4-6 Insights from Harvard Business School: How Global Talent Mobility can be a Driving Force for International Growth

In this episode, we have specially invited William (Bill) Kerr, D’Arbeloff Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School to talk about how global talent mobility can be a driving force for international growth. Bill will share more about the rise of talent clusters, return migration, the flow of knowledge and its impact on the economy. 

William Kerr is the D’Arbeloff Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Bill is Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Research, co-director of Harvard’s Managing the Future of Work initiative, and faculty chair of the Launching New Ventures program. Bill is a recipient of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation’s Prize Medal for Distinguished Research in Entrepreneurship and Harvard's Distinction in Teaching award. His recent book is The Gift of Global Talent: How Migration Shapes Business, Economy & Society.

Kate Rothwell has been an accomplished global mobility professional for more than 25 years. She joined Sirva in 2011 as Director, Global Account Management, bringing experience in account management, operations, and leadership from her roles in global mobility teams and as a service partner. 

If you have any questions or feedback, we welcome you to drop us a note at soundbites@sirva.com.

Get in touch with us: soundbites@sirva.com

Transcript

Kate Rothwell: [00:00:00] Hi, and welcome to Sirva Soundbites where we aim to connect, inform, educate, and entertain our listeners. I'm Kate Rothwell and I'm a director of Account Management at Sirva.

Kate Rothwell: And today's special guest is Bill Kerr, who is a professor at Harvard Business School. We'll be talking about how global talent mobility can be a driving force for international growth. Bill, welcome to Sirva Soundbites. Would you like to introduce yourself for our listeners please? 

Bill Kerr: Well, thank you very much for having me, and it's a pleasure to join this podcast and be able to speak some about the important topics of global talent.

Bill Kerr: As you mentioned, I'm a professor at Harvard Business School. I've also been for about eight years now, co-director of our Managing the Future of Work Project, which is looking at a bunch of the [00:01:00] topics related to the future of the workforce in a technology heavy environment and with demographic pressures and where we wanna go from there.

Bill Kerr: Beyond that for probably 25 years now, I have studied in various ways innovation and entrepreneurship, and particularly the lens of global talent and how it impacts those important dynamics in our work, in our economy, in our workforce. 

Kate Rothwell: That's an incredible story and background, and I think you're absolutely the right person to be talking to us about this topic today.

Kate Rothwell: Um, so Bill, apart from teaching, you've also authored several books. One of the most recent being The Gift of Global Talent, how Migration Shapes Business Economy. And society. I think this book really resonates with our podcast topic today in particular, given that the global workforce is one of CEO's top three priorities, I.

Kate Rothwell: Alongside growth and technology. What would [00:02:00] you say about the global race for talent? 

Bill Kerr: Well, I think it's an important race that as you highlighted, companies are already feeling and as we can kind of build up into, I think countries are. Feeling and will feel even more going forward. The book really though, starts with some basics of, let's try to put the put in place some numbers around the phenomenon of global talent.

Bill Kerr: It's, it's sometimes surprising for the first time when somebody recognizes that we know much more about the little widgets that we ship in cargo boats between countries Yeah. Than we do about the knowledge workers that are flying in the airplanes that go from place to place. Even though we're increasingly in a very knowledge centric world, and so one of the, the starting points of the book is to let's build some statistics and some, some baseline for understanding the phenomenon.

Bill Kerr: Mm-hmm. And as like an early example, the further you go up in kind of the, the talent level, the more likely global migration is. [00:03:00] So at the, you know, at the most basic level, about 2% of people that have a high school degree are moving out of their country of origin into another location. When you get to college educated workers, it's about 5%.

Bill Kerr: When you get to inventors or you get to kind of people that are building new science, you get to 10 to 15%. When you get to Nobel Prize winners, you're at above 30%. And so there's kind of this. Level at which we are constantly having some of the most talented people move to opportunities and places to, to put that to work.

Bill Kerr: And then that brings lots of implications in terms of how clusters form, how knowledge gets disseminated around the world, and how companies in particular can take a, a part of that process. 

Kate Rothwell: Mm. Hold onto that thought about inventors because we'll come onto those in a bit. But you mentioned about talent clusters, and that is one of the concepts that you cover in your book.

