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 | Southampton & PortsmouthSouth East | Teesside & the HumberNorth East / Yorkshire and the Humber | Glasgow & the Central BeltScotland |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sectors | Defence & Security, Robotics & Autonomous Systems, Advanced Manufacturing Supporting: Clean Energy, Digital Technologies, Advanced Materials | 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. | Not recorded on the map. |
|
| Infrastructure | Not recorded on the map. Naval and maritime engineering facilities, photonics research centres and port infrastructure. |
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 | Prime contractor supply chain finance and public programmes rather than venture capital. | 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. |
| What exists | Maritime, naval and defence engineering, marine autonomy, photonics research and a major port and logistics complex. | 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 | Routes for smaller innovators into defence and maritime procurement, and a civil market for capability developed for defence customers. | 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 | Marine autonomy and photonics connected to Plymouth marine capability, Bristol robotics and offshore energy operations: the same technologies serving defence, energy and shipping. | 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 | Marine autonomy is where defence, robotics and clean energy meet. The proposed Cornwall & Devon marine mission connects to this capability directly. | 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