Mapping the production, diffusion and drivers of future technologies

我们建议通过与行业和政策制定者的合作和参与，绘制和跟踪英国技术变革的状况，了解其驱动因素和影响，并帮助改善英国的生产率记录。我们专注于前沿或“未来”技术的作用，如人工智能，机器人技术，清洁技术，区块链和量子。这些技术对英国生产率的贡献将取决于其生产和使用（扩散）的双渠道，我们将寻求从理论和经验上建立模型的决定因素。我们将建立英国“未来技术生产”和“未来技术使用”部门经济活动的量化证据。第一，通过描述-包括部门和地理因素;第二，通过积累证据，说明金融或技能摩擦在多大程度上限制了投资。因此，我们正在解决PIN研讨会提出的两个挑战：理解和改善创新传播;理解和改善区域和地方生产力。我们的方法的一个创新是，我们将使用一系列新兴的数据库，以技术为导向的公司与基于文本的信息，他们的活动，建立一个全面的经验性的未来技术部门的图片。我们还将利用这些数据库以新的方式跟踪技术的传播，并计划进行一项调查，以进一步了解传播障碍，特别是中小企业。我们将与领先的行业和政策利益相关者合作，在新技术，相关数据和技术方面拥有专业知识。我们的实证练习将以一个概念框架为指导，该框架将模拟金融市场和劳动力市场摩擦对创新，扩散和经济增长的影响。我们的项目成果将一致的四个主要组成部分：1.未来行业数据和测量网络：我们将与项目合作者一起举办两次大型研究会议，与会者包括研究未来技术的学者以及来自政策和商业的相关利益相关者（例如NESTA和Be the Business）。其中第一个将寻求将主要利益攸关方聚集在一起，并制定研究议程;第二个将涉及介绍我们的研究结果，并制定一个持续的研究议程。我们还将举行不太正式的中间工作会议。举报人：18个月后，我们的核心成果将是一份报告，内容包括：（i）对相关文献的回顾，包括经验和理论;（ii）对英国未来科技行业的规模、地理、结构和业绩的新的描述性统计数据（与传统的SIC估计数进行比较和对比）;（iii）一个概念框架，为生产和采用未来技术的驱动因素提供信息-通过建立一个最低限度的模型，该理论将旨在利用我们收集或整合的新数据指导实证练习;以及（iv）使用新的公司级数据库和调查，对未来技术的生产和采用进行经验建模，在可能的情况下，包括（公司）外部的资金/技能供应措施。与项目团队的新合著者一起进行未来学术研究的议程：使用我们的新数据扩展理论工作并测试其预测，并确定需要额外数据的领域。我们预计，该项目将导致至少2篇学术论文的发展，最有可能的是一个更侧重于FTP公司，一个FTU部门，与路径的因果关系识别。4.数据：如果我们使用的数据是购买的，我们将寻求为希望建立在我们分析基础上的研究人员提供资源和指导。根据标准的学术实践，我们将在匿名的基础上通过UKDS酌情向感兴趣的各方分享我们自己生成的调查数据。

We propose to map and track the state of technological change in the UK, understand its drivers, impacts and help to improve the UK's productivity record via our collaboration and engagement with industry and policymakers. We focus on the role of frontier or 'future' technologies, such as AI, robotics, clean tech, blockchain and quantum. The contribution of these technologies to UK productivity will depend on the twin channels of their production and use (diffusion), the determinants of which we will seek to model theoretically and empirically. We will build up quantitative evidence on economic activity in the UK's 'future-technology-producing' and 'future-technology-using' sectors. First, through description - which will include both sectoral and geographical elements; and second through building evidence on the extent to which financial or skills frictions constrain investment. We are therefore addressing two of the challenges set out by the PIN workshop: understanding and improving innovation diffusion; and understanding and improving regional and local productivities. An innovation in our approach is that we will use a range of emerging databases on technology-oriented firms linked to text-based information on their activities to build a comprehensive empirical picture of the future technology sectors. We will also use these databases to track the diffusion of technologies in novel ways, and plan to conduct a survey to shed more light on the barriers to diffusion, for SMEs in particular. We will work together with leading industry and policy stakeholders with expertise on new technologies, relevant data and techniques. Our empirical exercises will be guided by a conceptual framework that will model the effect of frictions in the financial market and the labor market on innovation, diffusion and economic growth. Our project deliverables will consistent of four main components: 1. Future sector data and measurement network: Together with our project collaborators, we will host two major research meetings involving academics studying future technologies and relevant stakeholders from policy and business (e.g. NESTA and Be the Business). The first of these would seek to bring together the key stakeholders and set the agenda for research; and the second would involve presentations of our findings and developing an ongoing research agenda. We would also hold intermediate less formal working sessions.2. Report: Our core deliverable after 18 months will be a report containing (i) a review of the relevant literature, empirical and theoretical; (ii) new descriptive statistics of the size, geography, structure and performance of the future technology sector in the UK (comparing and contrasting with traditional SIC based estimates); (iii) a conceptual framework to inform the drivers of the production and adoption of future technologies - by building a minimalistic model, the theory will aim to guide the empirical exercises using new data we collect or consolidate; and (iv) empirical modelling of production and adoption of future technology using new firm level databases and a survey, including external (to the firm) measures of the supply of finance/skills where possible.3. Agenda for future academic research with new co-authorships from the project team: extending theoretical work and testing its predictions using our new data, and identifying areas where additional data are required. We envisage that the project will lead to the development of at least 2 academic papers, most likely one more focused on the FTP firms, and one on the FTU sectors, with paths to causal identification.4. Data: Where the data we are using are purchased, we will seek to provide resources and guidance for researchers wishing to build on our analysis. According to standard academic practice, we would share our own generated survey data on an anonymised basis to interested parties, via the UKDS as appropriate.