Senior Expert - Tech & Innovation Thought Leadership

Role Overview

Economist Enterprise is the B2B division of The Economist Group. We help organizations understand global economic, geopolitical and technological change, make better strategic decisions and reach influential audiences through Information Services and Media Solutions. Grounded in The Economist Group's values of independence, integrity and progress, Economist Enterprise brings together rigorous analysis, trusted insight and powerful channels of engagement to help leaders act with confidence in a volatile world.

How You Will Contribute

• Serve as the Senior Expert on sponsored thought leadership programmes aligned with Technology & Innovation, with a particular focus on global themes in artificial intelligence, frontier technologies and innovation policy.
• Design and develop high-quality programmes and oversee the production of reports, briefing papers, articles, executive briefs, multimedia content and other outputs, ensuring they reflect the latest trends, offer genuinely new insight and meet Economist Enterprise standards.
• Provide strong content leadership across projects, setting the intellectual direction of programmes and ensuring outputs are analytically rigorous, editorially sharp and relevant to target audiences.
• Write and communicate in clear, Economist-style, jargon-free prose.
• Undertake qualitative interviews with experts and stakeholders to inform the production of high-quality insight and content.
• Manage multiple research projects and client relationships simultaneously.
• Present interim and final deliverables to clients and stakeholders.
• Contribute to the delivery and evolution of EIU’s technology and telecoms industry forecasts, reports and analysis, ensuring they are timely, analytically robust and commercially relevant.
• Develop and maintain strong expertise in the global technology and telecoms sectors, including market developments, adoption trends, regulation, investment dynamics, competitiveness and strategic risk.
• Help deliver current tech and telecoms forecast outputs while supporting improvements to coverage, format and cadence where needed.
• Contribute to EIU’s shift toward more global, thematic and strategic-sector analysis, helping identify the major themes and sectors shaping the global outlook for business, investors and policymakers.
• Help develop differentiated research notes, data insights, scenario mapping and companion datasets that strengthen the value of EIU’s subscription offer in technology and adjacent strategic sectors.
• Identify opportunities for new or enhanced subscription-facing products, datasets, thematic series, alerts, hubs or other scalable propositions in the technology space.
• Work with relevant EIU colleagues to ensure that subscription-facing technology analysis is aligned with wider Economist Enterprise themes and with user demand.
• Serve as an expertise lead for core thematic areas and initiatives within Technology & Innovation, staying on top of global trends and developing ideas for new research, products and flagship initiatives.
• Produce high-quality, insight-led editorial content in multiple formats, developing a clear editorial line and a distinct Economist Enterprise voice.
• Contribute to the articulation of Economist Enterprise’s perspective on major technology and innovation issues, with a focus on practical, policy-relevant and commercially relevant insight for business, government and investor audiences.
• Moderate, present research and represent Economist Enterprise externally at relevant events, briefings and client engagements.
• Actively support business development by generating compelling ideas and proposals for Technology & Innovation opportunities.
• Partner effectively with commercial colleagues to shape client propositions, contribute to pitches and bring subject-matter authority to programme design.
• Build and maintain relationships with key clients and external stakeholders to support development, renewal and growth.
• Contribute to proposal development and senior content leadership without carrying direct commercial targets.
• Coach, train and mentor colleagues in matters of career and personal development.
• Manage Managers, Senior Analysts and Analysts where relevant, including planning and overseeing project resourcing and development.
• Provide day-to-day direction and quality assurance across projects, while escalating broader team or strategic decisions to the Global Head as appropriate.
• Work with other parts of The Economist Group to secure valuable input to Economist Enterprise research, thought leadership and subscription-facing products.

Priorities

• Artificial intelligence and the economy
• AI and the labour market, including job creation and displacement, skills transitions, wage polarisation and workforce strategy
• Productivity, growth and competitiveness, including firm-level adoption, diffusion and barriers to scaling
• AI governance, including safety, accountability, transparency, auditability, standards and regulation
• Geopolitics of AI, including industrial policy, chips and compute, supply chains and national competitiveness
• Trust, information integrity and the social impacts of AI, including mis- and disinformation, public services and education
• Frontier and exponential technologies
• Quantum technologies, including computing, communications, sensing, sectoral implications and timelines
• Biotechnology and bio-innovation, including health, synthetic biology, biomanufacturing, governance and ethics
• Space and the commercial space economy, including satellites, launch, earth observation, infrastructure, security and sustainability
• Advanced manufacturing and robotics, including automation, industrial AI, reshoring and resilience
• Next-generation connectivity and infrastructure, including 5G/6G, edge/cloud and cybersecurity
• Energy- and climate-adjacent innovation, including grid digitalisation, batteries and clean industrial technologies
• Technology, telecoms and strategic sectors
• Technology and telecoms industry outlooks, including market developments, investment trends, adoption dynamics and regulatory shifts
• Strategic sectors shaping the global economy and business landscape
• Technology adoption and diffusion across sectors
• Innovation policy and industrial strategy
• Competitiveness, resilience and economic transformation
• The intersection of technology, regulation, trade and economic security
• Public-private collaboration to accelerate innovation and implementation