INNOVATION LABS
Atlanta’s ATL Thinks! This is a launchpad for local start-ups – and they even keep their intellectual property. ATL Thinks! is a yearly innovation initiative that started in 2015. It is designed to highlight local companies and talent, connecting them to industries and opportunities through a series of ideation labs, hackathons, mentor sessions and pitch competitions for a duration of two months. Three divisions of participants – college students, professionals and start-ups less than three years old – work to solve airport challenges, and the winning team from each division gets to deploy their solutions at the airport. Outputs include sustainability solutions, marketing and communication projects, virtual and augmented reality, IoT (Internet of Things), predictive and location analytics, wearables, self-driving vehicles and drones.
There is increasing evidence to show that well-organised, results-oriented innovation labs have an important part to play in this process. SAS Lab is working on an electronic bag tag (EBT), which comprises a small, low-power flexible electronic device with new screen technology permanently attached to the passenger’s bag. The device connects to a smartphone so that travellers can update it with journey details for each trip they take. The tag would then display a bar code image and the itinerary for the trip. At the airport, travellers with the EBT would then just drop off their luggage at the baggage counter. This is the kind of technology which has the power to transform airport operations worldwide. But it is only one of a wide number of new technologies the airport labs are working on. Indeed, automated apron and terminal vehicles; the use of big data to track and predict passenger flows; beacons; new type of apps; and new generations of digital retail offerings are all being incubated and accelerated somewhere around the world. Not all these inventions will go from proof-of-concept to actual implementation. The value-creation mechanisms between the incubators and the start-ups are often opaque and will depend on whether the lab has been set up to focus on in-house technology challenges or to be marketed globally, or whether the airport is merely a host and facilitator for technology acceleration in areas which stretch far beyond the aviation sector. From the start, the airport has to understand exactly what it wants from its technology lab, what kind of people it wants to recruit and what kind of path to market it wants to design if the lab produces real results. This will require research – into the legal issues, new business models and the different types of innovation labs that are doing good work. For all airports considering setting up an in-house innovation lab, there is a considerable cultural divide to be bridged. These labs come from a place where risk-taking, OK-to-fail, entrepreneurship and radical innovation are core elements of success. This is very different from the risk-adverse, hierarchical and closely regulated world of airport management.
Airport innovation labs typically focus on as many as five broad, overlapping focus areas .
One way around this is for the airport to let a partner organisation manage the lab on its behalf. This is the strategy now being pursued by San Diego International Airport, which says the lab needs more attention than the airport itself can provide. The danger is that with so many airport innovation labs starting up, their outputs will be an overly ambitious focus on all possible aspects of aviation and not integrated with the strategic vision or business plan of the host airport. If there is a big technology challenge out there which will transform the way airports operate, then the chances are Google or Amazon are probably already working on it and they will be faster, smarter and more able to invest than the average airport, even an airport with an innovation lab. For any airport CEO considering whether to create an innovation lab, several strategic questions need to be answered from the start of the operation to make sure the output is linked directly to the airport’s business strategy, rather than being a mere flight of fancy.
– What scope of solutions will the lab research? Some labs cater to all areas of airport management, others focus on specific topics. How will this lab be different?
– Who is the end user? Will the research focus on in-house technology challenges or produce products that can be marketed around the world?
– What is the business model for the lab? Will the work involve closed or open innovation? Is the airport the service provider or the money maker? If it is an open model, based on partnerships, who will own what, and what level of confidentiality should apply? Who will hold the patent to the successful product? In-house airport innovation labs can use the passengers that pass through the terminal as potential guinea-pigs. ATL Thinks! has been developed to strengthen links with local start-ups, offering technical challenges to the academic community. What projects would be better suited for crowdsourcing, and what others for hackathons?
AIRPORT WORLD/APRIL-MAY 2018
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