Innovation of new products and processes is the engine of long-term productivity growth. This puts the current wave of innovations at the heart of the productivity puzzle. From biomedicine to advanced materials to AI, there is astonishing scientific progress, and yet this is not showing up in overall productivity growth.
The need to speed up diffusion in use of the technologies to generate economically valuable products and services points to the important policy levers involving infrastructure, skills, competition and data.
The paper also includes a number of policy implications.
Author: Diane Coyle (University of Cambridge)