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 | Leeds & West YorkshireYorkshire and the Humber | Liverpool City RegionNorth West | Teesside & the HumberNorth East / Yorkshire and the Humber |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sectors | Life Sciences, Digital Technologies, Financial Technology Supporting: Artificial Intelligence, Advanced Manufacturing, Creative Industries | Life Sciences, Engineering Biology, Advanced Materials Supporting: Digital Technologies, Clean Energy, Creative Industries | Clean Energy, Advanced Manufacturing, Advanced Materials Supporting: Digital Technologies, AgriTech & FoodTech |
| Research |
|
| Not recorded on the map. |
| Companies |
| Not recorded on the map. | Not recorded on the map. |
| Infrastructure | Not recorded on the map. Health data infrastructure, teaching hospitals and university research facilities. | Not recorded on the map. University research institutes, automated chemistry facilities and port and logistics assets. |
Process innovation and biologics scale-up facilities, port capacity and grid-connected industrial land. |
| Capital | Financial services depth locally, but early-stage health technology capital remains limited. | A modest local investor base; public and charitable research funding dominate. | Infrastructure capital, corporate investment and public programmes; almost no local venture base. |
| Government programmes | No place-based designation recorded. |
|
|
| What exists | National health data organisations, medical technology, a large financial and professional services base and a research university with data and materials strength. | Infection and tropical medicine research of international standing, materials chemistry and automated discovery, a large port and a Freeport designation. | 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. |
| What's missing · UKIZ interpretation | A clear route for companies to work with health data at scale, and clinical adoption pathways that move faster than pilot projects. | Translation capacity: strong discovery science with limited local scale-up manufacturing and limited early-stage capital to hold companies in the city region. | 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. |
| What could connect · UKIZ interpretation | Leeds health data capability connected to Manchester clinical research and to medical technology manufacturing, giving companies discovery, evidence and production in one region. | Infection and biologics research connected to North West and Teesside biomanufacturing capacity, with the port used for export rather than only import. | 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. |
| UKIZ relevance | Health data at population scale is a national asset. The proposed Manchester mission and Leeds capability are complementary rather than competing. | 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. | This is where Britain either builds an energy supply chain or imports one. The proposed Teesside & Humber mission is explicitly about retained industrial capability. |
| Last verified | 15 August 2026 | 15 August 2026 | 15 August 2026 |
Proposed by UKIZ · independent · not a government designation