PlaceMax: A New Pathway for Regions Ready to Shape the Future of Innovation

Across the UK, regions are working to strengthen their economies, attract investment, and create better opportunities for local communities. Many areas hold strong potential, with entrepreneurial talent, sector strengths, and committed public sector teams. Yet the path from potential to performance is rarely straightforward. Budgets remain tight. Expectations continue to rise. National policy has sharpened its focus on innovation-led growth, and regions are being asked to demonstrate clearer plans, stronger evidence, and more coordinated ecosystems.

PlaceMax has been created for this moment. Developed by Urban Foresight and CodeBase, it offers a new way for regions to identify their strengths, understand their barriers, and build an investible roadmap for long term growth. It brings together strategic insight, practical delivery, and a deep commitment to widening participation in innovation. The launch of PlaceMax signals a shift toward models that help regions take action with confidence and prove their readiness to government, industry, and investors.

‍

A Changing Economic Landscape and a Clearer Call to Action

Local economies are navigating a period of profound change. The last decade has reshaped labour markets, supply chains, and public finances, leaving public sector teams under sustained pressure to deliver more with fewer resources. At the same time, national strategies across the UK have placed innovation led, place based development at the centre of economic transformation. Regions are being asked not only to act, but to prove that their actions are coordinated, investible, and capable of delivering long term value.

In this context, collaboration is no longer optional. No single organisation can build a resilient innovation ecosystem alone. Strong outcomes increasingly depend on partners working together across local government, enterprise agencies, universities, industry, investors, and delivery organisations. When expertise, networks, and infrastructure are aligned, regions can unlock greater impact without duplicating effort or stretching limited budgets further.

PlaceMax has been shaped around this reality. It provides a framework that helps regions bring partners around the same table, align priorities, and focus collective effort where it matters most. By creating a shared understanding of regional strengths and systemic gaps, it allows organisations to contribute their capabilities in a coordinated way, rather than operating in parallel.

Placemax is a call for ecosystem partners to collaborate and deliver meaningful, inclusive growth. CodeBase and Urban Foresight invite partners who are already working to support founders, skills, and innovation to collaborate, combining insight, delivery capacity, and ambition. Together, we can help regions build stronger cases for investment, accelerate progress, and ensure innovation delivers benefits that are widely felt.

‍

A Framework That Turns Insight Into Action

PlaceMax is structured around a four stage pathway that helps regions approach innovation systems with clarity and a shared sense of purpose. Each stage is distinct, yet they work together to build solid foundations for sustainable and inclusive growth:

Diagnose Phase: Establishes a firm understanding of a region’s current assets and challenges. Through data analysis and structured assessment, regions gain visibility on clusters, skills, infrastructure, and sector strengths. This step helps local leaders define their highest achievable potential and build alignment around what is realistic and ambitious.

Design Phase: brings partners together to shape a practical plan for action. Collaborative workshops and strategy sprints create a shared vision for growth and identify the interventions most likely to produce measurable impact. The aim is to build a plan that is grounded in evidence and aligned with national priorities in a way that strengthens funding readiness.

Deliver Phase: Activates proven programmes that support founders, strengthen corporate innovation, and drive industry led progress. This includes support for early stage founders validating ideas and preparing for investment, guidance for startups seeking first customers, and structured corporate innovation programmes that help established organisations work with new technologies and new ventures. Industry specific venture builders allow regions to stimulate startup creation within high potential sectors such as climate and green industry.

Demonstrate Phase: Ensures regions can measure and communicate impact. PlaceMax provides evaluation models, dashboards, and narrative reporting that help places to evidence economic progress and understand where further intervention is needed. This strengthens accountability and provides investors and governments with confidence in a region’s capability and direction.

‍

A Partnership of Proven Expertise

PlaceMax draws strength from the experience of its founding partners. Urban Foresight is one of the UK’s leading place-based innovation consultancies, with a track record of delivering projects that have shaped economic development strategies and secured major funding for transformative initiatives. Their work helps regions translate ambition into practical and investible plans.

CodeBase is the UK's leading growth platform for tech ecosystems, working with founders, corporates, universities, and governments to support innovation and drive economic growth. Our programmes include national scale founder support, corporate innovation pathways, and industry partnerships that connect emerging technologies with real world challenges. Together, with Urban Foresight the aim is to offer a blend of strategic insight and operational capacity that is rare within the landscape of regional innovation support.

This partnership gives PlaceMax a unique position. It allows regions to combine high level strategy with on the ground delivery. It ensures that plans do not remain theoretical. Instead, they progress into real activity that accelerates startups, strengthens supply chains, and builds local capability.

‍

Building Skills and Preparing People for Future Industries

Innovation ecosystems rely on strong talent pipelines. Without the right skills, even the best strategies struggle to gain momentum. PlaceMax brings practical skills programmes into its offer through the expansion of digital training led by CodeBase’s new CodeClan offering. These pathways support both individuals and organisations as they adapt to a digital and AI driven economy.

The No Code pathway empowers entrepreneurs and SMEs to create digital tools without traditional programming. The Agentic AI pathway prepares teams to work with AI products and AI assisted processes in responsible and productive ways. Software development programmes build deeper technical capability within regional workforces. By integrating skills development directly into the wider ecosystem approach, PlaceMax ensures innovation is not limited to a small group but remains accessible to people across local communities.

This combination of skills, startups, and strategy strengthens the roots of regional innovation. It helps organisations adopt new technology, supports workers transitioning into digital roles, and builds long term resilience within local economies.

‍

Connect With the PlaceMax

Regions that want to understand their innovation potential, develop targeted interventions for inclusive growth, and build an investible roadmap for delivery can begin that conversation through PlaceMax. The team welcomes discussions with local authorities, investors, universities, corporates, and civic partners who share the ambition to create stronger and more resilient economies.

‍

Download Placemax proposal please click here.

‍