Kate Rothwell: And listeners will know about Silicon Valley, Hollywood, [00:04:00] Bangalore, Manila, and ultimately how having those concentrations of talent. In turn attract newcomers to the opportunities that are on offer there. There are some fantastic statistics, aren't there, bill, about the number of patents that are produced by, by those talent clusters or within the talent clusters, aren't there?

Bill Kerr: Yeah, let me go back to just the how familiar these are. I mean, we'll focus on today's talent clusters, but economists going back to Alfred Marshall a hundred years ago, were already noting that industrial activity often concentrates in certain key locations, and that provides to the firms that are there a productivity advantage and they're able to then be.

Bill Kerr: Better at their work, and there's a number of theories and pieces of evidence as to how that sort of takes root. What's become ever different though, is when we move from an industrialized economy into an economy that is more built [00:05:00] around knowledge based work, these clusters can in turn like further supercharge or, you know, be turbocharged in their nature.

Bill Kerr: And a lot of that has to do in the book, I kind of give this description of, you know, as you think about the recipe of ingredients you need to be successful in the work that you're doing. To the extent that those ingredients just become simply talented people being in close proximity, you can pack a lot more people into one location compared to an environment where, you know, you had to have a factory, you had to have a design team, you had to have a distribution network.

Bill Kerr: There was a more balanced set of ingredients. And so to the kind of statistics that you highlighted, you can look at patents and particularly around software related technology. And software is about half of patents that are being filed today globally. Six talent clusters today account for about half of those patents that are being created.

Bill Kerr: And that's a very significant kind of concentration of activity [00:06:00] that through much of the sixties, seventies, eighties, and, you know, inventive activity was being more spread out across the country in the United States. And today those concentrations are happening and it's also happening around the world in other environments as well.

Bill Kerr: Like there's the development of the Bangalore that, that you described. 

Kate Rothwell: Mm-hmm. 

Bill Kerr: And so we have an environment where it's a very spiky innovation landscape. There's places that really, really matter towards being close to the frontier. We can talk about how firms seek to participate or be a part of that, of that landscape, but it's one that all of the dynamics of global talent and the knowledge base economy are really accentuating they're making even more important going forward.

Kate Rothwell: Well, those talk of ingredients, you've got me thinking of cooking and baking, but if companies aren't physically present in those talent clusters, are there ways that they can take advantage of them? 

Bill Kerr: I think for many companies, the question is, I'd reframe it as [00:07:00] how will you be physically present? Like companies aren't required to stay exactly where they were originally located, and there's at least three broad strategies that companies take to be a part of talent clusters One isn't.

Bill Kerr: In a lot of cases, you see companies simply move their headquarters towards being in a place where they can more actively participate. Uh, this is particularly important if you are a company that's seeking to kind of be at the very frontier of technological advancements and knowledge development. And as we move into an environment where the pace of change, you know, and the technology opportunities moves so quickly, one of the consequences is your access or your ability to be close to where the new ideas are gonna form can be even more important than what you've historically done in house.

Bill Kerr: So. Typical. We used to have a lot of heavy r and d teams and companies kind of relied on this stock of knowledge that they had built up over, you know, decades. And to the [00:08:00] degree that the, the race is gonna move very, very quickly. You being very close to where those new. Concepts and ideas are emerging can be super important.

Bill Kerr: So you can see, you see some companies trying to allocate headquarters or an innovation team to one of these locations. There's a concept called an outpost or a satellite facility where you can participate a talent cluster with a small team that's in a specialized environment in the Boston area. I often point.

Bill Kerr: Companies when they're visiting towards a place called CIC. It used to be the Cambridge Innovation Center, but now it's just known by its acronym, CIC. And this is a remarkable building that has basically the equivalent of the, I think it's like the state of Pennsylvania in terms of the innovation activity and venture capital that's been done.

Bill Kerr: In one building and it's full of startup companies and as larger companies, kind of satellite facilities in close proximity. And if there's one place that if I said you wanted to put two or three people and have them try to [00:09:00] integrate themselves into the Kendall Square, Cambridge sort of technological community, that would be the starting point for doing it.

