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 | Teesside & the HumberNorth East / Yorkshire and the Humber | Norwich & the EastEast of England |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sectors | Semiconductors, Advanced Materials, Creative Industries Supporting: Clean Energy, Advanced Manufacturing, Digital Technologies | Clean Energy, Advanced Manufacturing, Advanced Materials Supporting: Digital Technologies, AgriTech & FoodTech | AgriTech & FoodTech, Engineering Biology, Clean Energy Supporting: Life Sciences, Digital Technologies |
| Research |
| Not recorded on the map. |
|
| Companies |
| Not recorded on the map. | Not recorded on the map. |
| Infrastructure | Not recorded on the map. Compound semiconductor fabrication and research facilities, materials and coatings research, production studios. |
Process innovation and biologics scale-up facilities, port capacity and grid-connected industrial land. | Not recorded on the map. Plant and food research institutes, genomics facilities and offshore energy operations bases. |
| Capital | Public and corporate capital dominate; venture funding is limited by capital intensity. | Infrastructure capital, corporate investment and public programmes; almost no local venture base. | Research council and charitable funding dominate; venture capital is scarce. |
| Government programmes |
|
|
|
| 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. | The largest concentration of industrial decarbonisation activity in the UK: hydrogen, carbon capture, process manufacturing, biologics scale-up capability and two Freeports with substantial serviced industrial land. | Plant, food and genomics research of international standing, offshore energy operations and maintenance, and a significant agricultural production base on the doorstep. |
| 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. | Skills pipelines and company formation. The land, power and permits exist; the innovation companies and the technical workforce to fill them do not yet exist at the same scale. | Commercial translation of agri-food science, and connection between offshore energy operations and the research base inland. |
| 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. | Industrial land and process scale-up capability connected to research clusters elsewhere that have technologies without a place to build them: a national scale-up site rather than a regional one. | Agri-food and genomics research connected to national food manufacturing and to engineering biology capacity, and offshore operations connected to the Humber and North East energy supply chain. |
| 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. | This is where Britain either builds an energy supply chain or imports one. The proposed Teesside & Humber mission is explicitly about retained industrial capability. | Food security and biotechnology intersect here more clearly than anywhere else in Britain, and connect to the proposed Oxford-Cambridge mission. |
| Last verified | 15 August 2026 | 15 August 2026 | 15 August 2026 |
Proposed by UKIZ · independent · not a government designation