A new report from Public First, commissioned by the Oxford-Cambridge Supercluster, sets out what it will take for the Oxford to Cambridge Growth Corridor to become one of the world’s top 10 innovation clusters.
Scaling OxCam benchmarks the corridor against 14 leading global clusters, including the Bay Area, Boston, Beijing and Singapore. It finds that while OxCam leads the world on research intensity, producing more scientific publications per resident than any other global cluster between 2019 and 2023, it is held back from competing at the highest level by five key constraints: access to growth capital, commercialisation, talent retention, infrastructure and transport.
The report, which carries a foreword from Lord Vallance, Chair of the Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor and former Science Minister, argues that resolving these bottlenecks is a national imperative. It calls on government to empower OxCam with the devolved powers and institutional freedom needed to break through these barriers, ahead of the forthcoming long-term national growth plan.