Bill Kerr: So companies can be. Thoughtful about creating some of these environments. And that's a more, again, more long term presence that they're having on the ground. The last one would be just immersions. A lot of leaders and a lot of corporate teams are taking more extended trips to the places that they need to learn more about.

Bill Kerr: And that is can be on like a one week basis in order to kind of get exposure to what are some of the leading thinkers working on in that space. And then you can kind of take that back home and ask, how do we apply that? To ourselves, to in other settings. Companies have had even like rotating headquarters where they've moved the team for a while.

Bill Kerr: Starwoods the hotel chain was famous for doing this with some of the environments that they wanted to know better for their work going forward. And so they would just take the whole team there for an extended period, maybe a month or three months and be immersive there. And then [00:10:00] that gave them an opportunity to learn on the ground what was happening.

Kate Rothwell: Some great insights there, bill, and certainly food for thought, I think for some of the corporates that will be listening to our podcast. Um, one of the things I was wondering is since the pandemic, there's certainly been a greater move towards remote working remote. Some companies are starting to mandate return to office.

Kate Rothwell: Do you think that will have an impact on this talent cluster concept? 

Bill Kerr: It's a great question and one that I will of course wanna recognize. We don't fully know what the future could look like and we made significant steps forward in terms of the digital connections across locations. That said, let me give a couple of arguments or reasons as to why, if anything, it may further reinforce the importance of consideration of talent clusters begin with the [00:11:00] recognition of.

Bill Kerr: Many of the ways that we actually use technologies, even if they would let us be scattered forever, you know, to all corners of the globe, actually reinforce the value of place in a specific place. And so the thought experiment I often give is, you know. Who do I, you know, send the most emails to? Like, or, you know, what, what address does HBS Harvard Business School send the most emails to?

Bill Kerr: And it's very clearly Harvard Business School, and I sit on the first floor of the Come Knock Center at Harvard Business School and probably the number one destination of emails from the first floor of the Come Knock Center of Harvard Business School. Is in fact the first floor of the Come Knock center of Harvard Business School, and we see this again and again.

Bill Kerr: It happens with telephone calls, same kind of phenomenon and Zoom. Most of my Zoom and teams meetings are with colleagues that I know through other environments often whom have been that proximity. And so these technologies that can make the world kind of distance free [00:12:00] also have this particular feature.

Bill Kerr: They often reinforce the value of us being in proximity at. Points in time to be able to work with us. So does it unbundle a little bit of the talent cluster where I'm more likely to be a part of it, but then I can, you know, be a away for a month or I can work from home two days a week? Yes, but it's also, most of the times we've seen this, it's reinforced the best litmus test or the best yardstick for measuring this has been real estate prices and in.

Bill Kerr: Some cases, a few of the cities are still sort of struggling to rebound their real estate prices kind of from where they were before. But in some of the most important kind of talent hotspots like the Kendall Square area around MIT, those prices tend to be extremely high and at high watermarks. So there's still a lot of value for this.

Bill Kerr: Maybe a last point just to kind of again, appreciate the, the global nature of this kind of landscape is we see these technologies as really [00:13:00] also reinforcing the value of connection across the clusters. And maybe if I had gone back to Alfred Marshall's time, which was before the, you know, the telephone was invented and, and other kinds of activities, you know, the activity that was in that industrial cluster really was focused on.

Bill Kerr: What was happening in the industrial cluster, and even by the year 2000 when I, I got became most, you know, closely connected to this phenomenon. At that point, it was already commented upon as to how much the entrepreneurs and the engineers that were in Silicon Valley were connecting to counterparts that were in Taipei or in Seoul, in other locations.

Bill Kerr: And those technologies and the degree that we make. Communication and we also make transportation easier between those environments, really strengthen not only the links across those communities, but also the importance of them to begin with. So it is kind of got this reinforcing effect on that value of the place there.

Kate Rothwell: So the [00:14:00] sense of place, the talent cluster will survive. 

Bill Kerr: Yeah. Well, an alternative, and this goes to the global talent framing. I'm not pushing readers too much towards trying to go find the book, but if you go find the book, I. There's a whole bunch of trends in there that we basically are able to really start measuring the role of global talent and the role of these clusters and so forth starting around 1975.

