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.
Choose up to three clusters
- London
- Cambridge
- Oxford
- Manchester
- Birmingham & the West Midlands
- Bristol & Bath
- Sheffield & Rotherham
- Leeds & West Yorkshire
- Liverpool City Region
- Newcastle & the North East
- Teesside & the Humber
- Edinburgh
- Glasgow & the Central Belt
- Belfast
- Cardiff & South Wales
- Southampton & Portsmouth
- Cornwall & Plymouth
- Nottingham & Derby
- Norwich & the East
Side by side
| Dimension | Birmingham & the West MidlandsWest Midlands | Sheffield & RotherhamYorkshire and the Humber |
|---|---|---|
| Sectors | Mobility & Transport Technology, Advanced Manufacturing, Quantum Technologies, Advanced Materials Supporting: Clean Energy, Digital Technologies, Defence & Security | Advanced Manufacturing, Advanced Materials Supporting: Clean Energy, Robotics & Autonomous Systems, Mobility & Transport Technology, Digital Technologies |
| Research |
|
|
| Companies | Not recorded on the map. | Not recorded on the map. |
| Infrastructure |
Automotive research centres, battery and vehicle test facilities and major logistics assets. |
High Value Manufacturing Catapult centres, nuclear manufacturing facilities and industrial research factories. |
| Capital | Corporate and supply chain finance dominate; venture capital is thin relative to industrial output. | Public co-investment, corporate partnership and asset finance rather than venture capital. |
| Government programmes |
| 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. | One of the strongest applied manufacturing research bases in Europe, covering machining, materials, nuclear manufacturing and factory-scale process development, working directly with industrial customers. |
| 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. | Domestic demand. Process capability of international standard is often demonstrated for overseas primes, and local SMEs lack the capital to adopt what is proven a mile away. |
| 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. | Applied manufacturing research connected to domestic customers, energy, defence, mobility and medical technology, with procurement used as the connector rather than grants. |
| 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. | The research holds international standing; the domestic customer base for what it produces is thinner than it should be. The proposed Midlands and Teesside & Humber missions both depend on this capability. |
| Last verified | 15 August 2026 | 15 August 2026 |
Proposed by UKIZ · independent · not a government designation