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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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Dimension	Nottingham & DerbyEast Midlands	CambridgeEast of England	Birmingham & the West MidlandsWest Midlands
Sectors	Advanced Manufacturing, Clean Energy, Mobility & Transport Technology Supporting: Advanced Materials, Digital Technologies, AgriTech & FoodTech	Life Sciences, Semiconductors, Engineering Biology, Artificial Intelligence Supporting: Quantum Technologies, Advanced Materials, AgriTech & FoodTech, Digital Technologies	Mobility & Transport Technology, Advanced Manufacturing, Quantum Technologies, Advanced Materials Supporting: Clean Energy, Digital Technologies, Defence & Security
Research	University of Nottingham	University of Cambridge Wellcome Sanger Institute MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology	University of Birmingham University of Warwick WMG
Companies	Not recorded on the map.	Cambridge semiconductor and processor IP cluster	Not recorded on the map.
Infrastructure	Not recorded on the map. Propulsion and nuclear engineering facilities, rail test capability and chemistry research centres.	Babraham Research Campus Cambridge Science Park University and institute laboratories, genomics and biomedical campus facilities, and semiconductor design capability.	Energy Systems Catapult UK Battery Industrialisation Centre Automotive research centres, battery and vehicle test facilities and major logistics assets.
Capital	Corporate and supply chain finance; limited venture activity.	Specialist deep tech and life science funds, university-linked funds, and corporate partners; strong at seed, thinner at growth stage relative to demand.	Corporate and supply chain finance dominate; venture capital is thin relative to industrial output.
Government programmes	East Midlands Investment Zone — Investment Zones East Midlands Freeport — Freeports	No place-based designation recorded.	West Midlands Investment Zone — Investment Zones
What exists	Aerospace propulsion and small modular reactor engineering, rail technology, sustainable chemistry research and one of Europe's busiest air freight hubs.	Extreme research density for its size: life sciences and genomics, semiconductor and processor IP, engineering biology and AI, with a mature spin-out culture and specialist investors who understand long timelines.	The largest manufacturing base in the UK by employment, automotive and electrification engineering, rail and mobility research, and a young, large working-age population.
What's missing · UKIZ interpretation	Diversification of the supply chain beyond a small number of large primes, and company formation from a strong engineering research base.	Ownership retention. Discovery and early company formation work; the Series B onward stage frequently transfers ownership overseas. Laboratory and scale-up space, power and housing also constrain growth.	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.
What could connect · UKIZ interpretation	Propulsion and nuclear engineering connected to Sheffield manufacturing research and Midlands electrification — one Midlands industrial mission rather than three sectors.	Cambridge discovery connected to UK manufacturing and biomanufacturing capacity, and to later-stage domestic capital, so that value created here is realised here rather than acquired out of the country.	Midlands manufacturing paired with battery and power electronics research, North East battery production and Coventry testing capability as a single electrification value chain.
UKIZ relevance	Propulsion and nuclear capability sit alongside the Midlands mobility mission. The proposed Midlands zone connects them.	Cambridge produces intellectual property at a rate few places match, and loses ownership of too much of it at Series B. The proposed Oxford–Cambridge zone concentrates on commercialisation and retention rather than on more discovery.	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.
Last verified	15 August 2026	15 August 2026	15 August 2026

Proposed by UKIZ · independent · not a government designation

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