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Connect UK is an affiliation of not-for-profit networks established across the UK that nurture and support technology and high growth companies through training, mentoring, investment showcasing, and networking between businesses, investors and the professional services community. Each regional Connect organises events, workshops, seminars and investment forums to meet the needs in their community, location and regional focus.

We are part of the wider Global CONNECT™ membership network links individuals and organizations committed to building international technology-based enterprises.

In the 90’s, as regions around the world were looking for new models of economic growth and sustainability, they came to San Diego to understand how a relatively small town with a local economy dependent on defense, tourism, and real estate transformed itself over 25 years into one of the world’s most admired technology and life sciences clusters. At the core of this transformation was a powerful base of scientific research and a group of leaders and champions who realized that in order to compete globally, they would need to collaborate locally.

The UCSD CONNECT program was pivotal in this transformation, and acted as an honest, neutral broker in facilitating critical new relationships and driving the flow of new ideas, knowledge, and partnerships among business, industry, academia, research, investors, and government. This ‘change of destiny’ inspired organizations from overseas to establish similar models that would encourage the behavior of efficient regional collaboration and thereby grow their innovation capacity. The first of these were CONNECT Scotland, and CONNECT Sweden.