From Working Group to Cyber Hub

The West Midlands Cyber Hub grew out of a shared ambition to connect the region’s cyber businesses, practitioners, universities, and public-sector partners. We look at how that community developed and the foundations it created for the next stage of regional cyber collaboration.

Contents

From Working Group to West Midlands Cyber Hub: Building the Regional Community

Regional cyber ecosystems are not created by announcing a new organisation. They develop through repeated collaboration: businesses identifying common problems, universities contributing research and skills, practitioners sharing expertise, public bodies coordinating support and people across the sector continuing to participate when there is no immediate commercial reason to do so.

The West Midlands Cyber Hub emerged from that process.

Its development can be traced through a period in which the region’s cyber community was becoming more organised, more visible and increasingly focused on the practical infrastructure needed to connect existing capability. The Hub was not intended to replace the organisations already working across cyber security, technology, business support, research and skills. Its purpose was to make those assets easier to find, connect and use.

The originating reflection, West Midlands Cyber Hub Diaries: I Went Quiet. The Work Didn’t., looked back at the work that continued as the Hub moved from concept towards an operating regional platform. Reframed institutionally, that history offers a useful account of how the West Midlands cyber community developed from a collection of relationships and working groups into something with a physical home, a programme of activity and a clearer route into the regional ecosystem.

The important story is not simply that a Hub was created. It is how collaboration became infrastructure.

Read the wider regional analysis. The West Midlands Cyber Cluster examines how the foundations established through the Hub can support a broader cyber cluster focused on economic growth, sector development and regional capability, in the companion article “From Cyber Hub to Cyber Cluster: Building the West Midlands Cyber Economy”.

Key Takeaways

• The West Midlands Cyber Hub developed from existing regional relationships and working activity rather than being created as a standalone organisation disconnected from the cyber community.
• Community consultation helped establish practical priorities around coordination, skills, SME growth, visibility and access, providing a stronger basis for the Hub than designing its programme solely from institutional assumptions.
• The opening of a physical Hub at Millennium Point in Birmingham created a focal point for activity, but the regional model depends on reaching organisations across the West Midlands rather than concentrating everything in one building.
• Events, business support, skills activity and connections between industry, academia and public organisations are valuable when they create continuing relationships and practical routes to support.
• The next stage of the Hub’s development is about converting community infrastructure into sustained capability for businesses, entrepreneurs, investors, young people and the wider regional cyber ecosystem.

The Hub Began with a Coordination Problem

The West Midlands already possessed significant cyber capability before the Hub existed.

Universities were conducting cyber-security research and educating students. Commercial providers were serving customers across the region and nationally. Public organisations were supporting cyber resilience. Technology networks were convening businesses, while practitioners were organising events, sharing expertise and building professional communities.

The problem was not the complete absence of activity.

It was fragmentation.

A business looking for cyber support might know one provider but not another programme better suited to its needs. A student could study cyber security without having a strong view of the employers operating nearby. Researchers might possess expertise relevant to industrial problems without an established route to the businesses experiencing them. Cyber companies could operate successfully from the region while having relatively limited connection with one another.

This is a common ecosystem problem.

Capability exists, but the relationships connecting it are too weak, inconsistent or dependent on individuals. Valuable activity happens, but organisations outside the immediate network struggle to discover it.

The early work that eventually contributed to the Hub was therefore as much about coordination as cyber security itself.

The objective was to make the regional system more legible: to understand who was active, where capability existed, what the community needed and which gaps could realistically be addressed through collaboration.

Working Groups Matter When They Lead to Delivery

Regional initiatives frequently begin with meetings.

That is not inherently a weakness. Bringing organisations together is necessary when responsibility and capability are distributed across universities, businesses, public bodies and community organisations.

The test is what follows.

A working group becomes valuable when discussion produces clearer priorities, relationships or activity that could not have been achieved as effectively by participants acting independently.

For the developing West Midlands cyber community, this meant moving beyond the broad proposition that “more collaboration” would be beneficial.

Collaboration needed a purpose.

