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 | Teesside & the HumberNorth East / Yorkshire and the Humber | EdinburghScotland | BelfastNorthern Ireland |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sectors | Clean Energy, Advanced Manufacturing, Advanced Materials Supporting: Digital Technologies, AgriTech & FoodTech | Artificial Intelligence, Financial Technology, Robotics & Autonomous Systems, Digital Technologies Supporting: Engineering Biology, Life Sciences, Quantum Technologies, Creative Industries | Defence & Security, Advanced Materials, Financial Technology, Creative Industries Supporting: Digital Technologies, AgriTech & FoodTech, Advanced Manufacturing |
| Research | Not recorded on the map. |
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| Companies | Not recorded on the map. |
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| Infrastructure |
Process innovation and biologics scale-up facilities, port capacity and grid-connected industrial land. |
Informatics research facilities, robotics commercialisation facilities and supercomputing capability. | Not recorded on the map. Cyber security innovation centre, composites and aerostructures manufacturing and agri-food research facilities. |
| Capital | Infrastructure capital, corporate investment and public programmes; almost no local venture base. | Large institutional asset management presence; venture activity is smaller than the capital base implies. | A small local venture base supported by public co-investment; growth capital typically comes from Dublin, London or the US. |
| Government programmes |
| No place-based designation recorded. | No place-based designation recorded. |
| What exists | 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 Europe's largest informatics research bases, robotics and autonomous systems commercialisation capability, and a substantial asset management, banking and financial technology sector. | Cyber security research and commercialisation of international standing, aerospace and composites manufacturing, agri-food research and a fast-growing software sector. |
| What's missing · UKIZ interpretation | 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. | A connection between the capital sitting in Edinburgh's financial institutions and the technology being created a mile away; and later-stage funding to stop companies relocating south. | Scale-up capital and market access. Companies reach a ceiling and are acquired, and dual-market access advantages are under-exploited commercially. |
| What could connect · UKIZ interpretation | 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. | Scottish institutional capital connected to Scottish deep tech, and Edinburgh AI and robotics capability connected to Glasgow manufacturing and satellite production. | Belfast cyber capability connected to UK defence and financial services demand, and composites manufacturing connected to Bristol and Midlands aerospace supply chains. |
| UKIZ relevance | This is where Britain either builds an energy supply chain or imports one. The proposed Teesside & Humber mission is explicitly about retained industrial capability. | Scotland's research strength is not in question; its scale-up retention is. The proposed Scotland mission focuses on the capital and customer layer. | Northern Ireland's position between two markets is a commercial asset that is under-used. The proposed Northern Ireland mission treats it as the organising advantage. |
| Last verified | 15 August 2026 | 15 August 2026 | 15 August 2026 |
Proposed by UKIZ · independent · not a government designation