How Companies Can Tap Into Talent Clusters

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 2 October 2018

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Bill Kerr, a professor at Harvard Business School, studies the increasing importance of talent clusters in our age of rapid technological advances. He argues that while talent and industries have always had a tendency to cluster, today's trend towards San Francisco, Boston, London and a handful of other cities is different. Companies need to react and tap into those talent pools, but moving the company to one isn't always an option. Kerr talks about the three main ways companies can access talent. He's the author of the HBR article "Navigating Talent Hot Spots," as well as the book "The Gift of Global Talent: How Migration Shapes Business, Economy & Society."

Transcript

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0:00.0	Looking for a good book? Pick up your next business read during HBR Cyber Monday sale.
0:06.0	Head to store.HBR.org and use promo code cyber23 to save big on HBR books, tools, curated collections and more. That's store.
0:16.6	HBR.org. Happy shopping. Welcome to the HBR IDA cast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Kurt Nickish. In 1974 General Electric left New York City.
0:49.8	It was part of a wave of big U.S. companies moving to the suburbs with our office parks and
0:55.6	country clubs. But today that trend is reversing. In 2016, GE moved its
1:01.4	headquarters from Fairfield Connecticut to the Boston Waterfront.
1:05.4	The company said it wanted access to the, quote, technologically fluent workforce.
1:10.3	Magic words for Boston's mayor, Marty Walsh.
1:13.5	GE recognizes the innovation in our city, the educational institutions in our city,
1:18.5	the diversity of our city, the people in our city.
1:21.0	We're excited about this.
1:22.0	GE is one of many companies moving recently to tech centers like Silicon Valley, London, and Shanghai.
1:29.0	These companies want to be right next to startup incubators, research universities, and co-working spaces.
1:35.0	Brent Grinnah, the CEO of a Boston startup, says that's where the talent is today.
1:41.0	People want to do the same thing. We want to work near where we live and where we live is
1:45.1	different and where we work is catching up. This trend poses big questions for companies.
1:50.5	Moving your headquarters is really expensive.
1:54.0	But there are other ways to access these talent clusters
1:56.7	and here to sort through the options facing senior leaders
1:59.6	is Bill Kerr.
2:01.2	He's a professor at Harvard Business School and the author of the
2:04.0	HBO article Navigating Talent Hot Spots. Bill, thanks for coming on the show.
	...

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