Bill Kerr: That's just a data feature that we have, and so I was born in 1974, roughly as old as me. So about 50 years at this point. And when you look at the trend lines, you see that they start and then they, they go up and they keep going up and they're going up and they're going up. And I often, you know, reflect upon that, that a lot has happened in the last 50 years.

Bill Kerr: So we have had, you know, the development of the personal computer, we've had the internet, we've had the great financial crisis, we've had wars, we've had. Like life has thrown a lot at that [00:15:00] curve and the curve is unbroken. It just keeps on going up and you don't even really see as many dips on there, which speaks to a more structural foundation piece that that's driving this and, and what's behind it.

Bill Kerr: Of course, you know, it could be that at some. And it will be at some point in time that's gonna taper off whether it is 2025 and what happens over the next five years. We, we'll see. I would tend to, if I had to bet, bet that the curves are gonna continue to go up a bit further. 

Kate Rothwell: Okay. And we'll certainly look forward to seeing what the next five years holds.

Kate Rothwell: Um, yeah, but certainly we, no crystal balls around here, but, but let's widen the lens a little bit and take a look at immigration policies and how they support global talent mobility. Um, regular listeners of the podcast will have heard recent Sirva Soundbites with our guest speaker, Ray Rackham, who is.

Kate Rothwell: Co-chair of Newland Chase, and he talks in depth about the impact of the H [00:16:00] one B policy on immigration. But for today, bill, perhaps we can look more broadly at the different systems that are in place. I'm thinking employer led versus country led and the way that organizations are able to mobilize their talent whilst keeping kind of within the structures of the immigration policy for that, for that particular location.

Bill Kerr: So at a, at a, at a, at least at a, at a conceptual framing, we often talk about like points-based systems versus employer driven systems. And I, I'm gonna, I, I think, try to articulate some of the, the pros and cons of each approach. But let me first recognize that no country sits exclusively in one domain, or the other systems end up being hybrids Of these two, the US is more of a employer driven system.

Bill Kerr: Canada is more of a points driven system, but they're, they're gonna have elements of each. So in a, in a, a points [00:17:00] based structure, what you're doing as you screen applicants for. The skilled or the economic visa slots, these get called different things in various countries, is you're trying to come up with some measure of, is Kate somebody that we want to have come into the country?

Bill Kerr: And we may ask you something about like how educated you are. Uh, we can, you know, your age is important to us. Do you have a lot of working life ahead or not? Uh, if you're going to Canada, do you speak French, uh, as well as also English. Uh, and this is where it also gets to be a little bit of a hybrid nature.

Bill Kerr: Do you have a job offer from a Canadian firm? So part of what you're doing from there is getting an assessment of, you know, how you look at in a candidate pool, and then it varies sort of gates in that process. People with a, a more, you know, greater number of points than some threshold kind of move on in the system and develop from there.

Bill Kerr: Again, there, there is often a link to the employer side, but there's an assessment in general about the, the point structure when [00:18:00] you go to an a more employer driven system. So if you're looking at the H one B Visa program in the us. There's really only one core requirement, which is that a company wants to hire you, and in fact, you know, if, if it's Bill Kerr, now if, if it's Bill that is seeking to migrate to the us, I can't apply for an H one B, somebody has to apply on my behalf.

Bill Kerr: It has to be Microsoft, or it has to be Proctor and Gamble. That applies on, on my behalf. And then there's some, some basic kind of like vetting about the level of this bachelor's degree has become more of the, the norm here and so forth. And I have to be paid a, what's called a prevailing wage. But beyond that, like really the, the key thing is, you know, does Microsoft want me?

Bill Kerr: And then is there an available kind of visa for that year? And we can describe, and this probably came up in the earlier podcast, there's a lottery system that gets used because there's such demand on the us. So someone, you know, you may ask like, why an employer driven system? Like what, what are some of the, the [00:19:00] potential advantages of that?

Bill Kerr: And one of the key things is that there is a, a job that's associated with it. And these stories are sometimes apocryphal, sometimes there, there's reality to it. But everyone's heard this story of the, you know, the taxi cab driver, you know, that is a nuclear physicist that maxed out the point score new French and 14 other languages.

