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 | ManchesterNorth West | Teesside & the HumberNorth East / Yorkshire and the Humber | Sheffield & RotherhamYorkshire and the Humber |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sectors | Advanced Materials, Life Sciences, Digital Technologies, Creative Industries Supporting: Artificial Intelligence, Advanced Manufacturing, Financial Technology, Engineering Biology | Clean Energy, Advanced Manufacturing, Advanced Materials Supporting: Digital Technologies, AgriTech & FoodTech | Advanced Manufacturing, Advanced Materials Supporting: Clean Energy, Robotics & Autonomous Systems, Mobility & Transport Technology, Digital Technologies |
| Research |
| Not recorded on the map. |
|
| Companies | Not recorded on the map. | Not recorded on the map. | Not recorded on the map. |
| Infrastructure |
National materials and graphene facilities, teaching hospitals and clinical research capability, and a major broadcast production estate. |
Process innovation and biologics scale-up facilities, port capacity and grid-connected industrial land. |
High Value Manufacturing Catapult centres, nuclear manufacturing facilities and industrial research factories. |
| Capital | A growing regional investor base and northern funds, with growth rounds usually led from London. | Infrastructure capital, corporate investment and public programmes; almost no local venture base. | 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 | Advanced materials research including graphene and 2D materials, a large health innovation base built on hospitals and universities, a substantial digital and cyber economy, and the biggest broadcast and creative cluster outside London. | 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. | 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 | The step from materials discovery to volume production, and a growth capital base proportionate to the research output. Health data at population scale is under-used by industry. | 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. | 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 | Materials research connected to Sheffield and Midlands manufacturing, and health innovation connected to Leeds health data capability: a corridor rather than three separate cities. | 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. | Applied manufacturing research connected to domestic customers, energy, defence, mobility and medical technology, with procurement used as the connector rather than grants. |
| UKIZ relevance | Manchester has scale in four different economies that rarely commission from each other. The relevant missions concentrate on connecting health, materials, digital and creative capability. | This is where Britain either builds an energy supply chain or imports one. The proposed Teesside & Humber mission is explicitly about retained industrial capability. | 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 | 15 August 2026 |
Proposed by UKIZ · independent · not a government designation