Supporting Innovation

Supporting our powerhouse of digital innovation

The Western Gateway has always been highly innovative. Wider SW England and Wales both outrank the UK and EU average in the EU Innovation index, and SW England is home to 52.5% of the UK’s high growth businesses. An ecosystem of university, public, and private sector start-ups, scale-ups, multi-nationals and innovation infrastructure provides technology pull at the same time as driving technology adoption and diffusion.

This unique ecosystem has attracted significant investment from the public and private sector, including BT’s new state-of-the-art office in Bristol, the Golden Valley Development that is home to Cyber Central in Cheltenham and the UK’s first business-led cyber centre in Wiltshire.

What do we want to do?

We are connecting the area’s highly innovative sectoral clusters in Advanced Engineering, Creative Industries, Digital Connectivity (mobile telecommunications) and Data Solutions (businesses that create wealth from data such as fintech and space) to create a super-cluster with the scale to compete on the global stage. This will unlock further digital-driven innovation in some of the UK’s highest value-add sectors, including work to create Europe’s largest aerospace and defence cluster and the world’s first cluster dedicated to compound semiconductors, enable our digital and data-led future and consolidate our role as a scientific super-power.