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 | Norwich & the EastEast of England | Newcastle & the North EastNorth East |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sectors | Clean Energy, Advanced Manufacturing, Advanced Materials Supporting: Digital Technologies, AgriTech & FoodTech | AgriTech & FoodTech, Engineering Biology, Clean Energy Supporting: Life Sciences, Digital Technologies | Clean Energy, Mobility & Transport Technology, Advanced Manufacturing Supporting: Life Sciences, Digital Technologies, Robotics & Autonomous Systems |
| Research | Not recorded on the map. |
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| Companies | Not recorded on the map. | Not recorded on the map. | Not recorded on the map. |
| Infrastructure |
Process innovation and biologics scale-up facilities, port capacity and grid-connected industrial land. | Not recorded on the map. Plant and food research institutes, genomics facilities and offshore energy operations bases. |
Offshore renewable test facilities, battery production investment and university research centres. |
| Capital | Infrastructure capital, corporate investment and public programmes; almost no local venture base. | Research council and charitable funding dominate; venture capital is scarce. | Infrastructure and development finance, with limited venture capital relative to industrial scale. |
| Government programmes |
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| 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. | Plant, food and genomics research of international standing, offshore energy operations and maintenance, and a significant agricultural production base on the doorstep. | Offshore renewable energy testing at national scale, battery and electrification investment, ageing and life sciences research and a strong engineering base. |
| 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. | Commercial translation of agri-food science, and connection between offshore energy operations and the research base inland. | Supply chain retention. Britain builds offshore capacity while importing much of the equipment; local firms often serve as installers rather than manufacturers. |
| 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. | 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. | Offshore testing capability connected to Teesside and Humber industrial land, Sheffield manufacturing research and domestic energy buyers. That is an energy supply chain rather than an energy market. |
| 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. | Food security and biotechnology intersect here more clearly than anywhere else in Britain, and connect to the proposed Oxford-Cambridge mission. | The region has the industrial land, the ports and the skills base. The proposed North East mission focuses on retaining the supply chain, not only the assembly. |
| Last verified | 15 August 2026 | 15 August 2026 | 15 August 2026 |
Proposed by UKIZ · independent · not a government designation