Connected Places Catapult is exploring how evidence and learning from innovation trials can better support wider solution adoption. By helping innovators and buyers build on what has already been proven, the project aims to reduce unnecessary repetition, strengthen buyer confidence and create an easier route from trial to deployment.
Across transport and infrastructure, innovation trials provide valuable opportunities to demonstrate new technologies in real-world environments. But a successful trial does not automatically lead to solution adoption.
As innovations move between buyers, locations and use cases, new requirements can emerge. Innovators can find themselves demonstrating similar capabilities repeatedly, while buyers need confidence that existing evidence is relevant and credible before making procurement and deployment decisions.
The opportunity is to build on what is already known while focusing new testing and assurance where it is genuinely needed.
An Innovation Passport could provide a consistent way to capture, verify and share evidence about an innovation, reducing the need for repeated assessments by different organisations.
The aim is to help innovators, particularly SMEs, bring their solutions to market faster, while making it easier for potential customers to evaluate and adopt new technologies with greater confidence.
Our Beyond the testbed discovery report sets out what we have learned so far and the opportunities we are now exploring.
Our discovery research identified three opportunities to improve the journey from trial to adoption.
Previous evidence and learning could provide the starting point for the next opportunity, helping organisations understand what is already known and where new evidence is genuinely required.
Evidence is most valuable when it helps someone make a decision. We are exploring how to capture it with the right context, provenance, and credibility so buyers and other decision-makers can understand what has been demonstrated, and its limitations.
Knowledge generated through one trial does not have to end when that trial finishes. Relevant evidence and learning could help inform future trials and adoption decisions, while maintaining appropriate safeguards around intellectual property, confidentiality, ownership and assurance.
The discovery phase has helped us build a clearer picture of where the journey from testing to adoption can break down.
In the next phase of the project, we will work with stakeholders to design and validate an approach that will help organisations understand whether a new innovation is ready to buy and use. The aim is to make it easier for promising solutions that have been successfully trialled to move into real-world procurement and deployment by giving buyers the information and confidence they need to make decisions.
We want to hear from organisations involved in developing, testing, buying, procuring, funding or assuring innovation.
We are particularly interested in hearing from you if you have:
