A Tale of Two Cities: The Cambridge x Manchester Partnership

Last year, I transferred from our Cambridge office to Manchester. It was not an unfamiliar move: I had previously studied and lived in Manchester for almost a decade before moving to Cambridge, where I joined the firm as a trainee patent attorney seven years ago.

Anyone who has spent time in Cambridge and Manchester will quickly notice their differences. One is defined by centuries-old colleges, narrow streets and low-rise architecture; the other by its industrial heritage, modern skyline and rapidly expanding city centre. Yet beneath these contrasting appearances are striking similarities. Both are home to world-leading universities, large student populations and thriving innovation ecosystems that attract talent, investment and ambitious businesses from around the world.

It was fitting, then, that I attended the inaugural Innovation Summit hosted by the recently launched Cambridge x Manchester Partnership, which explored how the two cities’ distinct strengths can complement one another.

The discussion explored how Cambridge’s well-recognised success in university spin-outs, together with strong access to investors – particularly in deep tech and life sciences – could be matched with Manchester’s own technology ecosystem as well as its size and diverse labour market, providing further potential for companies in both cities to scale-up. In the words of Greater Manchester mayor Bev Craig, Manchester provides even more “room to grow”. The word of the day was “co-opetition”: the idea that the two cities can compete in a healthy way while cooperating where it is mutually beneficial.

Charlotte Ridley, founder of Memorify, a digital platform for organising personal memories, offered an interesting perspective on the respective strengths of Cambridge and Manchester. She argued that Manchester holds a particular advantage in consumer technology, marketing and cultural impact. Despite leading a Cambridge-based consumer technology company, she explained that she often turns to Manchester marketing agencies, noting that Cambridge’s reputation is rooted in deep technology and innovation rather than consumer brands. By contrast, Greater Manchester has produced and is home to well-known consumer-facing businesses, including Boohoo.com, Reebok and JD Sports. As a patent attorney, I was struck by the parallel with my own profession: just as technology businesses often look beyond their immediate ecosystem for specialist marketing expertise, our clients frequently benefit from the complementary expertise that trade mark attorneys bring when protecting and building consumer-facing brands.

One point that particularly resonated with me was that innovation ecosystems are ultimately built by people. Throughout the summit, there was a recurring theme that talent, ideas and expertise do not stay neatly within city boundaries. As someone who has lived and worked in both Cambridge and Manchester, that struck a chord. At chip designer Arm, for example, employees move between the company’s Cambridge and Manchester locations for reasons that extend beyond work: lifestyle, family and housing all influence where talented people choose to build their careers. Yet these movements do not diminish the importance of place. Both cities benefit from organisations that are deeply embedded in their local ecosystems while remaining connected to opportunities further afield. Marks & Clerk has long recognised the strengths of both Cambridge and Manchester, and the importance of being at the heart of each, maintaining a presence in both cities alongside offices across the UK and internationally. That combination of local knowledge and wider connectivity means that when life eventually brought me back to Manchester, I was able to remain within the same firm, continue working with colleagues and clients across both cities and beyond, and stay closely connected to the innovation communities that make each of them distinctive. In many ways, that reflects a key aim of the Cambridge x Manchester Partnership: not simply connecting places, but connecting the people and organisations that help those places thrive.

The programme is set to run for three years, but the ambition behind it extends far beyond that initial term. The hope is that three years provides an opportunity to prove the model before possibly replicating it in other parts of the country. If the two cities can turn “co-opetition” into sustained collaboration, connecting their people, ideas and complementary strengths, the partnership could help shape a stronger, more connected UK innovation economy for years to come.

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Manchester and Cambridge bet on 'co-opetition' to take on the world

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