Your Location Assumptions Are an Unpriced Liability
Boards review currency risk and customer concentration. Almost none review the ten-year-old perceptiondriving their biggest fixed commitment. Walk through a typical board risk register: currency exposure, hedged. Customer concentration, monitored. Cyber, audited annually. Key-person risk, succession-planned. Now find the line item for “our beliefs about where to locate operations.” It isn’t there. It never is. […]
You’re a Bigger Fish Than You Think
A 30-job project is a rounding error in a global hub -and a headline in the right location. Mid-market executives systematically misjudge one thing about international expansion: their own weight. The reflex is understandable. You benchmark yourself against giants- their headcounts, their capex, their press coverage- and conclude that your 25-job, modest-capex project is small. […]
How to Be Early to an Emerging Cluster Without Being Wrong
Momentum and marketing look identical in a brochure. Five signals that tell them apart. Every region on earth now claims to be the next big hub for something. Glossy campaigns, renderings of innovation districts, superlatives about connectivity. Some of these places are genuinely inflecting. Most are aspiring. From a brochure, you cannot tell the difference- […]
The Mid-Market Location Paradox
The firms with the most at stake per decision get the least support making it. Here’s an asymmetry nobody talks about. A global corporation opening its fortieth site has site-selection advisors on retainer, an internal real estate function, and a playbook refined across decades. If site forty underperforms, it’s a line item. Meanwhile, a 300-person […]
The Second-Mover Premium
Following your industry into a hot cluster feels safe. You inherit the costs without the advantages. There’s a comfort in arriving where your industry already is. The cluster is proven. The board nods. Nobody gets fired for choosing the established hub. But look closely at what a late arrival actually inherits. The early entrants got […]
Your First Overseas Office Is an Option Contract
A 5-person office isn’t a small decision -it’s the anchor for the 50-person operation behind it. Finance teams know how to think about options: a small premium today for the right, not the obligation, to dosomething bigger tomorrow. Curiously, almost nobody applies that thinking to the corporate decision it fits best -the first overseas office. […]
Optimal Is Fragile. Choose Robust.
The best city in your base case is often the worst in your downside one. There’s a seductive moment near the end of every location analysis: one city tops the model. The board sees awinner. The decision feels made. Be careful with that moment. A location that’s optimal is optimal for a scenario- and scenarios […]
Wage Arbitrage Decays. Productivity Compounds.
Choosing a location on today’s salary differential is buying a depreciating asset. The spreadsheet moment is familiar to every CFO: engineer salaries in Location A are 40% below Location B. The model lights up green. The decision starts writing itself. Here’s what the spreadsheet doesn’t show: that differential is a snapshot of the most perishable […]
What Investment Agencies Actually Optimize For
You’re negotiating with the other side of the table without knowing their scorecard. Most executives meet an investment promotion agency the way they’d meet a landlord: politely, cautiously,assuming the agency’s job is to sell and theirs is to resist. It’s the wrong mental model -and it costs them. Investment agencies aren’t salespeople. They’re buyers. They’re […]
Rankings Lie, Flows Don’t
“Best cities for business” lists measure reputation. Capital flows measure revealed preference. Read thesecond. Every year, the rankings arrive. Best cities for tech. Top destinations for finance. Most business-friendly states. They get shared, screenshotted, and quietly absorbed into board conversations -and they are one of the most misleading inputs a location decision can have. Here’s […]