‘Leading the Future by Creating it’: Imagined Technology and Innovation Futures and the Role of the UK’s Catapult Network

The UK Government created the Catapult Network to help translate scientific knowledge into commercially viable and socially useful technologies. Its role is to support innovation by providing universities and businesses with expertise, infrastructure, and skills in technology areas that the UK has recognised strengths but limited commercial exploitation. The Catapult Network is expected to deliver economic growth and productivity to the UK and meet grand social challenges, while reasserting the UK’s status as a leader in science and innovation. In this paper, I use the case study of the Catapult Network to critically explore UK innovation policy, and its normative assumptions about technology, economy, and society. Using the concepts of innovation imaginaries and technology futures, I address two key research questions: (1) How have broad and ambitious innovation imaginaries and technology futures articulated within policy shaped expectations of the Catapult Network and its activities, and (2) To what extent and with what implications do higher-level policy imaginaries of desired technological futures cohere with or diverge from the futures envisaged and planned by stakeholders within specific technology sectors? Empirically, I use policy documents, interview data, and Select Committee oral evidence testimony to provide the first in-depth qualitative analysis of the Catapult Network. My findings reveal an important dissonance between grand policy level imaginaries driven by a politics of ambition, which are often ambiguous, and more grounded futures envisaged within ‘innovation communities’.