Manufacturing News – Late March 2026
Estimated reading time 1 minute
New Innovation Report says the UK is losing industrial competitiveness.
The UK is one of the world’s leading innovation economies. It ranks fourth globally for scientific publications (behind only China, the US, and India) and sits among the top countries for high impact research and patents in critical technologies. It has also built one of the strongest start-up ecosystems outside the US.
As the government moves from designing its Industrial Strategy to delivering it across eight priority sectors and begins to frame public R&D investment around a set of broad funding ‘buckets’, the question is shifting: not how much research the UK produces, but whether it translates into sustained industrial competitiveness.
The latest UK Innovation Report, published by Cambridge Industrial Innovation Policy at the Institute for Manufacturing, University of Cambridge, finds that while the UK excels in research and early-stage innovation, it continues to underperform on innovation outcomes such as high technology exports, technology scale-up, and global industrial market share.
Sourced from The Manufacturer
