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 | Nottingham & DerbyEast Midlands | Glasgow & the Central BeltScotland |
|---|---|---|
| Sectors | Advanced Manufacturing, Clean Energy, Mobility & Transport Technology Supporting: Advanced Materials, Digital Technologies, AgriTech & FoodTech | Space, Semiconductors, Quantum Technologies, Advanced Manufacturing Supporting: Clean Energy, Digital Technologies, Robotics & Autonomous Systems |
| Research |
|
|
| Companies | Not recorded on the map. |
|
| Infrastructure | Not recorded on the map. Propulsion and nuclear engineering facilities, rail test capability and chemistry research centres. |
Satellite manufacturing capacity, nanofabrication cleanrooms and national manufacturing research facilities. |
| Capital | Corporate and supply chain finance; limited venture activity. | Public co-investment and specialist funds; hardware scale-up capital is scarce. |
| Government programmes |
| No place-based designation recorded. |
| What exists | Aerospace propulsion and small modular reactor engineering, rail technology, sustainable chemistry research and one of Europe's busiest air freight hubs. | 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 | Diversification of the supply chain beyond a small number of large primes, and company formation from a strong engineering research base. | 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 | Propulsion and nuclear engineering connected to Sheffield manufacturing research and Midlands electrification. One Midlands industrial mission rather than three sectors. | 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 | Propulsion and nuclear capability sit alongside the Midlands mobility mission. The proposed Midlands zone connects them. | 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 |
Proposed by UKIZ · independent · not a government designation