NEWS4 May 2023

Government research with The Data City to identify business clusters

Data analytics Innovations New business Public Sector Technology Trends UK

UK – Leeds-based data consultancy The Data City has won a contract with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and Cambridge Econometrics to map high-potential business clusters in the UK.

Alex Craven

Founded in 2018, The Data City is a data-as-a-service company offering industrial data on emerging economic sectors.

The company’s AI-based platform combines data including open data sets, website text and financial data, and is used by policymakers, economists, investors and analysts to obtain insight on the economy and markets.

Through the study, The Data City will identify groups of science, technology, research and innovation businesses with a high potential for growth that share characteristics that can be defined as a ‘cluster’.

The project involves collecting, processing and analysing four primary datasets before data processing and analysis.

The Data City will carry out network analysis of the UKRI and Patent and Academic Activity datasets. The company will also build the data into an interactive website.

For the past seven years, the business has worked with industry bodies, academic and sector experts and government departments to build a library of new economy sector classifications.

Alex Craven, chief executive, The Data City (pictured), said the approach would result in “a more comprehensive and detailed picture of the UK cluster landscape that will ensure that support is targeted to companies with great potential for growth and job creation”.