Bill Kerr: But there really wasn't like. A need for that in CAD at the time or, or whatever country was the person was going towards. And so in this case, you have a employer saying, this is the person that we want. And there's some more than subtle advantages to that, which is in a, in, in a point structure. You could ask the question of, well, would a, would a bachelor's degree in data science be more important to us now than a PhD in chemistry?

Bill Kerr: That's a hard kind of question to ask. You know, and likewise, we don't, if we're just relying on that [00:20:00] we don't give any points for, is the person creative. Are they good at working in teams? Are they a complete jerk? And we want nothing to do with them, like, but the employer, the, the Microsoft of this world has the incentive to evaluate those pieces.

Bill Kerr: So we're, we're getting a lot of like hidden and kind of soft and tacit information that that comes from that process, which can be very good. Now, the, the analogy that I, I often use is, it's. You know, I, I mentioned my age a little bit earlier. There's a very popular band called Poison that had a song.

Bill Kerr: Every rose has its thorn, you know, and so you get thorns that come with the employer driven system. It, you know, it can be a very volatile system. So we, we don't have a particular set aside for the number of uses that we wanna have towards engineering versus accounting versus some other field. And so it gets driven a lot by.

Bill Kerr: The demand. So it's both responsive, but it can also be a very volatile structure. From that. It [00:21:00] relies a bit, this is weakening over time, but it relies a bit on a particular tie between the employer and the worker because again, to get Microsoft to invest all that. They would like to be, kind of have some certainty that once Bill does arrive in the country, he's not immediately poached by somebody else, you know, you know, that was gonna free ride on that, on that work.

Bill Kerr: And then there's also what we think of just unintended uses. Like there's a number of times where visas can get used in ways that the policy maker and, you know, maybe some general version of, of the, the, the. The proverbial social planner that we would, might have, would, would want to have towards use cases of visas.

Bill Kerr: And yet you've given affirm the choice, you know, to use it however they deem fit, you know, within the, the guidelines and, and the broad regulations. And so that can lead this to settings where a lot of controversy right now sits around the use of, of visas for outsourcing related firms. So companies that are going to ultimately be facilitating the shifting of activity [00:22:00] outside of the country.

Bill Kerr: And do we wanna have. The precious scarce fe is being used for that when you know that somebody that is an AI scientist is being denied a visa at the same time. 'cause we don't have enough of them. And so you, you know, the, uh, the lottery system is a very crude way of allocating those visas across use cases.

Kate Rothwell: Certainly a lot, a lot to, to unpack there. Bill, you, you and your family have got some experience of both of these types of immigration system, haven't you? 

Bill Kerr: Yeah, well my wife was, is an immigrant to the United States. She was born in Finland and did all of her kind of education and early work in Finland.

Bill Kerr: She first came to the US on a academic visitor exchange visa when we were, when we were dating, and, and, and we were trying to convince her to stay, you know, on this side of the Atlantic. She went through the H one B visa process, in fact. Per the typical story, the [00:23:00] Visas had run out that year. So she first went to Canada for, I believe it was about nine months while we waited for the next visa cycle to begin.

Bill Kerr: And then she went ultimately through and, and became a, a permanent resident through a family-based visa. So via marrying me and as today a US citizen. And so I think part of my reason for unpacking all that story is. It's a, it's always a, a complex weaving of the various visa policies under which any one person could be.

Bill Kerr: She had both an academic oriented visa, the classic H one B ultimately was a family based green card, and, and, and we see a lot of those kinds of twists and turns through, through the process. I think the thing I would, I would highlight is we never found that process to be what I would. Say is user friendly.

Bill Kerr: It was, it was never something that one felt like, oh my goodness, the official right now that's processing this really wants to like, make our [00:24:00] lives, you know, wonderful and easy. Like from this. But on the opposite side, and this is, is very important, like my, one of my main concerns about. You know, where the US is right now, and it's a kind of a warning for many countries is it was a, it was a certain process like, like there was a, a lot of clarity as, okay, if you do this step and you get through this hurdle on the other side, this really important thing is possible.

