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 | Teesside & the HumberNorth East / Yorkshire and the Humber | Glasgow & the Central BeltScotland |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sectors | Life Sciences, Digital Technologies, Financial Technology Supporting: Artificial Intelligence, Advanced Manufacturing, Creative Industries | Clean Energy, Advanced Manufacturing, Advanced Materials Supporting: Digital Technologies, AgriTech & FoodTech | Space, Semiconductors, Quantum Technologies, Advanced Manufacturing Supporting: Clean Energy, Digital Technologies, Robotics & Autonomous Systems |
| Research |
| Not recorded on the map. |
|
| Companies |
| Not recorded on the map. |
|
| Infrastructure | Not recorded on the map. Health data infrastructure, teaching hospitals and university research facilities. |
Process innovation and biologics scale-up facilities, port capacity and grid-connected industrial land. |
Satellite manufacturing capacity, nanofabrication cleanrooms and national manufacturing research facilities. |
| Capital | Financial services depth locally, but early-stage health technology capital remains limited. | Infrastructure capital, corporate investment and public programmes; almost no local venture base. | Public co-investment and specialist funds; hardware scale-up capital is scarce. |
| Government programmes | No place-based designation recorded. |
| 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. | 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. | More small satellites built here than anywhere else in Europe, quantum imaging and nanofabrication research, and a large applied engineering, manufacturing and energy research base. |
| 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. | 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. | Downstream value. Satellites are manufactured here while much of the data and applications value is captured elsewhere. Scale-up finance for hardware is limited. |
| 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. | 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. | Glasgow manufacture connected to Cornwall launch and Earth observation, Harwell space applications and domestic data customers, forming one national space chain instead of four regional ones. |
| UKIZ relevance | Health data at population scale is a national asset. The proposed Manchester mission and Leeds capability are complementary rather than competing. | This is where Britain either builds an energy supply chain or imports one. The proposed Teesside & Humber mission is explicitly about retained industrial capability. | Manufacture, launch and data are three different geographies in Britain. The proposed Scotland mission connects them deliberately. |
| Last verified | 15 August 2026 | 15 August 2026 | 15 August 2026 |
Proposed by UKIZ · independent · not a government designation