At present, a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation are advancing in depth. A large number of cutting-edge technologies and disruptive technologies have emerged. The maturity of new technologies continues to spawn emerging industries with huge growth potential and extensive enabling effects. Cutting-edge technological innovation and the development of emerging industries have become key factors determining the economic growth and status of various countries in the future. Major countries in the world are increasing their forward-looking layout and policy support for cutting-edge technological innovation and future industrial development.

China attaches great importance to cutting-edge technologies, disruptive technological innovation and the development of emerging industries they have formed. In 2020, General Secretary Xi Jinping repeatedly proposed to accelerate the layout of future industries. The Outline of the National "14th Five-Year Plan" reviewed and approved by the National People's Congress in 2021 proposes "forward-looking planning for future industries." Since the "14th Five-Year Plan", many places such as Shanghai, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Suzhou have specially formulated action plans, action plans, guidance opinions or implementation plans for future industrial development. The 2023 Central Economic Work Conference also proposed to "create a number of strategic emerging industries such as biomanufacturing, commercial aerospace, and low-altitude economy, and open up new tracks for future industries such as quantum and life sciences."

Technically, the future industry is an emerging industry driven by cutting-edge technological breakthroughs and disruptive innovation; strategically, the future industry is related to economic and social development and national security in the future; from the perspective of the industrial life cycle, the future industry is a dynamic concept. It is between laboratory product prototypes and large-scale industrialization, and is a strategic emerging industry of "tomorrow"; Due to the high uncertainty of technical routes and application scenarios, future industries need to be understood as a whole and planned in terms of major industries. For national and local governments, they need to attach great importance to future industrial development, strengthen forward-looking layout, increase investment in basic research, and accelerate the improvement of original innovation capabilities. However, they must also act within their capabilities according to actual conditions and accelerate the transformation of science and technology policies and industrial policies.

Understanding future industries from technical characteristics

Like high-tech industries and strategic emerging industries, technological innovation is an important driving force for future industrial development. However, the technologies that drive high-tech industries and strategic emerging industries can be relatively mature technologies, and the technological innovation of industries can be incremental innovation; the technologies that drive future industries are not incremental or gradual changes, and need to be connected with Existing technologies have substantial differences or even deviations, and are breakthrough, disruptive and cutting-edge.

Specifically, breakthrough means that new technologies have greatly expanded and deepened human understanding of the laws of nature and enhanced the ability to transform the world; disruptive means that new technologies can fundamentally change the existing technological trajectory and can give birth to new products, business models, industrial formats, or can make disruptive changes to existing product structures, production processes, or business models to meet the fundamental needs of mankind with lower costs, higher efficiency, and better performance; Cutting-edge refers to the time period when new technologies emerge and the high degree of novelty of technologies. New technologies driving future industrial development come from major scientific discoveries or major breakthroughs in basic research.

Cutting-edge technological breakthroughs and disruptive innovations will bring about a qualitative leap in productivity, that is, promote the formation of new productive forces. The 2023 Central Economic Work Conference proposed,"We must use scientific and technological innovation to promote industrial innovation, especially disruptive technologies and cutting-edge technologies to spawn new industries, new models, and new driving forces, and develop new productive forces." Since every period of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation is a period when a large number of cutting-edge and disruptive technologies emerge, the current new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation is creating huge opportunities for future industrial development.

Understand future industries strategically

In recent years, the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea and other major economies in the world have formulated strategies, laws and policies to increase forward-looking layout and support for cutting-edge technologies and the emerging industries they have formed. The reason why future industries are highly valued by governments of various countries is because they have huge potential to have a significant impact on a country's economy and society.

这种影响表现在三个方面：one is 未来产业虽然一开始只有很小众的市场需求和很小的产业规模，但是在今后一个时期有可能成为推动经济增长和社会发展的重要力量。这就意味着，如果不提前进行战略布局或在未来产业发展中落后，那么相对于其他国家和地区，一国经济增长的动力将会明显不足，人民群众的生活品质提升将会受到限制。 second is 未来产业的核心技术具有通用目的技术的特征，未来产业的产出能够应用于新的市场和行业，产生超出未来产业本身的深刻影响，使应用该技术的各产业发生深刻变革。例如，改变产业投入要素的重要程度、产品架构、产业组织形态、商业模式等。如果一个国家的产业不能很好地利用新技术并做出变革，那么将会在全球产业格局的重构中败下阵来。 third is 一些未来产业的产出与国家安全紧密相关。例如，新一代数字技术直接关系到产业安全、国家安全、个人隐私，而且由于其广泛融合性，对安全和隐私的影响无处不在。

