The North East LEP: ‘What do global trends mean for North East innovation?’

As part of Bdaily’s latest feature, Innovation Week, we hear from Emma Ward, research, evidence and analysis programme manager at the North East Local Enterprise Partnership. Here she explores global trends and how innovation can help businesses seize the opportunities they present for the North East. Read on to find out more…

In 2021, the North East LEP commissioned an independent foresight analysis to identify which markets will provide new or emerging opportunities for our region and our businesses, given our current strengths and assets in business and research.

This knowledge would allow us to help businesses to explore how they can prosper through innovation in a rapidly changing global economy. In delivering our ambitions for the region, we need to understand the future course of global trends and how these may shape market opportunities for our businesses.

The initial phase of the work was an extensive horizon scan of global social, technological, economic, environmental and political trends, drivers and issues and an assessment of their likely impact on the UK economy.

Frost and Sullivan, a growth strategy and research consultancy, applied the BEETS Framework to the horizon scan. This is a key tool for foresight analysis and one way of segmenting the complexity in global trends.

The BEETS framework helps to identify and prioritise trends and their interconnectedness, across areas including Business Model Transformations, Economic and Political Shifts, Environmental Trends, Technological Progress and Social and Demographic Shifts.

This process identified trends that are significant or surprising, and where new growth opportunities could lie over the next 10 to 15 years.

Understanding what’s happening on global markets and looking at global trends is important. Some trends will potentially have a greater impact than others. We looked for convergence, where several trends are leading to change in the same direction and 37 ‘high impact’ trends were identified.

Looking at these ‘high impact’ trends through the BEETS framework, we can see:

Business model transformations: Many of these new business models are enabled by technological advances in areas such as the internet of things, blockchain and the data economy.

This envisages the increased use of digital assets in everyday business operations, which would not be possible without technological change. These trends are likely to drive demand for both digital businesses, and to change the way businesses in other sectors operate.

Global trends include the circular economy, data as a service, offline to online commerce and the sharing economy.

Economic and political shifts: The next decade is likely to continue to see skills shortages in many industries, which in turn will create further demand for technologies such as AI and robotics that provide alternative ways to fill skills gaps through new forms of automation.

Economic changes will be framed by the global recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic and interaction with political developments, including the drive to Net Zero. Global trends include ageing infrastructure; changes in employment; economic clusters; and inter-regional connectivity.

Environmental trends: Environmental change is primarily being driven by climate change, which is degrading many natural environments and increasing the intensity and duration of extreme weather events. Global trends include biodiversity loss, climate change, environmental urgency, and more interest in sustainable materials.

Technological shifts: Technological changes are always one of the primary drivers of market change. However, technology is not developed in a vacuum and many emerging technological changes are being accelerated by wider trends.

For instance, demand from businesses and skills shortages are driving developments in artificial intelligence, advanced computing, and the internet of things. Environmental change is creating a new impetus to further develop technologies such as battery recycling and electric vehicles.

Global trends include advanced computing; autonomous vehicles; battery recycling; integrated mobility; smart cities and digital infrastructure.

Social and demographic changes: One of the most significant trends likely to change the market opportunities available to businesses is the further ageing of the population, which has accelerated skills shortages in some industries and prompted technological developments.

Inequality is also likely to remain a feature of UK and global society, impacting on the health and wellbeing of many communities. Global trends include ageing population; health and wellbeing; inequality and migration and diversity.

To explore the future global trends in more detail, we have published the outputs of the foresight analysis on the North East Evidence Hub.

By Matthew Neville – Senior Correspondent, Bdaily

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