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 | EdinburghScotland | Sheffield & RotherhamYorkshire and the Humber |
|---|---|---|
| Sectors | Artificial Intelligence, Financial Technology, Robotics & Autonomous Systems, Digital Technologies Supporting: Engineering Biology, Life Sciences, Quantum Technologies, Creative Industries | Advanced Manufacturing, Advanced Materials Supporting: Clean Energy, Robotics & Autonomous Systems, Mobility & Transport Technology, Digital Technologies |
| Research |
|
|
| Companies |
| Not recorded on the map. |
| Infrastructure |
Informatics research facilities, robotics commercialisation facilities and supercomputing capability. |
High Value Manufacturing Catapult centres, nuclear manufacturing facilities and industrial research factories. |
| Capital | Large institutional asset management presence; venture activity is smaller than the capital base implies. | Public co-investment, corporate partnership and asset finance rather than venture capital. |
| Government programmes | No place-based designation recorded. | No place-based designation recorded. |
| What exists | One of Europe's largest informatics research bases, robotics and autonomous systems commercialisation capability, and a substantial asset management, banking and financial technology sector. | 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 | 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. | 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 | Scottish institutional capital connected to Scottish deep tech, and Edinburgh AI and robotics capability connected to Glasgow manufacturing and satellite production. | Applied manufacturing research connected to domestic customers, energy, defence, mobility and medical technology, with procurement used as the connector rather than grants. |
| UKIZ relevance | Scotland's research strength is not in question; its scale-up retention is. The proposed Scotland mission focuses on the capital and customer layer. | 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