Awaiting Public Project Summary

"The 'AI for SMEs' programme will trial two methods of increasing productivity in London's SME retail and hospitality sectors, through the adoption of AI 'chatbots' and marketing automation systems. These are products which can supplement and improve the customer experience, increase their marketing reach and effectiveness, and which are tried and tested means of converting enquiries/leads into paying customers.They are particularly effective technologies for retail and hospitality SMEs, which have similar routes to customer discovery, marketing and converting leads into paying customers. Moreover, though every company is different, the technologies themselves augment the value of existing employees and existing workflows, rather than replacing the need for human staff. Using a RCT, we are testing the effectiveness of two alternative methods of increasing the adoption of AI chatbot and marketing automation technologies. Stream 1 will use a market convening methodology, which involves matching SMEs with AI vendors via a series of events, and allowing the supplier market to explain the opportunity through case studies and live demonstrations. This light touch method is based on 'letting the tech speak for itself' in order to encourage uptake. Stream 2 is a more targeted intervention, which will provide SMEs with a £1,000 innovation voucher, which they can use to install, test, or deploy the AI technology, and access an expert caseworker. This approach is based on the idea that expert technical and business advice is needed by the SME to assess the suitability of AI as a solution to enable the SME to calculate the ROI and to assist with implementation. By providing external expert support we will see if we increase uptake of AI amongst SMEs, and to realise the productivity potential of the technology. A control group will be established, who will receive basic information about the relevant technologies as an incentive to participate, but no further support. They will be tracked and used as a baseline to assess the effectiveness of the interventions on technology adoption, perceptions and performance. Lessons from this RCT will provide valuable insight into the most (a) effective and (b) cost effective means of driving adoption of AI; whether education and convening is sufficient to drive adoption or whether a degree of 'hand holding' is needed when seeking to drive adoption of perceived cutting edge technologies. Moreover, the findings from this experiment will have value for other geographies, technologies and sectors across the UK."

London's Demonstrator will bring together our world-leading expertise in the engineering, innovation and service industries to unlock the value from city systems integration, demonstrating at scale the exportable solutions that will transform cities of today into Future Cities. Our Demonstrator will stretch from the edges of the City, through the East End to major regeneration areas of the Lower Lea Valley, Greenwich and Barking Riverside, addressing the challenges of old and new cities: pollution, congestion, inequalities and growth, making this the ideal crucible for the Future Cities challenge. London will demonstrate digital and physical systems integration to deliver dynamic efficiencies, resilience, new business and employment opportunities, improved services, participation and quality of life. The Mayor of London will ensure the London Demonstrator delivers exponential value, learning and exposure to UK and global cities.

Engineering Comes Home turns infrastructure design on its head. We start with household needs and look outward to design infrastructure, not the other way around. This new paradigm allows integrated thinking about water, energy, food and data at the domestic scale, and connects homes to technologies, infrastructures and communities in order to meet everyday needs and demands as efficiently and reliably as possible. The project puts people and their everyday needs and desires first, using technology and infrastructure to best meet those needs within resource and environmental constraints. It addresses the challenge of designing sustainable and resilient systems and technologies to deliver infrastructure services within environmental and social constraints. The project will develop and test a methodology for co-design of infrastructure and technologies starting from household scale and connecting to neighbourhood, city and regional scale, working with a case study community of social housing residents in London. This will involve: 1. Synthesis of existing data relating to the nexus in case study community (census, water and energy companies, Environment Agency, local authorities, public health). 2. Social research to identify needs, aspirations and daily practices that relate to food, energy and water production and consumption (interviews, diaries, focus groups, participatory mapping, sensors and monitors of resources use). 3. Developing a design support toolkit of potential technical options for meeting household needs and their lifecycle resource and environmental impacts. The toolkit will include technologies and systems that are currently in the market or are emerging and will allow for speculation about new technologies, systems and configurations. 4. Co-design workshops with the project team, SMEs, technical experts and local communities to identify options for meeting needs using alternative technologies and infrastructures. 5. Feedback to infrastructure providers, policy makers, designers and local government regarding options for new infrastructure and needs for new governance and other arrangements. Infrastructure development and resource efficiency are of high national importance and are vital to the future success of the British economy. This project will develop new methods for infrastructure design within resource constraints and social expectations. The project is novel in addressing connections between water, food, energy, waste and data within the home as the starting point for how to design technology and infrastructure that meets these needs while achieving resource efficiency and environmental sustainability. This project will provide new opportunities for innovation across infrastructure sectors and in domestic and neighbourhood level systems. Integrating infrastructure services across different scales of provision is a particular challenge for policy and engineering, which will be addressed through the methods devised in this project. A new design paradigm starting from domestic needs and expectations will also help deliver infrastructure that is socially acceptable and desirable to local communities.