Glasgow: City of Innovation

27th Feb 2025

Welcome to the February edition of our Glasgow 850 Blog: celebrating 850 years of innovation, culture, and community.

Glasgow is a city of invention, creativity and ingenuity. A city of innovation.

Glasgow's reputation stems from its role as one of the world’s first industrial and heavy engineering centres that earned the city the title of “workshop of the world”. From shipbuilding in the 19th and 20th centuries right through to health and life sciences and advanced engineering of today. Glasgow draws on its long history of innovation to build the future.

The Glasgow City Region is home to 3 innovation districts. The three Innovation Districts are arrayed in a corridor along the iconic River Clyde which binds together Glasgow and the communities of West Central Scotland and is the lifeblood of the historic industrial heart of the region and Scotland. Together, Glasgow’s Clyde “innovation corridor” constitutes a platform whose depth, breadth and scale ranks it as a location of Scottish, UK and international significance.

1. Glasgow City Innovation District

Glasgow City Innovation District (GCID) was Glasgow’s first innovation district and is celebrating its 6^th anniversary. Located in Glasgow City Centre, and anchored by the University of Strathclyde, GCID is an urban hub for entrepreneurship, innovation and collaboration and is building on Glasgow's rich tradition of scientific excellence and industrial ingenuity.

The Innovation District is home to well-established businesses, education and cultural communities alongside companies working to develop new technologies and designs, while showcasing creative talent. It is home to over 1,600 businesses from a range of sectors.

In addition to this, the District is further anchored by an existing concentration of innovation organisations including the UK's only Fraunhofer Institute, five UK Catapults and three Scottish Innovation Centres. In May, GCID will once again host Glasgow's premeir tech event: Glasgow Tech Week.

2. Glasgow Riverside Innovation District

University Ave The Glasgow Riverside Innovation District (GRID) is anchored by the University of Glasgow and extends from the University’s West End campus to straddle both banks of the River Clyde and includes the world-leading Clinical Innovation Zone based around the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, the Scottish Events Campus (SEC) and the media hub at Pacific Quay (including the headquarters of BBC Scotland).

GRID leverages these world-leading education, medical and cultural assets to bring together and strengthen this already dynamic innovation ecosystem. Key projects are under development and the flagship Health Innovation Hub in Govan is scheduled to open later this year. Alongside the Living Laboratory, it will focus on translating cutting edge research and healthcare innovation into a real-world clinical setting.

3. Advanced Manufacturing Innovation District

The Advanced Manufacturing Innovation District (AMIDS) is Scotland’s home of manufacturing innovation. This purpose-built innovation district sits just west of Glasgow and directly adjacent to Glasgow Airport. It’s an evolution of the City Region’s particular strengths in engineering and advance manufacturing and is building on the success of existing academic centres of excellence in metal forming and lightweight manufacturing.

The site is home to CPI’s Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Centre and the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland (NMIS) alongside a cluster of world-renowned names including Boeing, Rolls Royce and Thermo Fisher.

This emerging centre of excellence is crucial to national and international efforts and is part of Scotland’s answer to balancing manufacturing requirements while meeting net zero commitments.

4. Assets of National Significance

Glasgow’s innovation ecosystem ranks as a location of Scottish, UK and international significance. In addition to its Innovation Districts, Glasgow is also home to three Scottish Innovation Centres, five Catapults and a host of Public Sector Research Establishments, namely:

Innovation Centres

Catapults

Public Sector Research Establishments

With ongoing developments at AMIDS and GRID, particularly around the Health Innovation Hub, this list is sure to grow.

5. Accelerating the Future of Innovation

Glasgow City Region was selected as one of three pilot areas across the UK to share £100 million funding from the UK Government Department for Science, Innovation and Technology for a new innovation and research accelerator.

The Innovation Accelerator is building on recent progress to help take our innovation economy to the next level by leveraging substantial private sector investment on the back of public sector funding.

The projects range from the inspiring ‘Museums in the Metaverse’ to vital advances on our sustainability and Net Zero journey through to the extraordinary realms of quantum, photonics and sensors.

6. Glasgow City of Science and Innovation

Within the innovation framework is Glasgow City of Science and Innovation (GCoSI). GCoSI are the cheerleaders for Glasgow’s innovation community, building visibility at a national and international level while articulating the city region’s innovation experience and expertise.

Alongside 89 partners, GCoSI is working to transform Glasgow into a globally recognised hub of scientific and innovative excellence. They do this via a multi-sector partnership of industry, academia and government to deliver a range of programmes with local and international reach.

Crucially, GCoSI also works directly within the science and innovation practitioners to enhance ecosystem connection and cohesion, support innovation strategy development and build a regional innovation identity to help build a thriving innovation economy.

7. Sectoral Strength Supports the Innovation Economy

Glasgow’s thriving innovation economy is supported by a diverse and strong business base across multiple key sectors. The city region benefits from commercial advantages in nano tech, fintech, life sciences, digital media, energy and advanced manufacturing.

Some headlines, Glasgow:

is home to 3,000 manufacturing businesses with a combined turnover of £11.8 billion, employing over 55,000 people and a resulting GVA contribution of £3.8 billion.
delivers 30% of all the biosafety testing across Europe.
is among the top three fastest-growing tech investment hubs in the UK.
will be the focal point of a new UK-wide, national government supported Maritime Research and Innovation Centre (MaRi-UK).
is set to become home to the world’s first facility to comprehensively test the ability of prototype devices to process 6G.
has a fintech ecosystem that is growing at an unprecedented rate.
is consistently ranked in the top 20% of the Top 100 most innovative cities in the world and is ranked second in the UK behind London as an emerging tech destination.
was runner-up for the European Capital of Innovation Award.
is a global capital for the space and satellite industry.

8. People Make Glasgow

It’s the city’s slogan for a reason.

Glasgow’s legacy of invention and innovation stems from the likes of Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell (radio pulsars), Ian Donald (ultrasound), James Watt (condensing steam engine), Joseph Lister (antiseptic), and John Logie Baird (television) among many others.

Many of them with connections to Glasgow’s universities, hospitals and industry. And that legacy has very much carried to today:

After London, Glasgow has one of the largest concentrations of higher education provision in the UK: 5 degree granting institutions and 3 colleges.
Some 85,000 students from 140 countries choose to study in Glasgow each year. As well as this, 30% of Scotland’s higher education students and postgraduate students choose to study in Glasgow.
Research base and skilled graduates are a key component of the city’s economic offer.
Ranked no.1 of the UK’s 11 core cities for producing the highest number of both students and graduates in engineering and advanced manufacturing
Academic institutions fuel research and the transfer of ideas to market, with spinouts making up 7% of Glasgow’s high-growth population (exceeding the national average of 3%).

8.5 From Shipyards to Satellites

In the 19th century, Clyde shipyards produced 20% of the world’s ships. Companies like AAC ClydeSpace, Alba Orbital, and Spire Global lead Glasgow’s satellite manufacturing capabilities. Today Glasgow is Europe’s small satellite manufacturing leader, driving a space economy set to create 20,000 jobs and a £4bn industry by 2030.