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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.

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Side by side

Dimension	EdinburghScotland	Birmingham & the West MidlandsWest Midlands	Nottingham & DerbyEast Midlands
Sectors	Artificial Intelligence, Financial Technology, Robotics & Autonomous Systems, Digital Technologies Supporting: Engineering Biology, Life Sciences, Quantum Technologies, Creative Industries	Mobility & Transport Technology, Advanced Manufacturing, Quantum Technologies, Advanced Materials Supporting: Clean Energy, Digital Technologies, Defence & Security	Advanced Manufacturing, Clean Energy, Mobility & Transport Technology Supporting: Advanced Materials, Digital Technologies, AgriTech & FoodTech
Research	University of Edinburgh Heriot-Watt University	University of Birmingham University of Warwick WMG	University of Nottingham
Companies	Edinburgh financial services and fintech cluster	Not recorded on the map.	Not recorded on the map.
Infrastructure	National Robotarium Informatics research facilities, robotics commercialisation facilities and supercomputing capability.	Energy Systems Catapult UK Battery Industrialisation Centre Automotive research centres, battery and vehicle test facilities and major logistics assets.	Not recorded on the map. Propulsion and nuclear engineering facilities, rail test capability and chemistry research centres.
Capital	Large institutional asset management presence; venture activity is smaller than the capital base implies.	Corporate and supply chain finance dominate; venture capital is thin relative to industrial output.	Corporate and supply chain finance; limited venture activity.
Government programmes	No place-based designation recorded.	West Midlands Investment Zone — Investment Zones	East Midlands Investment Zone — Investment Zones East Midlands Freeport — Freeports
What exists	One of Europe's largest informatics research bases, robotics and autonomous systems commercialisation capability, and a substantial asset management, banking and financial technology sector.	The largest manufacturing base in the UK by employment, automotive and electrification engineering, rail and mobility research, and a young, large working-age population.	Aerospace propulsion and small modular reactor engineering, rail technology, sustainable chemistry research and one of Europe's busiest air freight hubs.
What's missing · UKIZ interpretation	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.	Ownership of the value in electrified vehicles: battery, power electronics and software increasingly sit outside the region and outside the UK. Innovation-active SME supply chains are under-capitalised.	Diversification of the supply chain beyond a small number of large primes, and company formation from a strong engineering research base.
What could connect · UKIZ interpretation	Scottish institutional capital connected to Scottish deep tech, and Edinburgh AI and robotics capability connected to Glasgow manufacturing and satellite production.	Midlands manufacturing paired with battery and power electronics research, North East battery production and Coventry testing capability as a single electrification value chain.	Propulsion and nuclear engineering connected to Sheffield manufacturing research and Midlands electrification — one Midlands industrial mission rather than three sectors.
UKIZ relevance	Scotland's research strength is not in question; its scale-up retention is. The proposed Scotland mission focuses on the capital and customer layer.	The region's transition depends on owning the new value in a vehicle rather than assembling someone else's. The proposed Midlands zone focuses on batteries, power electronics and software.	Propulsion and nuclear capability sit alongside the Midlands mobility mission. The proposed Midlands zone connects them.
Last verified	15 August 2026	15 August 2026	15 August 2026

Proposed by UKIZ · independent · not a government designation

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