Bill Kerr: Like it, it's gonna be there. And what we find, you know, time and time again is that you. If you wanna think about the migration process and where, in particular talented people are choosing to invest in their schooling or where they want to invest in their early career and beyond. It's got a lot that is akin to making a big investment.

Bill Kerr: Mm-hmm. And the one thing that we know. Really, really hurts investments, whether it's, you know, picking someone to marry, whether it's opening up a chemicals plant, or whether it's buying a home. Like all these are investments, all of them. If there's uncertainty, you pause, you stop. You don't really know what to do next.[00:25:00] 

Bill Kerr: And I think a, a challenge that we are facing in the United States is, uh, there's a lot of uncertainty about policy and policy changes that happen when a, a Democrat comes into office when a Republican comes into the office. There's, there's a lot of movement around that. Yeah. That's a challenge for the US and it's also a challenge I think other countries are going to experience around this, that the more your system has some, some real clarity to it, some foundations, the more that's gonna be attractive to, to the immigrants that you're seeking to, to bring in.

Kate Rothwell: And certainly from experience attractive to the companies who are trying to mobilize their talent around the world. I, I'm not sure there. Yeah. And, 

Bill Kerr: and, and you know, if you're, if you're a policymaker too, I'd say that, that the biggest companies in the world always figure this stuff out. You know, like, it, it's, they, they have, they have locations and we're, maybe we're gonna talk some more about this.

Bill Kerr: They have locations around the world that they participate in. They have the ability, again, like my, like [00:26:00] my wife's case, the firm that she was going to join had an office in Canada. I. So like she was able to go there and start with the company. And then the, some of the bigger challenges come for people that are, and companies that are not as, as large and so don't have as much of a regular footprint in this domain.

Bill Kerr: It's the same thing with the lottery. If you know right now, you know, there's such over subscription for the H one B that we just use a simple lottery system to allocate those visas outwards. And that's a, it's a system that if you are, if you're a very. Significant company. If you're a Microsoft, you put in a number of applications, you know that you're roughly gonna get one third of 'em, you know, and you can kind of plan on that.

Bill Kerr: And if you got an extra high yield that year. Well, okay. We'll, we'll, we, we have places to put them to work. If you're a small, you know, startup company operating out of that CIC that we described earlier, you can't just load the system up with a bunch of applications and, you know, just play, you know. [00:27:00] Well, we'll roughly get one third of them, right?

Bill Kerr: Like you often tend to have much more discreet needs. You have to think more carefully about, well, what if we actually are trying to, to have, could we have two people come in this year or do we need just one? And so those systems also disadvantaged. Typically, the smaller companies that are less regular in the, in kind of the global talent process 

Kate Rothwell: and perhaps have less of the infrastructure internally to, to manage that entire process.

Kate Rothwell: Yeah. 

Bill Kerr: Yeah. And, and as you know, as, as the, the Serva and others do, like, the infrastructure is forming more broadly through companies that seek to, to aid in this environment, like, and can provide either the legal support or, you know, software to help Visa processing, or, I'm on the board of a company that does nearshore talent provision.

Bill Kerr: So there, there's a, a variety of ways that. That, that the ecosystem, because global talent is so important. Mm-hmm. [00:28:00] The ecosystem is trying to form to help in this domain. 

Kate Rothwell: All right, so just one other topic to touch on perhaps Bill, and that is about return migration, a, a different facet of this global talent conundrum.

Kate Rothwell: Um, early in my career I spent, uh, a good chunk of time working in Russia and there were some opportunities for Russian nationals to take assignments overseas at the end of their assignments, some. Wanted to stay in their new locations and localize there, but others were really intent on returning to Russia, and this obviously is going back of a similar vintage as you are V, so the late nineties, early two thousands, but their return to Russia was kind of conditional on higher reward because of their unique experience.

Kate Rothwell: And I think you see similar trends in China, India, and I'm [00:29:00] sure graduates from Harvard who are returning to their locations will face a similar kind of conundrum as well. What, what are your views on that? I. 

Bill Kerr: Well, I think the world is becoming to our earlier conversation a, a much more integrated opportunity set.

Bill Kerr: I mean, with un unfortunate fracturing that's happening also geopolitically. But in terms of the capabilities that would exist for integrating. Careers across locations. It's made significant steps forward. When I was first working in this kind of space, this was actually in, in, in practice, before I came in back into academia.

