UK investment in intangible assets: Report for NESTA

Abstract

This report provides an update on estimates of the level of UK market sector investment in knowledge assets. Our main findings are: 1) In 2011 the UK market sector invested £137.5bn in knowledge assets, compared to £89.8bn in tangible assets; 2) Since the recession of 2008-9, intangible investment has recovered and grew in 2010-11. In contrast investment in tangible assets has been flat; 3) Within intangible investment, the asset categories for which the most investment is observed in 2011 are: workforce training (£33.6bn); organisational change (£25.5bn); and software (£24.3bn). *Contacts: Peter Goodridge, Jonathan Haskel, Gavin Wallis, Imperial College Business School, Imperial College, London. SW7 2AZ. j.haskel@ic.ac.uk, p.goodridge10@ic.ac.uk; gavin.wallis@bankofengland.co.uk. . We are very grateful for financial support for this research from NESTA. This work was based on data from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE), National Employers Skills Survey (NESS) and UK Innovation Survey (UKIS), produced by the Office for National Statistics and supplied by the Secure Data Service at the UK Data Archive. The data are Crown Copyright and reproduced with the permission of the controller of HMSO and Queen's Printer for Scotland. The use of the data in this work does not imply the endorsement of the ONS or Secure Data Service at the UK Data Archive in relation to the interpretation or analysis of the data. This work uses research datasets which may not exactly reproduce National Statistics aggregates. Views expressed in this report represent those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of affiliated institutions. All errors are of course our own.