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 | Norwich & the EastEast of England | Birmingham & the West MidlandsWest Midlands |
|---|---|---|
| Sectors | AgriTech & FoodTech, Engineering Biology, Clean Energy Supporting: Life Sciences, Digital Technologies | Mobility & Transport Technology, Advanced Manufacturing, Quantum Technologies, Advanced Materials Supporting: Clean Energy, Digital Technologies, Defence & Security |
| Research |
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|
| Companies | Not recorded on the map. | Not recorded on the map. |
| Infrastructure | Not recorded on the map. Plant and food research institutes, genomics facilities and offshore energy operations bases. |
Automotive research centres, battery and vehicle test facilities and major logistics assets. |
| Capital | Research council and charitable funding dominate; venture capital is scarce. | Corporate and supply chain finance dominate; venture capital is thin relative to industrial output. |
| Government programmes |
|
|
| What exists | Plant, food and genomics research of international standing, offshore energy operations and maintenance, and a significant agricultural production base on the doorstep. | The largest manufacturing base in the UK by employment, automotive and electrification engineering, rail and mobility research, and a young, large working-age population. |
| What's missing · UKIZ interpretation | Commercial translation of agri-food science, and connection between offshore energy operations and the research base inland. | Ownership of the value in electrified vehicles: battery, power electronics and software increasingly sit outside the region and outside the UK. Innovation-active SME supply chains are under-capitalised. |
| What could connect · UKIZ interpretation | 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. | Midlands manufacturing paired with battery and power electronics research, North East battery production and Coventry testing capability as a single electrification value chain. |
| UKIZ relevance | Food security and biotechnology intersect here more clearly than anywhere else in Britain, and connect to the proposed Oxford-Cambridge mission. | The region's transition depends on owning the new value in a vehicle rather than assembling someone else's. The proposed Midlands zone focuses on batteries, power electronics and software. |
| Last verified | 15 August 2026 | 15 August 2026 |
Proposed by UKIZ · independent · not a government designation