Businesses needed routes into appropriate support. Cyber companies needed opportunities to connect with customers and one another. Skills initiatives needed stronger relationships with employers. Researchers needed routes into practical application, while the region as a whole needed a clearer way to communicate its cyber capability externally.

Those requirements helped move the conversation from networking towards infrastructure.

The eventual Hub model developed from that transition.

Consultation Helped Define What the Community Actually Needed

One of the most important stages in developing a regional initiative is testing whether institutional assumptions correspond with what potential users actually want.

The pre-launch consultation undertaken for the West Midlands Cyber Hub identified several recurring priorities.

Participants wanted stronger collaboration and coordination across the region. Education and the talent pipeline were important, as were SME and business growth. The community also wanted a stronger collective voice and greater visibility for West Midlands cyber activity.

Across those priorities sat a broader concern with access and engagement.

This is significant because a regional Hub can easily become something that makes sense to the organisations creating it while remaining difficult for everybody else to navigate.

A business should not need an existing relationship with the cyber community before it can obtain support. A student should not need to know the right people before discovering regional opportunities. A founder should not need to understand every innovation programme before finding the one relevant to the company.

Consultation therefore helped establish a useful design principle: the Hub needed to make the ecosystem easier to enter, not merely create another organisation within it.

That principle remains relevant as the programme develops.

A Physical Home Can Make an Invisible Network Visible

The West Midlands Cyber Hub opened at Millennium Point in Birmingham on 24 November 2025.

The physical location provided something that a network of organisations alone could not: a recognisable place around which the community could organise activity.

That has practical value.

Digital communities can connect people efficiently, but physical environments create different forms of interaction. A founder can meet another business unexpectedly. Students can encounter employers outside a formal recruitment process. Researchers and practitioners can discuss problems before a funded collaboration exists. Organisations considering cyber support can have exploratory conversations without beginning with a procurement exercise.

A physical Hub can therefore reduce the formality required to enter the ecosystem.

Its value should not, however, be confused with the building itself.

The West Midlands is a large and economically diverse region. Cyber capability exists across Birmingham, Coventry, Warwickshire, the Black Country, Worcestershire, Staffordshire and elsewhere. A genuinely regional model cannot require every useful interaction to take place in central Birmingham.

The stronger model is hub-and-spoke.

Millennium Point can provide a focal point while activity, partnerships and routes to support extend across the wider geography.

The physical Hub makes the network visible. It should not define its boundaries.

The Hub Was Built Through Partnership

The development of the Hub has involved organisations with different roles across the regional ecosystem.

It was funded by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology through Innovate UK, led by the regional Cyber Tzar and supported by partners including Aston University, TechWM, the Innovation Alliance for the West Midlands, the Cyber Resilience Centre for the West Midlands and Midlands Cyber.

That partnership structure reflects the nature of the problem being addressed.

No single organisation controls the West Midlands cyber ecosystem.

Universities cannot independently create the commercial market. Cyber companies cannot provide the entire skills pipeline. Public-sector organisations cannot generate innovation through policy alone. Business networks cannot replace specialist technical capability.

The regional system becomes stronger when those roles complement one another.

Partnership also creates a requirement for clarity.

A Hub should not duplicate services that an existing organisation already delivers effectively. Its role is more useful where it connects provision, exposes gaps and helps organisations progress towards the support they need.

That distinction is important for maintaining trust within the ecosystem.

The Hub is strongest as shared infrastructure rather than as a competitor to the community it exists to support.

Early Activity Demonstrated Demand for Connection

During its first six months, the Hub supported more than 20 sector-led events involving more than 750 participants.

Participation numbers alone do not prove that an ecosystem is becoming stronger. Events can generate substantial activity without producing lasting outcomes.

They do, however, demonstrate that there is demand for places and programmes through which the community can connect.

The more important question is what those interactions enable.

An event can introduce an SME to practical cyber support. A founder may meet a potential customer or investor. A student can encounter a career path that was previously invisible. A researcher can find an industry partner. Practitioners can identify a shared problem that becomes the basis for subsequent collaboration.

The value accumulates when these connections continue beyond the event itself.

This changes how community activity should be assessed.