Bill Kerr: I spent a lot of time in one assignment flying between Seoul, Korea, and Silicon Valley. I. Where there was a, a, a partnership that was about a wireless data technology coming to fruition. And there were some Korean scientists that were located in, in Silicon Valley that were really pushing this technology forward.

Bill Kerr: [00:30:00] And they were partnering with the SK group in, in Korea to, to make this happen. And, and, and at that time and at that environment, you tended to see less return migration. You have people that would go on expat assignments for defined shorter periods of time, say for three years to a country and back. But there was also, if I was to have looked at the stay rates for the foreign graduates of US universities, or if we went to, I came to Harvard Business School in 2005.

Bill Kerr: I. If I looked at the graduates of our MBA program, at that time, there was almost always a presumption that you were going to stay in the United States, or you're going to stay in London, or you know, some, some place like that. And there was less return migration to to China or to India or to Africa, and similar.

Bill Kerr: And today the, that is, it's a different landscape. There's a lot more opportunity that ex exists abroad in those countries and in those environments. And in, in some cases, if you're an entrepreneur and you look [00:31:00] abroad and you see how fast India's growing you, you may wanna lean into, that's a great opportunity.

Bill Kerr: Same with Vietnam. Like there's a lot of of these things which, which are great, we want to kind of celebrate, but it also. Sort of heightens the, the, the ways that companies need to think carefully about these migration choices. And then also people are going to contemplate maybe different periods of time that they're gonna spend in one location versus another location.

Bill Kerr: And maybe it's more of a, a ping ponging back and forth, rather than a simple model where someone comes to the United States and they stay for forever. Or someone comes to the United States and they return home once, there may be a much more constant flow between them. To, to your eye notion. And I experience, I do see that there remains sometimes gaps in expectations between what the individual is anticipating to, to, to be able to command salary wise or in terms of where they're going to, you know, start their career when they go back home and [00:32:00] join the, the, the business that's in their home country versus.

Bill Kerr: What, what is often available to them in those locations. And, and that leads to some, some mismanagement or some people that are trying to think about, you know, maybe I, I can't go home right now because I really need to, you know, pay off the school debts. Mm-hmm. Or I need to, you know, I, I, it's better for me to, to wait another 10 years.

Bill Kerr: And establish myself in New York and then I'm gonna go home. 'cause then it's not only that I've done my education abroad, but I've also, you know, really developed a career experience that is going to be different and more valuable back in, in that home, home country. In, in general. I, I, it kind of goes, also links to our remote work kind of conversation.

Bill Kerr: Yep. A little bit earlier. You're just gonna have this, I think an environment where we're gonna have, whether it's how much you're in an office, or how much you're remote, how much you are paid versus not paid, and, and that. You know, the balances that exist across global companies, what's the type of [00:33:00] job arrangement?

Bill Kerr: There's gonna be just, I, I think less and less of a one size fits all and more of here's a bespoke set of attributes that sit with a, an opportunity. And how well does that align with the, the, the talented individual that you're trying to bring into your organization or, or attract? We haven't. You know, spend as much time today on, on kind of these pressures that are, you know, changing in terms of the demographic changes that countries, that particularly advanced economies are experiencing.

Bill Kerr: The very, very fast pace of technological change. And when you're sort of trying to operate in that, where those things are, are kind of colliding or overlapping. When you try to think about that specialized kind of talent set, you're often gonna try to think about how do I appeal to Kate in particular?

Bill Kerr: What is the thing that I need to activate her to be a part of my organization, and how can I bring her into my business in, in a variety of different ways to, to build from there. 

Kate Rothwell: So [00:34:00] a lot more fluidity, a lot more personalization, I guess a lot. More individual say in both their locations and the, the, the price that they will, yeah.

Kate Rothwell: Sign up for. And I think 

Bill Kerr: companies, yeah, and I think, I think the companies that are listening to this need to be aware of the stakes that are involved. You know, like the, the, the access to talent. This goes all the way back to our very first conversation about the, the race that, that some companies feel the access to talent's gonna become ever more important in the future.

