New report sets out how the OxCam corridor can become a top 10 global innovation cluster

Public First and the Oxford-Cambridge Supercluster Board have today published a new report, Scaling OxCam: How the Oxford to Cambridge Growth Corridor can become a top 10 global innovation cluster.

You can read the full report here.

The report benchmarks the Oxford to Cambridge Growth Corridor (OxCam) against the world's leading innovation clusters. It finds that, relative to its size, OxCam is one of the most research-intensive places in the world. It has produced more university spinouts than any other cluster, and its research has been cited in more than 26,000 patents over the past decade.

However, OxCam does not yet have the scale or depth of a top-tier cluster. Once the conditions that allow companies to scale are taken into account, it ranks second last among the clusters compared in the research, ahead of only Tel Aviv. The report identifies five constraints holding the corridor back:

• Capital: OxCam hosted five venture capital rounds above $100 million in 2025, against 22 in Austin, and attracted $93 million of late-stage investment to Austin's $2.7 billion.
• Commercialisation: OxCam has just one headquartered Forbes Global 2000 company, the fewest of any cluster compared, and turns a smaller share of its research into patents than all but two of them.
• Talent retention: Around two-thirds of unicorns founded by Oxford and Cambridge alumni are not headquartered locally, and roughly one in five has left the UK altogether.
• Infrastructure: Industrial electricity costs over 60% more than in Paris and Boston, and almost five times as much as in Austin. Rents take more than a fifth of average household income, the highest of any cluster compared.
• Transport: 406,000 people live within 60 minutes of two of Oxford, Cambridge or Milton Keynes. In the Randstad, 3.5 million live within 60 minutes of both Amsterdam and Rotterdam.

Drawing on how clusters such as Paris, Austin, Boston and the Randstad overcame similar constraints, the report sets out what OxCam can learn from them.

Unlocking growth in OxCam would materially strengthen the UK economy. The supply chains, factories and tax receipts that follow scaling firms could benefit places such as Birmingham, Bristol and Sunderland. The report argues the Government needs to go further and faster: if OxCam moves too slowly, more of the firms and talent nurtured in the UK will move abroad.

In a foreword to the report, Lord Vallance, Chair of the Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor and former Science Minister, says: "I have long believed that we do not make enough of what we are good at. The challenge has been how we transform that innovation into products, companies, and growth. And nowhere is that clearer than in the Oxford to Cambridge Growth Corridor."