Attendance remains useful, but it is an input rather than the final objective. The stronger measures concern what follows: introductions, collaborations, referrals, business support, investment conversations, employment opportunities and new activity generated through the network.

The Hub’s development therefore needs to move increasingly from measuring participation towards understanding progression.

Community Is Infrastructure When Relationships Become Reusable

The word “community” can sound informal when placed alongside economic development, cyber resilience or innovation policy.

In practice, professional relationships are a form of infrastructure.

A founder who knows which investor understands cyber can move more quickly. A manufacturer that knows where to find specialist OT-security expertise faces a lower search cost when a problem emerges. A university researcher with established industry relationships has a better route towards applied collaboration. A student who encounters regional employers can make more informed career decisions.

These relationships reduce friction.

Their economic value is difficult to capture in a single metric because the benefit often appears later and elsewhere. An introduction made at one event may result in a commercial relationship months afterwards. A conversation between practitioners can develop into a collaborative programme. A business referred to the correct source of support may avoid spending money on an inappropriate service.

Regional ecosystems become more effective when these connections do not depend entirely on chance.

The Hub’s community role is therefore not peripheral to its economic purpose.

It is one of the mechanisms through which fragmented regional capability becomes usable.

SMEs Need an Accessible Front Door

For many smaller businesses, cyber security remains difficult to navigate.

National guidance is extensive, but organisations still need to determine what applies to them. The commercial provider market contains considerable expertise, but a non-specialist buyer may struggle to distinguish between different services. Public programmes and certifications can help, but businesses need to know that they exist and whether they are appropriate.

The Hub can provide an accessible entry point.

A business should be able to arrive with a problem rather than a preselected solution.

That problem might involve Cyber Essentials, customer assurance, backups, AI adoption, remote access, industrial systems, staff skills or uncertainty about where to begin. The appropriate next step could involve national guidance, a regional programme, a commercial provider, a university or another support organisation.

The Hub does not need to deliver every answer itself.

Its value lies partly in making the route towards the answer shorter.

This is especially important for SMEs because management time is limited. The cost of navigating a fragmented support landscape can be enough to postpone action altogether.

A functioning regional network reduces that cost.

Cyber Companies Need More Than Cyber Networking

The Hub also serves businesses operating within the cyber sector itself.

Cyber companies benefit from meeting one another, but a regional cyber economy cannot develop through supplier-to-supplier networking alone.

Providers ultimately need customers.

For the West Midlands, that means stronger connections between cyber companies and the wider economy: manufacturing and engineering businesses, professional-services firms, public organisations, technology companies and other sectors with significant digital dependencies.

These relationships can help cyber SMEs understand actual customer problems, validate products and build reference customers.

They can also improve the relevance of regional cyber capability.

An OT-security company learns more by understanding the operational constraints of manufacturers than by discussing industrial cyber exclusively with other security specialists. An AI-security business benefits from encountering companies deploying AI in real workflows. A cyber consultancy can refine its SME proposition by understanding why smaller organisations struggle to engage with conventional security services.

The Hub can help create these cross-sector connections.

That makes the regional cyber community economically useful rather than professionally self-contained.

Skills Need a Route into Employment

Skills have been a recurring priority throughout the development of the regional cyber ecosystem.

The West Midlands has universities, colleges, training providers and programmes capable of introducing people to cyber-security careers. The harder problem is ensuring that skills development connects with real employment demand.

Cyber is not one occupation.

Employers need technical specialists, governance and risk professionals, security architects, analysts, software engineers, salespeople, product managers and people capable of working at the boundary between cyber and particular industries.

Regional networks can make these requirements more visible.

Employers can explain where recruitment is difficult. Education providers can adapt engagement around actual demand. Students can encounter smaller regional companies that may lack the recruitment visibility of major national employers.

Young people can also encounter cyber through events and practical activity before making decisions about university or employment.

The Hub’s role is therefore not simply to promote cyber as a career.

It is to improve the connections through which interest becomes education, education becomes experience and experience becomes employment.

The Next Phase Needs to Support the Company Lifecycle

The Hub’s next phase extends beyond establishing a community and physical presence.

