The UK’s approach to the formulation and communication of an Industrial Strategy can best be summarised as stop-start, inconsistentand generally inadequate for a major global industrialised economy. This has serious consequences for research priorities, industrial engagement, and
public-private resource allocation.
This is a problem which needs to be tackled head-on with rigorous fresh thinking. In response to this challenge, the RDS has launched a major research initiative to support the development of a new
Industrial Strategy for the UK.
The development of a coherentindustrial strategy depends on three key elements:
· An approach based on systems thinking, which explicitly articulates system boundaries, defines all the value-based elements within the system, and explores how these elements interact within the system boundary
· An integrative approach which recognizes that a wide range of factors can affect industrial strategy, explicitly defines these drivers, and examines how these can be integrated to create a framework which enables relative priorities to be quantified
· A dynamic approach to applying the drivers which explicitly articulates the maturity of innovations, based on defining the Commercialisation Readiness Level CRL
The RDS has partnered with the Triple Chasm Company to apply the TripleChasm framework which provides the first systematic methodology for understanding how science and technology enabled
innovation can be transformed to deliver social, environmental and commercial impact.
The new RDS research programme consists of 5Phases:
Phase 1: Analysis
In this first phase we will review current thinking, including recent reports and publications from Government departments and private/public think tanks, based on the rigorous meso-economic framework developed by our strategic partner, The Triple Chasm Company. This critique will include, among others, the following:
· Analysis of the UKScience and Technology Framework March 2023 report
· Analysis of the Independent Review of the UK’s Research, Development and Innovation: Organisational Landscape by Sir Paul Nurse, March 2023
· Analysis of The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change report: A New National Purpose: Innovation Can Power the Future of Britain, Feb2023.
· Analysis of the EU’s European Green Deal, 2019.
Phase 2: Deep dive into KeyMarket Spaces
The RDS will convene a set of working groups, which will, through a series of online roundtables, research, gather feedback and make recommendations to build an effective Commercialisation
Infrastructure in the UK, generally and for key technology sectors. These working groups will include the following:
· The Digital Media Market Space
· The Semiconductor Industry
· The Transport and Logistics Decarbonisation Market Space
· The Agrifood/Agritech Market Space
· The Life-sciences andHealthcare Market Space
· AI/Machine Learning Technologies and their impact on different market spaces
Phase 3: Synthesis
Integration of insights from different market spaces and technologies into the framework to suggest a new approach to defining and articulating industrial strategy, priorities and execution plans.
Phase 4: Understanding Sustainability Stance and Priorities
The framework will be used to explicitly define overall ideological orientation, including the attitude to sustainability.
Phase 5: Articulate Industrial Strategy
Define a new draft Industrial Strategy for critical review, discussion by all the key stakeholders, and
adoption by the new incoming political leadership.
Our plan is to complete and publish all our outputs over the next 12 months.