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 | Cardiff & South WalesWales | EdinburghScotland | Liverpool City RegionNorth West |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sectors | Semiconductors, Advanced Materials, Creative Industries Supporting: Clean Energy, Advanced Manufacturing, Digital Technologies | Artificial Intelligence, Financial Technology, Robotics & Autonomous Systems, Digital Technologies Supporting: Engineering Biology, Life Sciences, Quantum Technologies, Creative Industries | Life Sciences, Engineering Biology, Advanced Materials Supporting: Digital Technologies, Clean Energy, Creative Industries |
| Research |
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| Companies |
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| Not recorded on the map. |
| Infrastructure | Not recorded on the map. Compound semiconductor fabrication and research facilities, materials and coatings research, production studios. |
Informatics research facilities, robotics commercialisation facilities and supercomputing capability. | Not recorded on the map. University research institutes, automated chemistry facilities and port and logistics assets. |
| Capital | Public and corporate capital dominate; venture funding is limited by capital intensity. | Large institutional asset management presence; venture activity is smaller than the capital base implies. | A modest local investor base; public and charitable research funding dominate. |
| Government programmes |
| No place-based designation recorded. |
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| What exists | The UK's compound semiconductor cluster, combining research, fabrication and supply chain, alongside steel and coatings materials research, and a significant screen production economy. | One of Europe's largest informatics research bases, robotics and autonomous systems commercialisation capability, and a substantial asset management, banking and financial technology sector. | Infection and tropical medicine research of international standing, materials chemistry and automated discovery, a large port and a Freeport designation. |
| What's missing · UKIZ interpretation | Design demand. Fabrication capability needs a pipeline of UK customers designing products that use it, and capital patient enough for semiconductor timelines. | A connection between the capital sitting in Edinburgh's financial institutions and the technology being created a mile away; and later-stage funding to stop companies relocating south. | Translation capacity: strong discovery science with limited local scale-up manufacturing and limited early-stage capital to hold companies in the city region. |
| What could connect · UKIZ interpretation | South Wales fabrication connected to Bristol and Cambridge chip design and to defence, automotive and energy customers who currently source overseas. | Scottish institutional capital connected to Scottish deep tech, and Edinburgh AI and robotics capability connected to Glasgow manufacturing and satellite production. | Infection and biologics research connected to North West and Teesside biomanufacturing capacity, with the port used for export rather than only import. |
| UKIZ relevance | Compound semiconductors are a genuine national specialism with a fragile ownership base. The proposed Wales mission focuses on keeping the value chain here. | Scotland's research strength is not in question; its scale-up retention is. The proposed Scotland mission focuses on the capital and customer layer. | 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. |
| Last verified | 15 August 2026 | 15 August 2026 | 15 August 2026 |
Proposed by UKIZ · independent · not a government designation