UK Innovation Map

Compare placesDifferent, not ranked.

Two or three clusters, read side by side across sectors, research, companies, capital, infrastructure, government designations and UKIZ relevance. There is no score and no ranking: British clusters are different from one another, not better or worse than one another.

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Dimension	Birmingham & the West MidlandsWest Midlands	Liverpool City RegionNorth West	CambridgeEast of England
Sectors	Mobility & Transport Technology, Advanced Manufacturing, Quantum Technologies, Advanced Materials Supporting: Clean Energy, Digital Technologies, Defence & Security	Life Sciences, Engineering Biology, Advanced Materials Supporting: Digital Technologies, Clean Energy, Creative Industries	Life Sciences, Semiconductors, Engineering Biology, Artificial Intelligence Supporting: Quantum Technologies, Advanced Materials, AgriTech & FoodTech, Digital Technologies
Research	University of Birmingham University of Warwick WMG	University of Liverpool Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine	University of Cambridge Wellcome Sanger Institute MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
Companies	Not recorded on the map.	Not recorded on the map.	Cambridge semiconductor and processor IP cluster
Infrastructure	Energy Systems Catapult UK Battery Industrialisation Centre Automotive research centres, battery and vehicle test facilities and major logistics assets.	Not recorded on the map. University research institutes, automated chemistry facilities and port and logistics assets.	Babraham Research Campus Cambridge Science Park University and institute laboratories, genomics and biomedical campus facilities, and semiconductor design capability.
Capital	Corporate and supply chain finance dominate; venture capital is thin relative to industrial output.	A modest local investor base; public and charitable research funding dominate.	Specialist deep tech and life science funds, university-linked funds, and corporate partners; strong at seed, thinner at growth stage relative to demand.
Government programmes	West Midlands Investment Zone, Investment Zones	Liverpool City Region Freeport, Freeports	No place-based designation recorded.
What exists	The largest manufacturing base in the UK by employment, automotive and electrification engineering, rail and mobility research, and a young, large working-age population.	Infection and tropical medicine research of international standing, materials chemistry and automated discovery, a large port and a Freeport designation.	Extreme research density for its size: life sciences and genomics, semiconductor and processor IP, engineering biology and AI, with a mature spin-out culture and specialist investors who understand long timelines.
What's missing · UKIZ interpretation	Ownership of the value in electrified vehicles: battery, power electronics and software increasingly sit outside the region and outside the UK. Innovation-active SME supply chains are under-capitalised.	Translation capacity: strong discovery science with limited local scale-up manufacturing and limited early-stage capital to hold companies in the city region.	Ownership retention. Discovery and early company formation work; the Series B onward stage frequently transfers ownership overseas. Laboratory and scale-up space, power and housing also constrain growth.
What could connect · UKIZ interpretation	Midlands manufacturing paired with battery and power electronics research, North East battery production and Coventry testing capability as a single electrification value chain.	Infection and biologics research connected to North West and Teesside biomanufacturing capacity, with the port used for export rather than only import.	Cambridge discovery connected to UK manufacturing and biomanufacturing capacity, and to later-stage domestic capital, so that value created here is realised here rather than acquired out of the country.
UKIZ relevance	The region's transition depends on owning the new value in a vehicle rather than assembling someone else's. The proposed Midlands zone focuses on batteries, power electronics and software.	Discovery and manufacture here are unusually well connected, with scale-up routes that are already in use. The proposed Manchester mission treats the North West as one health and biomanufacturing geography.	Cambridge produces intellectual property at a rate few places match, and loses ownership of too much of it at Series B. The proposed Oxford-Cambridge zone concentrates on commercialisation and retention rather than on more discovery.
Last verified	15 August 2026	15 August 2026	15 August 2026

Proposed by UKIZ · independent · not a government designation

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