BANGKOK -- Today, Huawei together with the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) launched their collaborative research regarding the impact and power that information and communication technologies (ICT) have on the economy and society, at the fourth Huawei Asia-Pacific Innovation Day on June 6 in Bangkok.

The study covers the topics of the evolving role of ICT in the economy; technological influence of ICT as a generator of ‘knowledge spillovers’; an analysis of the history of broadband diffusion in the data-rich setting of the United Kingdom which can also serve as a proxy for other advanced economies; and a discussion of recent employment trends and the challenge of automation.

Dr Mirko Draca, Senior Research Associate at LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) and Associate Professor at Warwick University, shared details about this compelling research at the event.

The research suggests that the current productivity slow-down is most likely due to an implementation lag. Just as the 1990s productivity surge was preceded by multiple decades of investments by companies and governments in physical and human capital related to ICT, the same process is likely to repeat itself with a new generation of technologies. In 10-15 years’ time we will begin to fully experience the productivity benefits of 5G, the Cloud, IoT, big data and AI/automation.

In a key section, the report also finds that the ICTs generate on average much larger ‘knowledge spillovers’ than those generated by other technologies. These knowledge spillovers are measured via an in-depth analysis of international patent citations that takes account of the full network of citations related to individual patents. The large knowledge spillovers associated with ICT hold even when ICT is compared to other exciting frontier technologies such as biotech and clean energy. For example, wireless technologies generate on average more than 50% higher knowledge spillovers than other types of technology.

Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd