Programme on Innovation and Diffusion (POID)

The UK’s productivity lags behind its peer nations, and the gap varies sharply across different organisations, places, and people. This matters because low productivity holds back wages, living standards, and public services. While researchers already understand many broad drivers of productivity, they lack detailed, accessible data and a clear picture of what happens inside individual workplaces and communities. The Programme on Innovation and Diffusion (POID) aims to fill that gap by creating new data, improving understanding at the level of the organisation, and examining how place and community shape outcomes for businesses, workers, and society. If successful, the research could change how policymakers, managers, and local leaders target interventions—for example, by identifying why some regions or firms consistently outperform others. This could lead to more effective support for struggling industries, better training programmes, and smarter infrastructure investment. The project also prioritises impact through non-technical summaries and online content, making its findings accessible beyond academia. While much of the work is fundamental social science, its insights could quietly reshape the systems that determine how productively the UK economy runs.