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London: A Global Leader in Advanced Digital Technologies

Posted 29 Jul 2020

London is fast becoming the global hub for research, development, innovation and commercialisation of a new advanced digital technology stack, that will transform how we live, work and play in the near future.

Digital Catapult was commissioned by the Mayor of London to project forward, inform and advise on technology research and innovation trends over the next 15 years. Covering the full spectrum of R&D, innovation, startup and scaleup ecosystems, creativity, design and sector leadership, it explores the evolution of the advanced digital technology stack that is taking us from our current fingers on screens and browser based applications, to an immersive and interactive physical internet with rich layers of data. This will be formed in two areas:

  • Advanced digital infrastructure: 5G & future networks, artificial intelligence, the internet of things and in the future potentially quantum computing
  • Advanced digital technology service layers: Immersive and extended reality, robotics and autonomous machines, blockchain and distributed ledger technologies and brain computer interfaces.

The combination of advanced digital technologies into this new stack, will drive a market worth hundreds of billions of pounds. Competition will be felt a local, regional, national and international level, transforming businesses, economies and society. This will span everything from localised and personalised manufacturing facilities, smart cities, next-generation services, innovative healthcare, immersive entertainment venues, new methods of content distribution and beyond. The report highlights London’s strengths and the opportunities already being seen as they come into play, and recommends how the innovation, policy and research community can come together to ensure these benefits are felt across the UK economy.

For more information and to read the report in full, access the publication below.