The Wireless Infrastructure Strategy sets out a policy framework to affirm our unwavering commitment to extending 4G coverage to 95% of the population, deliver high quality 5G to all populated areas in the UK by 2030, and investing £40 million to drive take up of innovative 5G-enabled services for businesses and the public sector. It also sets out a comprehensive 6G strategy to harness and develop the UK’s strengths in future telecoms, and to ensure that the UK can influence and benefit from the development of 6G in a way that meets the UK’s future connectivity needs.

UK Science and Technology Framework   The motivation behind the science and technology superpower agenda is simple: science and technology will [...]

This HEPI Report intends to begin a conversation – within universities and across local economic organisations and national government – about what this role currently looks like, how it can be co-developed for mutual gain and what benefits this could create for local innovation-led growth and the UK’s global competitiveness.

The APPG and the British Science Association (BSA) have published the Regional STEM Skills Inequity report.

A new report, commissioned by the Faraday Institution and authored by DNV, analyses how hydrogen and battery technologies are likely to be used in different sectors within the UK

The NAO’s latest study scrutinises whether the government is set up to deliver value for money from its approach to investment in research and innovation to deliver net zero.

Wireless 2030 Wireless connectivity has become increasingly critical for different aspects of our lives, from keeping in touch, to getting [...]

What do we know about green jobs in the UK? And what are the barriers to getting more people into green jobs?

The Science and Technology Framework is the strategic anchor that government policy will deliver against, and which the government will hold itself accountable to.

This POSTnote reviews the digital technologies that support freight transport, considering the benefits and challenges associated with their use.

Longer duration storage can support a future energy system with high proportions of renewable energy by providing flexible energy supply and demand, and increasing the resilience of energy networks.

Digital Catapult shares highlights from the past year, and demonstrates how it continues to accelerate industry adoption of advanced digital technologies to drive growth and opportunity across the UK economy.

The report surveyed three clusters selected in consultation with Innovate UK – East Midlands medical technologies, Solent marine and maritime, and Belfast cyber security.

The strategic delivery plan details how engineering and physical sciences deliver ideas, innovations and technologies that are needed for a sustainable, resilient and prosperous UK.

Key findings and 7 high-level recommendations from BBSRC's review of its technology development portfolio and associated support mechanisms.

Local Digital Capital Index 2022 The Local Digital Capital Index is a guide that describes the impact and value technology [...]

Automation in Military Operations Advances in robotics and digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), are enabling greater levels of [...]

The role of hydrogen in a net zero energy system Hydrogen can carry energy to many hard-to-decarbonise sectors with no [...]

An overview of the key players and support in the UK public sector research and innovation ecosystem for hydrogen

Backing Innovation-Led Businesses 2022 The ‘Backing innovation-led businesses: the role of public investment’ report examines, for the first time, how [...]

Showcasing impact stories that demonstrate how engineering and physical sciences research can engineer a net zero world.

techUK has published a new quantum commercialisation report calling on UK Government and industry to set clear commercial ambitions together, giving UK-based and international businesses the confidence that the UK is a viable place to achieve quantum commercial viability

An Evaluation of the Small Business Research Initiative A new report from Innovate UK that evaluates and showcases the success [...]

Professor Ben Goldacre’s review into how the efficient and safe use of health data for research and analysis can benefit patients and the healthcare sector.

An overview of the impact of digital technology on the arts and culture sector in the UK focusing on the uses of emerging digital technologies and the impact of COVID-19 on stakeholders.

This sets out long-term, high-level priorities for how UKRI will deliver their vision for an outstanding research and innovation system in the UK that provides everyone with the opportunity to contribute and to benefit, enriching lives locally, nationally and globally.

Mapping and analysis of science engagement and inequity in the UK The British Science Association (BSA) commissioned London Economics to [...]

In this annual Connected Nations report, Ofcom measure progress in the availability of broadband and mobile services in the UK, including the newest full fibre and 5G networks now being rolled out.

The key to a successful tech ecosystem is critical mass in terms of access to talent, advice and investment. Local authorities may hold the key to unlocking some of this potential and this report contains numerous pragmatic suggestions for doing so.

Latest analysis of the UK spinouts landscape identifies top universities, local authorities, sectors and investors. Findings highlight gender imbalance among leadership, success across UK regions and the impact of Covid-19.

In collaboration with its members, techUK has summarised four top priorities for a successful AI governance regime in the UK.

BCS' “Landscape Review - Computing Qualifications in the UK” is a view of the current state of computing and digital qualifications in the UK.

The Vision is for a built environment whose explicit purpose is to enable people and nature to flourish together for generations.

An independent vision from the UK’s Robotics Growth Partnership for a new cyber-physical infrastructure to accelerate innovation.

The UK Government has published its Levelling Up White Paper, setting out a plan to transform the UK by spreading opportunity and prosperity to all parts of it.

