Scientific analysis and judgment of future industrial development direction
The future industry is an important area for reshaping the global innovation landscape and economic landscape. Prospective layout of future industries is an important part of building a modern industrial system and a key factor in firmly grasping the initiative of future development. An important prerequisite for forward-looking layout of future industries is to determine which industries belong to the future. The future industry has a high degree of uncertainty in terms of technological routes, application scenarios, and the timing of large-scale industrialization, which makes it difficult to accurately select the future industry. Therefore, it is necessary to choose effective methods to comprehensively analyze and judge the development direction of future industries based on accurately grasping the development laws of future industries.
The increasing importance of future industries
A new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation is flourishing, and new disruptive technologies are constantly emerging. With the maturity of technology, new products, models, and formats are formed, leading to the formation of new industries. These new industries have enormous growth potential. The diffusion, penetration, and integration of new technologies will also have a profound impact on the development of existing industries, becoming an important factor in determining industrial competitiveness. Currently, major economies around the world are strengthening their layout of cutting-edge technologies and future industries, in order to maintain their existing advantages in high-tech industries and seize opportunities in the emerging high-tech industries, further strengthening their leading position in the global industrial chain.
For a long time ago, countries around the world utilized their respective endowments and advantages to participate in the division of labor in different links of the global industrial and value chains. Developed countries gain a significant share of the benefits from global division of labor through their high-tech industry advantages, while developing countries can also achieve economic growth by participating in global division of labor, and have the opportunity to gradually narrow the gap with developed countries through technological diffusion. However, in recent years, unilateralism and protectionism have risen, economic globalization has encountered a countercurrent, the game among major countries has intensified, and the COVID-19 has further accelerated the restructuring of the global industrial chain value chain. In order to ensure the security of the industrial chain, enhance the resilience of the supply chain, and promote the return and nearshore of various links in the industrial chain, especially high-tech links, has become an important direction for many countries to adjust their productivity layout. In this context, accelerating the development of cutting-edge technologies and forward-looking layout of future industries will directly affect the global competitiveness and supply chain security of a country's technology and industry for a long period of time in the future.
The future industry is driven by new technologies, and in this regard, developing countries and developed countries are on a similar starting line. Therefore, developing future industries has become an important opportunity for developing countries to catch up with industrial technology and seize a place in high-tech industries. Seizing the new opportunities brought by the new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation, developing countries can not only further narrow the technological and industrial development gap with developed countries, but also better maintain the security of industrial and supply chains by leveraging the new advantages shaped in future industrial fields.
Emphasize technology promotion and demand driven development
Technology driven and demand driven are important forces driving innovation and industrial development processes.
From the perspective of technological advancement, innovation starts with basic scientific research, goes through applied research and engineering, enters the stage of commercial manufacturing of products, and ultimately pushes products to the market on a large scale. In existing traditional industries, technology is already relatively mature, and technological innovation in this industry is mainly incremental and gradual. On the one hand, in order to enhance product competitiveness, enterprises continue to carry out innovative activities such as improving technology, improving products, and reducing costs; On the other hand, users are more familiar with the application scenario and have been using the product for a longer period of time, and can also provide suggestions for improving the product. However, the future development of industries is a process from scratch, from scratch, involving fundamental and disruptive innovation, adopting a completely different technological route from existing products, developing and providing unprecedented products to the market. For new technologies and products that have not yet emerged, users lack sufficient experience and imagination to demand the products. A study has found that incremental innovation has a stronger response to demand pull than technology push, while non incremental innovation has a greater response to technology push. For future industries, technological advancement is the "first driving force" for industrial development.
From a demand driven perspective, the process of scientific discovery, application and development of new technologies, prototype manufacturing, and sales is not the usual way for innovation to occur. In economic activities, innovation generally starts by perceiving demand, and then drives product development, processing and manufacturing, as well as selling products to users. For enterprises, the fundamental purpose of innovation is to develop products that can meet market demand and sell them to users, thereby gaining revenue and profits. Only when enterprises can sell products and services formed by new technologies in the market, obtain income and profits, can they have the ability to continuously invest in new technological innovation, promote continuous improvement of technology, product architecture, production process optimization, product performance improvement, and cost reduction, thereby making products and services formed by new technologies more competitive in the market and continuously expanding business scale. Therefore, market demand also plays an essential role in the future development of industries.
Technology driven and demand driven are mutually reinforcing relationships. Technological progress is the source of most innovation, without which new products and services will not emerge. Market demand points the way for technological innovation, and only technological innovation that meets market demand can achieve large-scale industrialization. The future industries driven by cutting-edge technology with the goal of meeting the constantly upgrading needs of the economy and society also require the conjugate evolution and joint promotion of technology and market.
Several Dimensions of Scientific Research and Judgment
Technological innovation is the primary driving force for future industrial development, and market demand will affect the direction and progress of commercialization and large-scale industrialization of cutting-edge technologies. Therefore, it is necessary to choose and judge the direction of future industrial development from the two-way interaction between technology and demand. At the same time, the factor supply conditions of a country or region are also an important dimension for scientific analysis.
In terms of technological innovation, the development stage of technology is very important. The reason why future industries are called "industries" is that they have already entered a stage of technological commercialization and have the potential to generate income. Based on this judgment, although the future industry is driven by cutting-edge technology, research activities that exist in the laboratories of universities and research institutions, with the aim of revealing natural laws and the output performance of publishing papers and patents cannot be called future industries. Only when the results of these scientific and engineering research are transformed into products or services with practical functions, can technology enter the industrial stage from the scientific field. In this sense, developing product prototypes is the starting point for the birth of a specific future industry. The changes in the number of scientific papers and invention patents, as well as the technological foresight published by countries and institutions, can be used as references for specific future industry choices.
In terms of market demand, future industrial development can be evaluated from the aspects of market and technology matching, the ability of new technologies to replace existing products, and relatively certain new market demands. In terms of the matching degree between the market and technology, although the specific application scenarios of cutting-edge technology are difficult to predict, the functions of the products formed by this technology can be roughly inferred from the characteristics of the technology itself. By combining people's basic needs with the functions and potential benefits of new technologies, we can roughly predict the commercialization prospects of cutting-edge technologies and future industries. In terms of the ability of new technologies to replace existing products, it is necessary to consider what benefits the functions provided by new technologies can bring to people, the size of the market for similar products or services that provide such benefits, the advantages and disadvantages of new technologies in terms of price and performance compared to existing technologies, and the trend of cost reduction for new products and services based on new technologies. In some specific situations, market demand is fixed, or even existing, but there are no suitable products that can fully meet this demand. Therefore, relevant departments and enterprises can research and develop new technologies and products around this specific demand, and promote the large-scale production of new products.
In terms of factor supply, a country or region's choice of which future industries to support depends not only on its own financial resources, but also on the conditions of technology and industrial development, as well as the corresponding supply of talent factors such as scientists, engineers, and skilled workers. From the perspective of regional layout, future industries should mainly focus on areas and cities where funds and talents gather, while other regions can participate in supporting production activities at various links of the future industrial value chain in the process of gradually industrializing cutting-edge technologies.