未来产业的战略性又取决于三个特征：**一是在今后一个时期能够形成较大的规模。**如果一个产业的规模太小，对于经济、社会的影响就会非常有限。 Second, there is large room for growth and has shown or will show rapid growth. 较大的规模和高增长速度一起，在微观上对于社会投资形成巨大的吸引力，在宏观上保证未来产业对国民经济增长形成有力的推动作用。The third is the breadth of application. 未来产业的产出能够渗透到广泛的市场和行业，这不仅是未来产业的产业规模、增长速度的支撑，也是其对国家安全产生广泛影响的基础。

Understanding the future industry from the industrial life cycle

The current differences in understanding future industries are mainly reflected in the maturity of technology and the development stage of the industry. One view basically equates future industries with strategic emerging industries, such as power batteries and photovoltaics as future industries. This understanding has certain rationality. On the one hand, future industries and strategic emerging industries do have the characteristics of new technologies, great growth potential, and strong driving force for the national economy; on the other hand, because the direction of technology and industries is relatively clear, it is easier for local governments and enterprises to seize specific industries to support or invest. However, this division blurs the particularity of future industries and makes the concept of future industries meaningless.

The development of industries generally has a process from conception to emergence, rapid growth, stable development, decline and even decline. Therefore, many industrial concepts actually have their inherent temporal characteristics. The future industry is in the early stages of the industrial life cycle, more specifically, it is in the development stage between the emergence of product prototypes and the realization of large-scale industrialization. The purpose of laboratory work is to reveal scientific principles and verify scientific hypotheses, while industries need to have a certain scale and pursue creating economic value and profits. The future industry is in the stage after the emergence of product prototypes, which distinguishes the future industry from scientific research in the laboratory and reflects the "industry" characteristics of the future industry. If industrial development enters the stage of large-scale industrialization, it means that the industry has a large scale and becomes a strategic emerging industry.

The technology of strategic emerging industries is still relatively new, and changes in technical routes may even occur, but it is already of a large scale. The ninth chapter of the national "14th Five-Year Plan" is titled "Developing and Expanding Strategic Emerging Industries". The first section "Building New Pillars of the Industrial System" mainly talks about the development of traditional strategic emerging industries. The second section is "Forward-looking and Planning Future Industries". In this sense, it can be considered that future industries are an integral part of strategic emerging industries, but strategic emerging industries cannot be equated with future industries. In other words, the future industry is the strategic emerging industry of "tomorrow".

The temporal characteristics of future industries also mean that the content contained in future industries will change dynamically. Although technologies regarded as cutting-edge are pioneering and disruptive in the early stages of their development, they will enter a mature and stable period over time. Similarly, future industries that are considered to have great development prospects are novel in the early stages of their development, but as core technologies mature and widely applied, they will transform into strategic emerging industries, thus withdrawing from the ranks of future industries. There are also some industries that were once regarded as having great prospects that have declined or disappeared due to technical or market reasons. However, at the same time, due to the continuous breakthroughs of cutting-edge technologies and the continuous emergence of disruptive technologies, new industrial segments will emerge, adding new content to future industries.

Understanding future industries from high uncertainty

Technological innovation in traditional industries is incremental, and its technical routes generally do not change significantly. More improvements in product design, performance, appearance, production efficiency, etc. can be relatively clearly judged. The future industry will be very significantly different from the development direction of technology and industry. Since the future industry is driven and formed by major breakthroughs in cutting-edge technologies, industrial development has very high uncertainties.

The first is the high uncertainty of the technical route. 在产业发展的早期，通常都有多条能实现同样功能的不同技术路线相互竞争，不仅很难事先准确判断哪条技术最终会成功，甚至也无法预料最终是否有技术路线能够走通，进入到商业化、产业化的阶段，甚至一些具有优异性能的技术路线也未必能形成具有经济价值的产业。

The second is the high uncertainty of application scenarios. 虽然可以根据技术的性质及其转化形成产品的功能大致推测新技术新产品应用的场景，但是产业的发展是技术和市场相互作用中选择的结果，技术不仅要具有先进性还要具有经济性。一种新技术形成的产品虽然能给用户提供优异的性能，但是由于产品生产成本高、价格高，可能无法形成足够大的用户规模，进而无法达到足够大的产业规模，不能满足未来产业对于国家经济增长的战略要求。这意味着新技术新产品的场景很难事先预判，甚至一些性能非常优异的技术由于找不到合适的场景而失败。