Physics and the Economy: Measuring the value of physics-based industries in the UK The new Physics and the Economy project [...]

This report summarises RISE’s events and activities since 2019, including their annual conference, and the achievements of the eight RISE-funded research projects.

The Cyber Security Strategy explains how the government will ensure that all public sector organisations will be resilient to cyber threats.

Intelligent Automation in Central Government techUK is the trade association representing the UK tech industry. In this report, Intelligent Automation [...]

Building the future economy: plan for action for UK business innovation Business innovation is the commercially successful application of ideas. [...]

Reducing the whole life carbon impact of buildings The emissions attributed to a building across its lifetime are known as [...]

This report notes that Northern Ireland faces challenges in the transition to net zero given its heavy dependence on jobs in carbon intensive sectors. There is also a strong need to reduce emissions from businesses, households, and transport.

Interpretable machine learning Modern machine learning (ML) systems are increasingly being used to inform decision making in a variety of applications. However, for some types [...]

This POSTnote gives an overview of these uses, and their potential impacts on the cost and quality of healthcare, and on the workforce.

Developing essential digital skills Digital skills are increasingly important for day-to-day life, including for communication, accessing services and employment. However, [...]

Hydrogen could play a significant role in tackling climate change. Using it does not produce carbon dioxide, so it could replace fossil fuels in a range of applications.

Energy sector digitalisation The incorporation of digital technologies in the energy sector can support progress towards key UK objectives such [...]

This POSTnote looks at smart city innovation in the UK and the technologies involved.

This POSTnote from the UK Parliament provides an overview of vaccine development and technologies.

This report by The Productivity Institute looks at the decisions of successive UK Government's over the last 50 years to attempt to glean learnings from what has worked well and what has worked not so well in improving the rate of productivity in the UK economy.

THE CREATECH REPORT 2021 The UK has long been renowned as a shining light in the global tech ecosystem, and, equally, [...]

This report aims to inform other governments about the evolution and function of science advice in the UK, illustrating how structures and processes have been developed and embedded, highlighting key strengths and attributes, as well as articulating where the tensions and challenges lie.

A new report from TechNation has revealed that tech companies are hiring at higher than pre-pandemic levels and Northern Ireland is the region with the third highest growth in the number of advertised tech vacancies across the 12 UK regions.

National AI Strategy The UK Government has today launched its first National AI Strategy. The aim of this Strategy is set [...]

In this briefing the National Engineering Policy Centre (NEPC) calls for an economic recovery that pivots the UK towards a net-zero future, rather than one that locks us into a high-carbon future.

techUK's Fast Forward for Digital Jobs report examines the state of play of adult education and digital skills training and sets out seven key recommendations to support learners, support employers, and deliver change at scale.

Skills for success: Supporting business leaders with digital adoption The embrace of technology by small- and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) across [...]

Using firm level survey data, this report from the Office of National Statistics explores the relationship between management practices and innovative activity, including formal R&D.

The economic case for reskilling in the UK: How employers can thrive by boosting workers’ skills This report from McKinsey [...]

Documents relating to the employer skills survey 2019 conducted by the Department for Education in England, the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Executive.

This vision document has grown out of extensive research into the future of transport and out of consultation with Innovate UK's partners in both the public and private sectors. It takes a view of where we will be by 2050 and outlines the likely steps along the way to achieving this.

The UK’s first-ever Hydrogen Strategy has been published. It sets out how the UK government will work with industry to meet its ambition for 5GW of low carbon hydrogen production capacity by 2030.

This report uses real-world examples to illustrate how different businesses conduct late-stage R&D, the range of activities and the resources they draw upon.

This survey is the first of its kind in the UK and brings together the views of leading businesses and organisations at the forefront of the hydrogen economy.

Life Sciences Vision The UK Government has published its Life Sciences Vision. This report takes a detailed look at the [...]

CaSE - The Campaign for Science and Engineering has published its Education Policy Review, entitled Inspiring Innovation.

The Royal Academy of Engineering's National Engineering Policy Centre has published a report on Late Stage Research & Development. 

Northern Ireland response to the AI Council AI Roadmap The Northern Ireland Innovation Stakeholder Group has submitted a Northern Ireland [...]

The Department of Transport (UK) has published a report on the next steps for the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation.

The Understanding the Cyber Security Recruitment Pool report quantifies and explores the supply of cyber skills in the UK.

Now in its seventh year, the report highlights how the sector has changed, who the top performers were through the year, and the challenges and opportunities the UK faces as it navigates out of the pandemic and leaving the EU.

The Royal Academy of Engineering has produced a report on Spinouts

This report examines whether the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund has been set up in a way likely to optimise value for money. The report examines the establishment of the Fund, in particular whether it has attracted sufficient good-quality bids, whether the selection processes have been efficient and whether the budget is managed effectively and the approach to monitoring and evaluating the Fund’s performance, as well as its performance to date.

This report provides a review of the UK’s industrial and innovation performance in a global context, drawing upon the latest available international indicators.

An independent report, carried out by the AI Council, providing recommendations to help the government's strategic direction on AI.

This UKRI AI review ’Transforming our world with AI’ sets out UKRI’s view of the opportunities for research and innovation in AI – artificial intelligence – in the UK.

The analysis in this report is based on Beauhurst’s data on 1,424 spinouts – both alive and dead – that have spun out or met one of Beauhurst’s tracking triggers since 2011.

This report highlights the extent, pace and scale at which NW businesses have adopted new digital technologies and made more use of existing ones over the last year, and how significant this has been in terms of positively responding to the pandemic, creating new business models and opportunities, as well as retaining jobs.

This research report reviews the innovation benefits for cities and subnational governments of international collaboration.

Over the last three months, recruitment for tech jobs has quickly recovered from the inevitable slump during lockdown. In fact, according to Tech Nation’s new Jobs and Skills Report 2020, the number of advertised tech job vacancies increased by 36% between June and August.

In this paper, Nesta sets out how an ambitious programme of challenge prizes could play a vital role in the revitalised UK innovation funding system envisioned in the government’s R&D Roadmap.

Airspace 2050: Three Futures contains three alternative scenarios which might play out around the year 2050. These are challenging but plausible futures. They are not predictions, but envision potential outcomes arising from the call to action on climate change, from technological disruption and geopolitical change, from burdens put upon the regulatory system, and from changing demographics and attitudes.

Over the coming months the UK government will develop the proposals in this Roadmap into a comprehensive R&D plan, working very closely with the devolved administrations where plans cover or impact on their devolved policy responsibilities.

Written by Dr Peter Totterdill, and edited by Lesley Giles and Heather Carey, this paper explores how working and management practices can be transformed in order to tackle the productivity gap that has characterised the UK economy for more than a decade.

The Missing £4 Billion - Making R&D work for the whole UK For many people and places across the UK, [...]

The Industrial Strategy Council is an independent non-statutory advisory group comprised of leading men and women from business, academia and civil society. This first Annual Report provides the Council’s independent assessment on the progress of the Industrial Strategy.

This new study shows the public sees innovation as a vital tool in tackling major challenges facing the UK – both economic and social.

This report examines the phenomenon of ‘digital innovation brokerage’ that aims to connect ideas, people, organisations, and communities through digital technologies.

At a time of unprecedented growth, this report sets out a comprehensive understanding of the skills, the gaps and the ways to address these that are vital to the growth of the immersive experience production sector.

This report tells us that the Life Sciences sector has the potential to create approximately 133,000 jobs over the next 10 years, and that digital and computational skills, statistical literacy, leadership and inter-disciplinary working are essential to its continued success.

The workforce crisis in UK manufacturing is well known. There is an acute skills gap that prevents manufacturers from successfully exploiting new technologies. This report provides a blueprint for the way forward.

This report, co-authored by Immerse UK and Digital Catapult, provides an overview of the scale, nature and economic value of the virtual, augmented and mixed reality ecosystem, its key drivers and barriers.

A comparative analysis of public, private and third sector accelerators to lawtech innovation and adoption in the UK and in other jurisdictions. This study is based on data available up to August 2019.

This report presents findings around growth and productivity based on a comprehensive review of the literature and interviews with selected academic and industry experts in the bioeconomy of the United Kingdom.

This handbook is a digest of 20 tools that are proven to help innovation flourish inside government, based on Nesta's work over more than a decade in UK local and central government, as well as with more than 30 international governments.

The aim of the project was to move the productivity conversation forward, away from the economists, politicians and statisticians, and into the workplace by engaging with employees in manufacturing companies

Agricultural Robotics: The Future of Robotic Agriculture The recent commitment of a £90million investment by the government (Transforming Food Production [...]

This document builds on POST’s previous publication, Topics of Interest 2018 and represents evidence gathered between May 2018 and April 2019. Topics included consist of areas of change with a larger volume of evidence attached that are likely to have significant impact, as these are most likely to be of most interest to Parliament.

Lack of gender diversity in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) workforce is raising growing concerns, but the evidence base about this problem has until now been based on statistics about the workforce of large technology companies or submissions to a small number of prestigious conferences.

This report presents an in-depth analysis of where these opportunities for doing "business unusual" will come from. It has been created to inspire, provoke debate and ultimately influence the choices made today.

This white paper sets out plans to transform the UK’s regulatory system to support innovation while protecting citizens and the environment.

The Government Office for Science looked at how changes in technology and an ageing population affect what skills the UK will need in the future. The project also considered how investment in skills and encouraging lifelong learning can have a positive impact on productivity.

