The Innovation Space project aims to establish a cohesive plan for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to move through research, patents, and products to make informed decisions to achieve economic growth. The first objective is to identify forms for social and Institutional organization for the production of knowledge between several institutions within KSA that could enable scaling up their ability to coordinate, cooperate, exchange information, and make decisions. Additionally, we aim to develop metrics that are predictive of regional diversification in both industries and knowledge production using the product space, industrial space, and research space methodologies. Moreover, we aim to develop approaches to answer the question of how to move forward in research, industry, and education in a comprehensive multi-dimensional view; and explore tools to promote virtuous social and professional linkages that can enhance Saudi Arabia’s movement to a knowledge economy.

To achieve this, we will use a mixture of modeling and analysis methods such as complex network modeling, machine learning, and other big data analytics techniques to improve the understanding of the effect of social context, technology, and institutions, in the production and diffusion of knowledge. We will do this by looking at connections between a country’s industrial structure, as it is reflected in the product space, and connecting that space with the space of knowledge production (or research space), and the space of labor skills. Moreover, we will explore how the automation of skills affects industrial structures, and how the potential pitfalls of that automation can be anticipated by looking at the sectors of the economy that are more likely to be disrupted.