable. The role of transport is much more than just moving people from A to B. There is a need to adopt innovation culture and cooperation and co-innovation with external stakeholders are important to solve some of the challenges faced by the transport authority. Open Innovation can help organizations to define their problem, co-developing solutions by providing subject matter expertise and data, and then trialing some of the solutions

Rikesh Shah is Head of Commercial Innovation at Transport for London (TfL). Rikesh is accountable for TfL’s engagement with market innovators that include start-ups, small and medium-sized enterprises, academics, R&D institutes, accelerators, venture capitalists, and large corporates. TfL’s Commercial Innovation function is able to set out clear challenges, engage with the most innovative companies from across the world, curate and incubate the best ideas and then scale them to support the delivery of the Mayor’s Transport Strategy.

Rikesh was previously responsible for TfL’s open data strategy and set up a digital and data partnerships function. As a result of TfL’s open data, there are nearly 700 apps used by 42% of Londoners with over 14,000 registered users, mainly developers. He truly believes that “Any innovation is about saving real-life problems".