Tracking the IS-8, UK Government’s High-Growth Sectors — The Beauhurst Way
The UK Government recently launched ‘Invest 2035: the UK’s modern industrial strategy’, identifying eight high-growth sectors that will be critical to the nation’s long-term economic success.
These sectors have been selected not only for their global competitiveness but also for their potential to drive innovation, productivity, and prosperity across the country.
This will be an essential area to understand, measure, and influence over the coming decade. The majority of government support will be poured into these industries, making it essential for government clients, ranging from local authorities to national organisations, to gain a deeper understanding.
But there’s a problem — there’s no agreed-upon list of companies and fairly vague sector definitions. While the government has published some SIC code definitions, it has admitted they aren’t comprehensive. So, we decided to tackle the issue head-on and add them to our platform.
At Beauhurst, we’ve built new tools to help our users — particularly across government, academia, and economic development — track these sectors with greater clarity and confidence.
What are the IS-8 sectors?
The government’s strategy focuses on eight industries:
- Advanced Manufacturing
- Clean Energy
- Creative Industries
- Defence
- Digital and Technologies
- Financial Services
- Life Sciences
- Professional and Business Services
Why do we need to track them?
Each of these sectors plays a vital role in shaping the UK’s future economy. These industries are already attracting increased investment, targeted government support, and policy interventions.
For local authorities, national agencies, and research institutions, the ability to monitor activity in these areas is becoming a critical requirement.
We’ve consistently heard the same challenge from our users: there’s no clear way to identify the companies that actually sit within these sectors.
Many teams have been forced to build proxies — using a combination of SIC codes, keywords, and custom tagging — just to get a rough view of sector-level activity. It’s time-consuming, inconsistent, and often inaccurate.
How we’ve responded
We’ve now added all eight sectors to the Beauhurst platform, building on top of our existing market-leading company classification research and technology.
The result is a clean, scalable, and high-precision way to explore these sectors, without relying on proxies or patchy data. It means users can:
- Spot innovation and commercial clusters
- Track growth over time and by region
- Measure the impact of funding and policy
- Share a common language across teams and institutions
Learn how to use our industry classifications today
What comes next
This is just the beginning. These sectors will continue to evolve, and so will our coverage. We’re fortunate to work closely with institutions across government and academia, and we’ll be listening closely to your feedback to shape future iterations.
If you’re already a Beauhurst user, you can start exploring these sectors in Advanced Search. And if you’re working on economic strategy, industrial policy, or regional development, we’d love to hear about how you’re using the data and where we can take it next.
