New UK report: ‘How Knowledge is Reshaping the Economic Life of Nations’

The London-based Work Foundation released a new 92 page report on 11 March titled The Knowledge Economy: How Knowledge is Reshaping the Economic Life of Nations.

Report highlights include:

• Work: knowledge-based industries and knowledge-related occupations have provided most of the new jobs over the past decade.
• Trade: The UK has emerged as a world leader in trade in knowledge services with the biggest trade surplus of the major OECD economies. While the City of London and financial services remain important, two thirds of this trade comes from business services, high tech, and education and cultural services.
• Innovation: innovation in the knowledge economy comes from both the successful exploitation of R&D undertaken in the UK and overseas and from wider forms of innovation — design and development, marketing and organisational change.

The report includes this fascinating map of the public vs private geographies of the knowledge economy (or economies, to be more precise) in the UK.

More food for fodder in the ongoing attempt to understand exactly what the ‘knowledge economy’ is, and what its development means for economy, society and space.

Kris Olds