Tech Compass 2026: Are we ready for the real leap?
For the past five years, every January, when we release the Bosch Tech Compass, I like to ask the same question: how ready are we, as people, as businesses, and as societies to really make the most of the technology we create?
Innovation has never just been about invention, but the process around it, too. Over the half decade since we first launched the Tech Compass, I’ve noticed a quiet shift. Early on, people talked about technology with a kind of cautious hope. Today, they talk about it with expectation. They want technology to make life better, cleaner, fairer and simpler. And the good news is, most believe it can.
Globally, 71% of people now say technological progress is making the world a better place. That’s a remarkable sentiment in times defined by uncertainty. To me, it’s proof that optimism still matters – not blind faith, but a belief in our ability to shape progress to serve people, and not the other way round.
The UK, however, presents a more nuanced picture. We’re a nation that values innovation deeply, yet we like to get things right before we get them fast. More than half of Brits in the latest Tech Compass survey say we should slow technological advances until we understand their impacts better. I actually find that a reassuring sign. It tells me that people care about the quality of progress. We’ve matured from asking “how fast can we?” to “how well should we?”, and that’s a question worth asking.
But there’s another side to this story. The UK is rich in talent and ideas. We have extraordinary universities, engineers, researchers, and entrepreneurs. And still, somewhere between those ideas and large-scale innovation, momentum gets lost. Six in ten young people would tell their child to start a business instead of going to university, yet many say our education system doesn’t teach them how to innovate. That gap between ambition and opportunity is one we urgently need to close.
If we want to lead in the technologies that will define our future, we have to build confidence early on, right from school classrooms, workshops, and local communities. We need to give young people spaces to try, fail, and try again. Innovation roots itself in confidence far more than in a code.
Energy is another critical piece and one close to my heart. It is a topic that remains a reality check in any vision of progress. In the UK, infrastructure and cost are still big barriers to innovation. They don’t just affect businesses; they affect where progress happens and who gets to benefit from it. We often talk about decarbonisation or hydrogen or electric mobility as competing pathways, but the truth is, we’ll need all of them. There isn’t one perfect route to net zero, just a web of interdependent solutions that demand patience, resilience and persistence.
And then there’s artificial intelligence, a topic impossible to avoid today. It brings extraordinary potential on one hand, and legitimate concern on the other. The UK is well placed to lead in responsible AI as we have the ethics, research depth, and governance frameworks to do it. But at the end of the day, leadership will come down to people. Specifically, how well we prepare our workforce not only to use these tools but to question them, to challenge bias, and to shape technology with human purpose in mind.
When I think of the years ahead, I come back to the same principle that has long guided us at Bosch: progress should feel human. It should improve what really matters (cleaner cities, safer transport, more opportunity, better everyday living). That’s where technology earns its trust.
None of it will happen through optimism alone. It will take sincere collaboration, curiosity, and the willingness to keep asking the hard questions. But if we keep progress anchored to purpose then we’ll build a future that really is, in every sense, ‘Invented for Life’.