It's designed to connect like-minded businesses and influential voices from across the region to collaborate, identify new partnerships and help to scale their impact — leveraging what works locally on a regional-wide level to co-create a path forward.
We have created the True North Data Explorer to demonstrate our commitment to understanding the economy of North England and where True North fits. This pioneering approach will show what we are doing and how we and others are making an impact.
The Data Explorer is high quality real-time Data Infrastructure that accesses open data pipelines created and built by Open Innovations and aggregated data relating to the economy at company level, provided under licence by The Data City.
In simple terms the data partnership with Open Innovations is a crucial commitment that demonstrates how serious we are about making True North a success.
The explorer is an open web-tool that will enable the True North network and specifically, its advisory council, to use data to explore the current situation, ask & develop the right questions and identify challenges & opportunities for action across the North.
The explorer will focus on 4 key themes which we have identified as the keys to progress across the North: People, Skills & the Future; Innovation & Change; Sustainable Growth; and Purpose & Social Impact.
We want to help the North of England win, you can read about why that is in this blog post. We know that True North is a way for North England to win, you can read about how and why we helped create this site in this blog post.
Defining what counts as "The North of England" is a contentious topic. To align with how data is published, we have used the three ITL1 statistical region boundaries of: Yorkshire and The Humber, the North East, and the North West (shown below).