The pandemic has led to a reassessment, we will see if it is temporary, of the priorities of public administrations and societies. The measures imposed to deal with the health emergency accelerated processes of economic and social transformation, and although there may be readjustments in terms of teleworking, there has been a change in habits in mobility, consumption and information processing, and a learning process intensive use of digital tools that is difficult to reverse. In addition, another of the legacies of the health crisis has been the focus on science, with apparently contradictory phenomena such as the greater social prestige of science (the latest global survey by the State of Science Index (SOSI) indicates that 79% of the people trust that science will improve the way of life in the next five years) and the dynamics of politicization and contestation mentioned above.
The trend, if it continues, invites us to think about a densification of collaborative projects between research teams, the articulation of alliances between public administrations, scientists and the private sector, and a closer relationship between citizens and science. And, all this, with a clear increase in the budget. This is indicated by the items of 37% and 20% respectively destined to finance the green and digital transition in the Next Generation EU funds, or the 250,000 million destined to innovation in the stimulus plans of the United States. On the other side of the scale, this will increase the concentration of scientific production in a few countries. Global investment in artificial intelligence and quantum computing is led by the United States, China and a small group of developed countries, to which, in some areas, India is added. In terms of new patents, the Chinese leadership is indisputable and a shift towards Asia is also observed here. This scientific asymmetry adds a new dimension of inequality, in this world that advances, also in innovation, at different speeds.
Along with health, the second major area of concentration of efforts is the environment. In 2022, pressure will increase on scientific communities, companies and public administrations to find innovative solutions to the climate crisis. This includes research into advanced technologies to lower emissions associated with energy use, such as carbon capture and storage, modular nuclear reactors, and options to decarbonize energy-intensive industries. Another challenge is the search for technical solutions to anticipate and prevent the worst impacts of natural disasters and increase resilience.
In digital matters, the issue of chips will continue to be on the agenda – their scarcity has been one of the news items of 2021 and their impact on other industries has become visible – but also in terms of governance and conceptual innovation. 2022 is a year in which the ambition and usefulness of the EU-US Council on Trade and Technology, whose agenda includes artificial intelligence, green technologies, data governance and the global supply chain of semiconductors, will be proven. In conceptual terms, one of the ideas that will gain traction is that of the twin transitions (green and digital) in which the role of cities will play a major role. A shared challenge will be that of the digitization of the public sector – a process that has accelerated with the pandemic – and in which the different levels of administration will look for examples of success in other countries to emulate them. Two risks arise in this area: administrations that are left behind, and an increase in cybervulnerability.
In 2022 there will be talk of solutions and also of the obsolescence of the currently valid models of production and consumption. In the international sphere, a particularly relevant question is whether the new models of production, consumption and work have a universal extension or deepen the processes of fragmentation. The delicate balance between the need to find cooperative solutions and the competitive instincts of those powers that aspire to be at the forefront of these processes of change will also mark the geopolitics of innovation. In this sense, the space race and, in general, everything that is seen as “the last frontier” will gain weight on the agenda.
