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

Side by side

Dimension	Sheffield & RotherhamYorkshire and the Humber	ManchesterNorth West	Teesside & the HumberNorth East / Yorkshire and the Humber
Sectors	Advanced Manufacturing, Advanced Materials Supporting: Clean Energy, Robotics & Autonomous Systems, Mobility & Transport Technology, Digital Technologies	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
Research	University of Sheffield	The University of Manchester Manchester Metropolitan University National Graphene Institute Greater Manchester health innovation partnership	Not recorded on the map.
Companies	Not recorded on the map.	Not recorded on the map.	Not recorded on the map.
Infrastructure	Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre Nuclear AMRC High Value Manufacturing Catapult centres, nuclear manufacturing facilities and industrial research factories.	MediaCity Advanced manufacturing Catapult capability, North West National materials and graphene facilities, teaching hospitals and clinical research capability, and a major broadcast production estate.	Centre for Process Innovation Process innovation and biologics scale-up facilities, port capacity and grid-connected industrial land.
Capital	Public co-investment, corporate partnership and asset finance rather than venture 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.
Government programmes	No place-based designation recorded.	No place-based designation recorded.	Teesside Freeport, Freeports Humber Freeport, Freeports
What exists	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.	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.
What's missing · UKIZ interpretation	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.	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.
What could connect · UKIZ interpretation	Applied manufacturing research connected to domestic customers, energy, defence, mobility and medical technology, with procurement used as the connector rather than grants.	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.
UKIZ relevance	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.	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.
Last verified	15 August 2026	15 August 2026	15 August 2026

Proposed by UKIZ · independent · not a government designation

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