The late American economist Nathan Rosenberg notably argued that the most important question about technological progress is not “Who did it first?”.

Instead, it is the diffusion process – the rate at which a new technology is adopted and the extent to which it is embedded in an economy’s processes – which marks the true impact of an invention.

Dr Laurel Teo is senior research fellow and head of society and culture at the Institute of Policy Studies, National University of Singapore. She studies the future of work and impact of technological changes on people in the workplace.