Clusters Think In: Episode 6 - How UK clusters can become internationally competitive

In the last episode in our 'Clusters Think In' podcast series, Hashi Mohammed, Contributing Editor at Tortoise Media is joined by Michael Anstey, Partner at Cambridge Innovation Capital, and Dan Metcalf, Director of Marketing & Communications at the Harwell Science & Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire, to discuss how successful clusters can help the UK’s regions and nations to become internationally competitive. 

Dan explains that it is vital that UK clusters are more proactive in investing in communications activity, which is underdeveloped compared to other international competitors who are constantly revisiting their brand and positioning in the marketplace to remain at the forefront of investor attention. He believes that the UK has a lot of strengths which are competitive globally but needs to break free of the conservative behaviour around science and technology infrastructure investment in order to be world-leading – to go faster will mean investing with conviction and require greater risk-taking. 

Michael highlighted the importance of the Oxford-Cambridge Arc to the UK economy explaining that it is one of the most exciting places for novel innovation in the world – as good as anything you will find in the US, Israel or Asia – with the potential to truly inspire people. He argues that mega clusters are emerging internationally and connecting clusters in the UK to scale up and create a far larger, compelling narrative and proposition is vital. This also creates the opportunities to expand into other regions and drive employment and investments in the rest of the country 

'Clusters Think In' is a podcast series included as part of the CBI's series of Thriving Regions events. Listen and subscribe to the series here.