The Future of Food 2040 report highlights the importance of establishing a future domestic agricultural policy that enables the farming industry to increase its productivity, profitability and resilience in the future, which will be crucial for businesses to thrive in an increasingly volatile world.

Improving the ratio of women to men in STEM innovation by just 1% has the potential to increase company revenues in that sector by over £300 million per annum - thanks to diverse perspectives and backgrounds delivering innovation that’s more in tune with customers and society.

This compendium brings together some of Nesta's innovation experience over the years. Each section gives a simple introduction to the method and describes Nesta’s work in relation to it. In each case they have also provided a link to further relevant resources and inspiration on their website.

The RSA’s Future Work Centre has published research that models four ‘futures of work’ by 2035 - and shows how politicians may not be up to speed on what’s going on.

This document presents a review of existing literature on the future of work. This review has been commissioned by The Alan Turing Institute to inform the Turing research strategy aiming to further data science and artificial intelligence (AI) research to address real-world problems.

This report details the scale, geographical distribution and competitiveness of the UK materials sector. It is based on a database of the UK materials companies that was extracted in a bottom-up approach from a wide range of company datasets and sources of information.

This report counters the long-held caricature of the state as a slow, lumbering, bureaucratic machine and sets out to find the people, processes and practices in government that are ‘moving fast, and fixing things’ and demonstrating a new kind of public entrepreneurship. It draws on several examples of work done in Northern Ireland.

This list sets out the topic areas identified of possible parliamentary interest under the 9 different category headings (Agriculture, Fisheries, Food and Forestry, Crime, Defence, Education and Skills, Energy, Environment, Health, ICT and Robotics and Transport and Infrastructure).

This Royal Society report explores the challenges and issues facing the subject in primary and secondary schools since the subject was introduced in English schools in 2014.

This British Council report has been commissioned to better understand the diverse value, processes and motivations of creative hubs and in doing so, analyse how best to support and stimulate the wider creative economy they are rooted in, particularly in times of political and financial uncertainty.

This report – a collaboration between Nesta and Creative England – reveals hotspots of creative activity in all nations and regions of the UK, and produces data that economic development agencies and policymakers charged with promoting business growth can use when setting strategic priorities.

This NESTA report is the first systematic analysis of employment in the UK’s creative and high-tech economies. It analyses their size, growth and distribution across the country.

In this report, the CBI calls for a commitment to spending 3% of GDP on R&D by 2025 – a joint target to be met by the private sector and government.

This report draws on 30 interviews with senior digital and policy officials across Whitehall and the public sector, and vendors to government. It focuses on the role of the Government Digital Service (GDS) in creating a framework for digital government that is successful, and assesses how GDS is performing in that role.

This report maps out how the North of England can better engage with its tech clusters, drawing on respective expertise and innovation in order to provide solutions for smart cities and digitise industry strengths.

It is clear we need a new way of measuring the economy and that is what is presented in this report by the National Institute for Economic and Social Research, based on the pioneering big data techniques of Growth Intelligence, a UK company who specialise in tracking and measuring the economic activities of companies.

What is the potential of machine learning over the next 5-10 years? And how can we develop this technology in a way that benefits everyone? The Royal Society’s machine learning project has been investigating these questions, and this report sets out the actions needed to maintain the UK’s role in advancing this technology while ensuring careful stewardship of its development.

Learning to be an Engineer presents a different way of framing the challenge of persuading more young people to continue studying STEM subjects and to consider engineering as a suitable career for them.

This report argues that the ability to solve problems with others is a crucial skill for our young people in the workplace of the future but the current education system does little to support it.

This research sought to explore the leadership, management and business skills gaps within the UK creative industries and to identify development interventions that may meet these gaps.

This review is intended to provoke debate as to the current and likely future state of the contruction industry and identifies the urgent actions needed to lead a change agenda that will safeguard the industry’s future. 

In this report, Horizon 2035 outlines some initial results and messages from their work to date. A final publication will follow  once all analysis of this extensive work has been completed and verified.

This evaluation scoping study and baseline had two main objectives: to estimate the current size of the Agri-Tech sector and to make projections for the sector based on its current structure and global trends up to the 2030.

This report looks at what has been achieved against the original vision for Industrial Partnerships (IPs). It focuses on the lessons learned from the activities, the challenges and successes.

A Healthcare UK report on how partnership with the UK in Genomics and Personalised Medicine could transform healthcare.

This report examines the issues that still remain around personal data and suggests the actions that need to be taken.

This report was commissioned when DETI and MATRIX identified substantial commercial opportunities associated with sustainable energy technology markets which were likely to grow significantly as worldwide demand for lower-carbon technologies increased.

This report finds that major advances have been achieved in the quality and extent of telecommunications provision in Northern Ireland and, combined with near term plans, the overall provision places it among the leading regions in terms of international standards.