Invest 2035: 8 high-value sector & subsector mapping guide
Join us in defining the UK’s high-value sectors and creating a shared evidence base for all national and local organisations involved in Invest 2035 industrial strategy. In collaboration with The Productivity Institute, we’ve mapped the relevant SIC and RTIC codes for the 8 key sectors. Download, review, and share your feedback.
Industrial Strategy Sector Mapping Guide
The Data City’s Industrial Strategy Sector Mapping Guide provides a detailed framework and list of SIC & RTIC codes for defining and measuring the 8 high-value sectors using our RTIC-driven approach. Here’s what you’ll find inside:
- Proposed sector definitions, mapped with RTICs and SICs.
- Methodology insights, developed with The Productivity Institute.
- How RTICs provide real-time, granular insights, enabling better tracking of emerging sectors.
- How RTICs and SICs work together to create a comprehensive, evidence-based framework.
Our approach is designed to support better decision-making, targeted policy interventions, and increased investment by providing a real-time, evidence-based view of the UK economy. Our aim is to establish a shared evidence base across all national and local organisations involved in this ambitious strategy.
Why it matters: establishing a shared evidence base
Historically, the absence of reliable industrial classifications for frontier economy sectors has led to a less-than-ideal approach to evidence gathering for place making and industrial strategy.
Regions bidding for central funding must map sectors independently, often using different definitions, making comparisons difficult. This pressures regions to claim leadership in multiple sectors rather than focusing on genuine strengths. We aim to help national and local government, academia, and industry adopt a more consistent and efficient approach.
The problem? The lack of shared definitions for frontier economy sectors, such as Advanced Manufacturing and AI, has led to a fragmented and inefficient sector mapping process:
- Each sector is mapped multiple times, wasting significant resources.
- Inconsistent taxonomies and methodologies produce widely varying results.
- Without a shared understanding, national and local government struggle to identify and support genuine sector clusters.
- Measuring the impact of funding and interventions becomes difficult.
- Regions feel pressured to bid for everything, rather than specialising in their real areas of strength.
A shared, real-time evidence base can solve these challenges, ensuring funding and policy decisions are based on consistent, accurate, and actionable data.
Download our Industrial Strategy mapping guide
Download the Industrial Strategy Sector Mapping Guide to explore our detailed framework and lists of SIC and RTIC codes for defining and measuring the 8 high-value sectors identified in the UK’s Industrial Strategy Green Paper. The guide comes with a supporting spreadsheet.
The challenge with traditional sector mapping
Without accurate sector definitions and reliable data, policymakers, businesses, and researchers risk working from inconsistent or incomplete information, making it harder to support emerging industries and drive investment.
For decades, Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes have been used to measure UK industry. However, these outdated and often vague classifications pose significant challenges, especially in today’s fast-evolving economy. SIC codes alone cannot support the needs of a modern industrial strategy.
Following the release of Invest 2035: The UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy green paper, we have been working with our clients to develop an early view of the scale and distribution of these key sectors. To ensure accurate, real-time sector mapping, we aim to collaborate with government and industry to address three critical questions raised in the strategy:
- How should the UK government identify the most important subsectors for delivering our objectives?
- How should the UK government account for emerging sectors and technologies for which conventional data sources are less appropriate?
- How should the UK government incorporate foundational sectors and value chains into this analysis?
(Excerpt from Invest 2035: The UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy)
Our free guide provides an early framework for answering these questions, helping stakeholders build a shared understanding of the eight high-value sectors and establish a consistent evidence base using a combination of real-time classifications and traditional SICs.
Collaborate with us
We’re inviting feedback from all stakeholders, policymakers, businesses, investors, and researchers, to help refine and improve our approach. We want to know:
- Do you agree with our RTIC and SIC code selections?
- Are there additional subsectors or RTICs we should consider mapping?
- Who else should we seek input from?
Once we have gathered feedback we will publish V2 which we hope will represent a national consensus on the correct SIC & RTIC codes that define the 8 High-value sectors and subsectors highlighted in the Invest 2035 green paper.
If you have time please fill in our feedback survey or if you would like to discuss our work further, please contact us at [email protected]
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