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Frontier-technology markets are too narrow — here’s how to widen them
Luisa Corrado is an economist in the Department of Economics and Finance at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy, and a visiting research fellow at Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
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Paul Kattuman is an economist at Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
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Collage: Gibson Kochanek/ Getty; Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty; Bill Ingalls/NASA via Getty; Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty
Public money does more than support frontier technologies, it helps to shape the markets that grow around them. Through decisions on contracts, grants, benchmarks, infrastructure and purchasing routes, governments influence which firms learn first, which systems are adopted and whether markets stay open or closed.
Governments must recognize their role in shaping future competition in frontier-technology sectors. When possible, they should make choices that widen the markets they help to create and not turn them into gateways controlled by a few private firms.
Concentration is already evident in parts of the space sector1. In artificial intelligence and quantum technologies, the choices governments are making now — on which capabilities to fund and procure, how to assess and deploy them and how to govern their use — will influence future use and investments (see ‘US frontier-technology markets’).
Source, top to bottom: Ref. 1; go.nature.com/5r6y8j; go.nature.com/4xah8
Leading suppliers of frontier technologies might owe their position to outstanding performance. But repeated awards to the same supplier can become a problem if they make one system the default around which future work is planned.