LOCATION · CLUSTERS · INFRASTRUCTURE
Where a business is located is a strategic decision, not an afterthought
Economic geography, stripped of theory, is about one practical question: does a company’s footprint help or hurt it, and would moving actually change the outcome.
Where this matters, by seat
Corporates
Deciding whether an HQ or facility location is still the right one as the business and its talent needs change.
Investors
Assessing whether a company’s location is a genuine competitive asset or simply where it happened to start.
PE operating teams
Deciding whether to consolidate footprint after an acquisition, and which site should survive.
FRAMEWORK
The location decision checklist
Proximity to talent & suppliers
Whether the people and inputs the business needs are actually nearby, or just used to be.
Infrastructure & connectivity
Whether transport and digital infrastructure support the business at its next size, not just its current one.
Cluster effects
Whether being near competitors and peers is actually an advantage here, through shared talent and knowledge spillovers, or just crowds the market.
Regional cost & policy stability
Whether the current cost and policy environment is durable enough to build a five-year plan around.
EXAMPLE
Deciding whether to relocate an engineering hub
Context. A growth-stage company’s engineering team was based in a city where it had started five years earlier, but new hiring had slowed as the local talent pool for its specific tech stack tightened.
Analysis. The location checklist showed talent availability had genuinely declined, but the existing team’s retention and productivity remained strong, and a full relocation risked losing both.
Output. Rather than relocating, the company opened a second, smaller hub in a market with deeper talent supply for new hiring, while keeping the original team and its institutional knowledge in place.
The bottom line
A location decision is rarely all-or-nothing. The checklist above usually points to a more precise fix, a second site, a shifted function, a different hiring market, rather than the blunt choice between staying put and moving everything.
The lesson. Separate what a location problem is actually about, talent, cost or infrastructure, before assuming the answer is to relocate the whole business.