Third, the time for successful industrialization is highly uncertain. 即使大多数人都认定某项特定技术发展前景光明、潜在市场需求巨大，但是什么时候能够达到技术和市场的匹配，新技术真正实现大规模产业化也是很难预判的。回顾很多前沿技术及新兴产业发展的历程可以发现，从科学发现、新技术的工程化到产业化往往要经历数十年时间，即使从基础研究到产业转化的时间近年来有所缩短，但仍然是一个漫长的过程。在这一漫长的过程中，由于企业要持续进行基础研究、新产品开发和工程化商业化的投入，但同时仅能获得很少甚至没有收入，很多企业因无法承受长期的亏损而退出，有可能会进一步放缓新技术的产业化进程。

The high uncertainty of technology, scene and industrialization time means that there is a "future industrial paradox". However, the inability to accurately select a specific future industrial track in advance does not mean that the future industry loses its meaning in theory and loses its grip on policy. On the one hand, as a whole, the future industry can bring about changes in the rules of the industrial game, and has great potential to promote economic growth and sustainable development; on the other hand, its application field can be roughly inferred from the function of technology. the basic needs of human beings will not change significantly, so the outline of the future industry can be roughly described by combining the functions of technology and human needs. Although it is difficult to predict the specific technology and application scenarios, and it is impossible to predict which specific technology and industry segments will succeed, we can roughly judge the prospects of development at the level of fields and large categories of industries. In addition, we should also pay attention to the relationship between the whole and the part. When we point out that a large category of industries belong to the future industry, there may be a phenomenon that a certain subdivision track has entered the stage of large-scale industrialization. For this, it is necessary to adopt differentiated policies for future industries and strategic emerging industries according to the difference of industrial maturity.

countermeasures and suggestions

The speed and level of future industrial development will become an important force in determining a country's economic growth, sustainable development, international division of labor status and affecting national security. If a country has an early layout of future industries and invests heavily in cutting-edge technological innovation, it may be the first to achieve breakthroughs and industrialization of core technologies, thereby grasping standard and necessary patents that competitors cannot circumvent, building a business ecosystem that is difficult to break, and achieving the goal of locking in users, thereby gaining control in industrial competition and obtaining more results of future industrial development.

因此，对于国家和地方政府来说，First, we must attach great importance to future industrial development and strengthen forward-looking layout. 制定未来产业发展规划引导发展，在技术创新、科技创业、场景创造和市场应用等方面给予扶持。

The second is to strengthen investment in basic research and enhance original innovation capabilities. 加大各级政府对基础研究的投入并鼓励企业投入，完善科学研究的组织方式，鼓励科学家在前沿未知领域自由探索，鼓励企业进行前沿技术的工程化、商业化开发和市场开拓。

The third is to act within our capabilities according to actual conditions. 未来产业投资大、投资回收周期长，且面临着高度的不确定性。对于国家来说，为了在未来全球产业竞争中取得优势地位，需要在未来产业的主要赛道进行布局，但是也要根据科技和产业优势、国家战略需求有所侧重。对于地方政府来说，面临更大的资金和人才约束，应该根据人才、科技和产业基础选择若干未来产业领域进行布局。对于一些低线城市，融入大城市的未来产业发展战略、积极进入其未来产业链生态可能是更优的选择。

The fourth is to accelerate the transformation of science and technology policies and industrial policies. 由于中国长期在技术、产业上处于跟随地位，因此科技和产业政策大多围绕追赶战略而展开。而未来产业无论对于世界各国都是新事物，中国第一次全面进入科技和产业发展的无人区，没有发达国家的经验可以借鉴，需要根据前沿技术和未来产业高不确定性的特点调整科技和产业政策，在发挥中国集中力量办大事优势的同时，更好地激发个人、企业、社会机构等微观主体的创造、创新、创业活力。

Fund project:National Social Science Fund Key Project "Research on the Mechanism of Digital Economy to Promote the Modernization of Industrial and Supply Chain"(Approval No.:22 AZD124), a basic research funding project for the think tank of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Li Xiaohua, researcher at the Institute of Industrial Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences