This is the fourth in a series of blogs on the UK Industrial Strategy Green Paper published recently by the UK Government. In Blog #3 we discussed strategic priorities in selecting key market spaces from a national perspective and noted the absence of rigorous assessment of the UK’s strategic technology strengths and weaknesses, and the implications of this for UK technology sovereignty.
The main focus of this blog is to tackle this critical question, because it affects so many things, including the priorities of UKRI. We do this based on the analytical frameworks and tools built into the Triple Chasm Model.
In doing this we tackle the following questions posed in the Green Paper:
2. How should the UK government account for emerging sectors and technologies for which conventional data sources are less appropriate?
3. How should the UK government incorporate foundational sectors and value chains into this analysis?
4. What are the most important subsectors and technologies that the UK government should focus on and why?
5. What are the UK’s strengths and capabilities in these subsectors?
6. What are the key enablers and barriers to growth in these subsectors and how could the UK government address them?
As we noted in Blog #3, industry sector and sub-sector definitions are becoming less useful as technology is blurring boundaries. Previous thinking on industrial strategy has tended to conflate markets with technologies, based on a misconception about how technologies can affect different market spaces.
The best example of this type of conflated approach can in fact be found in the definition of the 8 Great Technologies defined by the previous government in 2013. The 8 ‘Technologies’ defined in this paper include several genuinely transformative technologies but also some vague ideas. This paper, which was used to justify national investments and initiatives (both national and international), describes the following:
- Big Data, which is neither a market space nor a technology in a strict sense, but the application of pervasive data handling technologies in which the UK is not particularly strong.
- Space, which is a curious ‘bag’ of technologies and application areas, covering elements of data collection and communication technologies deployed in orbit, alongside UK launch capabilities.
- Robotics & Autonomous Systems, which at least covers a number of the key elements in a typical technology stack with a strong focus around application technologies, platforms and applications.
- Synthetic Biology, which is a unique hybrid technology focused on the interaction between pervasive digital technologies and focused technologies in the biological sciences.
- Regenerative Medicine, which is a powerful example of the integration of different focused technologies, operating at the intersection between biological and material sciences.
- Agri-science, which is a loose description of several technologies and applications associated with different areas of the agri-food market space.
- Advanced Materials, which covers a wide range of materials (both their formulation and manufacturing) which is interesting but quite broad.
- Energy, which appears to include energy production & storage technologies but is better addressed as a market space.
We need a more robust categorisation to understand technologies with growth potential and how they contribute to growth by enabling new products and services.
To tackle this systematically we need a robust technology taxonomy, which covers three key aspects:
- A generic model which clarifies the difference between fundamental building block technologies and the different ways in which they are deployed to create new products and services. We use the 6-layer technology characterisation model to do this, which can be applied to a very wide range of technologies typically developed in universities and research institutes. This is discussed in more detail under Vector I1 of the Triple Chasm Model.
The 6 Layer Model for Technology Characterisation
- A framework to differentiate between three different types of technologies:
- Pervasive (largely digital) Technologies which can be applied across virtually all market spaces- these technologies typically cover all aspects of processing data, and are areas where ‘strategic control’ typically rests with the US, China and Taiwan.
- Focussed Technologies, which are usually quite specific to one market space (sometimes several)- for example many areas in the biological sciences-these rely on serious investment in the R&D base and rightly within the remit of UKRI.
- Hybrid Technologies, which operate at the interface between pervasive and focussed technologies- this is a critical area for the development of new products and services: for example, the development of new biomarkers depends on the combination of pervasive and focused technologies. This is a crucial area for UK Industrial Strategy.
Pervasive vs Focused vs Hybrid Technologies in Lifesciences & Healthcare Market
- A breakdown to understanding the broader implications of manufacturing and deployment. This is one of the critical issues in looking at national technology strategy. Vector I4 in the Triple Chasm Model tackles this explicitly. We need to understand the issues around the sub-vectors covering supply chains (where our dependence on international supply chains needs to be explicitly understood) and the deployment of pervasive technologies where we must understand our dependence on computing and data infrastructures provided by large US tech companies.
Manufacturing & Deployment Unpacked
These three building blocks provide a structured basis for understanding the origin, ownership and exploitation of key technologies, which are critical for understanding questions around UK Technology Sovereignty. However, while these provide a strong base for ‘selecting’ national priorities, they do not explicitly address the critical role of data and meta-data in the creation and implementation of products and services enabled by data. To do this we need to understand the critical role played by data: the 9-layer model for product synthesis and definition does this explicitly.
The 9-layer Model: Technologies, Data and Products
For example, UK industrial strategy needs to understand the difference between ‘foundational’ aspects of AI technologies and its application to solutions in healthcare (just as Google has done by separating healthcare innovations in Google DeepMind); this requires a more nuanced approach to supporting technologies than the technology determinism implied by ideas such as the 8 Great Technologies.
Incorporating the key aspects of this framework, the UK should adopt a strategic focus based on detailed analysis in three key areas:
- Understanding our dependence on pervasive technologies (often provided by US-centric MNCs), and identifying opportunities to exert an influence based on our specific strengths in fundamental technologies such as quantum engineering.
- Identifying and supporting strategic focused technologies where the strength of our science base can be leveraged, for example in genetic advances.
- But the biggest opportunity lies in hybrid technologies where we should be looking at the 'crossover' opportunities, for example in identifying and exploiting new bio-markers or new materials.
Key takeaway from this Blog
The recent change of government in the USA, coupled with the ongoing challenges resulting from Brexit, suggest an urgent need for the UK to explicitly tackle the issue of UK Technology Sovereignty and our overall Technology Strategy: we should take the lead from Europe on this.
This is a priority task in the context of the Industrial Strategy Green Paper.