Plans include development as an independent not-for-profit organisation, alongside an investor and angel network, an onboarding programme for entrepreneurs and more structured support across the lifecycle of cyber SMEs.

This represents an important progression.

Early ecosystem-building activity is often necessarily broad. Events, consultation and community engagement help identify participants and create relationships.

As the network matures, support can become more targeted.

An aspiring founder needs different help from an established cyber SME. A company seeking its first customer has different requirements from one preparing for investment. A research-led spinout faces different problems from a consultancy attempting to standardise its services.

Lifecycle support recognises those differences.

The measure of success should not simply be how many businesses interact with the Hub, but whether those businesses progress towards stronger commercial positions.

That might mean incorporation, a first pilot, customer revenue, certification, investment, recruitment or entry into a new market depending on the company’s stage.

Investment Needs Relationships Before Transactions

Developing an angel and investor community around West Midlands cyber businesses is another logical extension of the Hub model.

Investment markets depend heavily on networks.

Investors need visibility of credible companies. Founders need to understand what different forms of capital are appropriate and what evidence investors expect. Both sides benefit from relationships developing before a company formally begins fundraising.

The challenge for regional businesses is not necessarily that capital exists only in London.

Capital can travel.

Relationships are less evenly distributed.

A stronger regional investor network can therefore improve access without attempting to create a closed local capital market. West Midlands companies should be capable of raising investment from regional, national and international sources.

The regional role is to make promising companies visible and help founders become investment-ready.

This also requires discipline.

Not every cyber SME should raise equity investment. Strong consultancies and service businesses can grow through customer revenue. Venture investment is appropriate where the opportunity and business model can support the growth expectations attached to that capital.

Good ecosystem support helps founders understand the distinction.

A Regional Hub Must Reach Beyond Birmingham

A physical location at Millennium Point gives the Hub visibility, but regional legitimacy depends on participation beyond the city centre.

The West Midlands contains multiple economic centres, universities, industrial clusters and business communities. Organisations should be able to benefit from the cyber ecosystem without relocating activity to Birmingham.

This requires deliberate regional engagement.

Events can move across the geography. Partnerships can connect with existing local networks rather than attempting to replace them. Digital participation can complement physical activity, while specialist programmes can be organised around sector concentrations wherever they exist.

The hub-and-spoke principle is therefore operational rather than rhetorical.

The central Hub should increase the visibility and accessibility of activity across the region.

If regional organisations see the Hub only as a Birmingham venue, an important part of the original coordination problem will remain unresolved.

From Activity to Outcomes

The transition from working group to operating Hub changes the standard against which progress should be judged.

During formation, meetings held, partners engaged and events delivered provide evidence that momentum exists.

As the Hub matures, outcomes become more important.

Are SMEs finding appropriate cyber support more easily? Are cyber companies meeting customers and progressing commercially? Are entrepreneurs moving from ideas towards sustainable businesses? Are investors seeing stronger opportunities? Are students and young people finding routes into regional employment? Are universities developing more effective relationships with industry?

Not every outcome can be attributed solely to the Hub.

That is inherent in ecosystem development. The Hub’s purpose is often to enable activity delivered by other organisations rather than own every result directly.

Evaluation therefore needs to recognise contribution as well as attribution.

A useful regional platform succeeds when the organisations around it become more effective because connections are easier to make.

Building the Hub Means Building the Network

The development of the West Midlands Cyber Hub demonstrates how regional capability can move from informal relationships towards more durable infrastructure.

The working groups and community conversations mattered because they helped identify shared priorities. Consultation mattered because it tested those priorities against the needs of potential users. Millennium Point matters because it gives the community a visible home. Events matter when they create relationships that continue afterwards.

The next stage is more demanding.

The Hub needs to convert connectivity into progression: helping businesses find support, cyber SMEs reach customers and investment, researchers connect with practical problems, and people develop routes into cyber careers.

That work cannot be delivered by one organisation acting alone.

The West Midlands already contains much of the capability required. The continuing task is to connect it well enough that businesses and individuals can actually use it.

That was the problem from which the Hub emerged, and it remains the strongest test of what the Hub should become.