Project team: Dr. Viktória Döme, Dr. Robert Doubleday, Dr. Eoin O’Sullivan from the Centre for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy (CSTI) in collaboration with the Department for Science, Technology and Innovation (DSIT)

Project aim

This project aims to capture lessons learned and effective practice for emerging technology evidence gathering and analysis and how they link to decision-making processes with an intention to inform future government strategy.

Background

The UK government has identified a number of priority emerging technologies (quantum technology, engineering biology, semiconductors, etc) which will underpin a range of transformative advances in the economy, society and the environment. The government has a vision to grow UK capabilities in these key domains in areas where the UK can lead the world in developing applications and solutions, as well as in regulations, standards, and ethically responsible innovation. In particular, the government aims to advance the foundational technological, research and industrial components of these domains into a competitive ‘innovation ecosystem’ which can develop and realise the commercial and societal opportunities of these technology domains.

There are significant challenges to strategizing for emerging technologies, especially for those domains which are still making the transition from promising applied science (perhaps with early niche/specialist applications) to engineered industrial technologies (with established design rules, supply chains, engineering ‘tools’, standardised production processes, etc).

Project objectives:

• To institutionalize tacit knowledge embedded within UK stakeholders involved in past and current emerging technology policy and analysis, enabling the transfer of insights gained to inform future strategy
• To enable more systematic analysis of complex emerging technology landscapes by identifying and defining key system parts and their interdependencies
• To introduce framework tools as shortcuts to organizing the inherent complexity
• To provide examples of successful domestic and international emerging technology policy analysis
• To describe and unpack the process of strategic analysis and provide examples of tools and best practices

Project focus

Given UK’s recent history in prioritizing specific technologies, this project focuses on the stage where strategic analysis is conducted for selected emerging technologies. Nevertheless, links to the earlier stage of technology prioritization and later stage of implementation are also made.

This work delves into analysing the most recent strategy developments around quantum technologies and engineering biology given the importance of these technologies for UK’s competitive advantage and the government support these have received over the past decade.