Bill Kerr: And historically when we saw multinationals opening up facilities, let's say for r and d, it was about, well, what we need to do is we need to be able to customize our products for the Japanese consumer, or pass European emission standards. Or they were saying, I need to learn about this opportunity or what they're doing that's further advanced than, than what we're doing.

Bill Kerr: Increasingly, you're also [00:35:00] seeing it though. It's about I need to access the talent to make my company super successful and we're gonna create a, a talent network around the world that is going to accomplish this. We know that in those settings, you face challenges, like you have to worry about access to resources.

Bill Kerr: One of my colleagues, Raj, did a lot of great work about thinking about how the movement of talent within an organization. Really activates the resources that are provided to various, uh, parts of, of the team. You have to worry a lot about knowledge pools that form. One of the, the ambitions about being able to do these global centers is that you're gonna be able to kind of harness the best of all those worlds.

Bill Kerr: But if there's a, a pocket of knowledge that is sitting over in Dubai and is not being shared with what's going on in London, then. You're, you've lost a lot of the advantages or opportunities that sit there and there's, there's t there's tactics and there's techniques to try to, to help there, but companies need to be aware [00:36:00] that they're, that this is not, it's something that always looks great on paper, but it's like when you get down to the practice of like how you're gonna pull it off, it's important.

Bill Kerr: And kind of finally I'd say is as companies do it, they need to be respectful of. I wanna say like who they are. One of my more recent studies looked, this was done in inside the United States, but looking at different locations across the United States where companies were, were located, and you had, I mean, just say it starkly like two different types of companies.

Bill Kerr: One was a very decentralized company, meaning that most of the decision making authority and the innovation was kind of broadly spread in the organization. And then you had a very centralized company. And as you know, a centralized company would've been like, Hey, everything happens in this one building that sits, you know, like, and it's the mega center of, of the corporation.

Bill Kerr: And what you found when you looked at the facilities that these organizations were opening, these innovation facilities [00:37:00] within the United States, so just other cities that were being created, the, the, the ones that were being opened up by centralized companies tended to look a lot more like headquarters.

Bill Kerr: Then, then the companies are being opened up by the decentralized organizations. So the decentralized ones it, you know, let's say they were opening up a facility in Silicon Valley. They tended to look, you know, ethnically and in terms of their talent base, just a lot like Silicon Valley, if you looked at the ones that are very centralized, they tended to have, you know, almost equal weighting on what does.

Bill Kerr: The mothership looked like compared to the, the satellite facility, and there were many ways that this was being reinforced. The movement of, of workers between the facilities was important for this, the collaboration across teams, you know, so you'd have people at headquarters that were, were working on, on a patent with the people that were at the, the satellite facilities.

Bill Kerr: All of these kind of practices ultimately reinforced those choices that, that were being made. And that's [00:38:00] not to say that one necessarily must be good or bad, but companies really need to be thoughtful about how this is going to take root, because it really does then play out in terms of how tightly integrated is the activity that you're gonna do at the new facility gonna look like and be a part of what you've always done, or is the whole point of doing this to activate something brand new and something very different for your, for your business.

Bill Kerr: And if that's the case and you. If you're a very centralized business, you better be very careful as to how much you seed yourself into that new environment. 

Kate Rothwell: Well, bill, you've given us so much to think about, but before I let you go, I'd like to ask you to share a top tip, please. What would you have for our listeners this?

Bill Kerr: Well, I think my top tip when it comes to talent. And, and particularly global talent that we've described today always goes back to like, I'll, I'll just [00:39:00] pause and just like have the listener think about in their mind when I say global talent. Who pops into your, you know, who pops into your brain. And then I want to just make a couple of reflections.

Bill Kerr: First, the, you know, women are more likely to be. Part of the global talent today than men. Like there's more migration of women across borders than men. And second, the, the modal person is, while obviously the numbers that come out of China and out of India and so forth are big, the modal person tends to come from more of a mid-sized.

Bill Kerr: Country, like the Philippines or Saudi Arabia or, or, or similar. And so what I often kind of say is my top tip is I, I personally conjure up a woman from Saudi Arabia as the person that if I wanted to think about how, how does a policy affect this or who is the, you know, if a firm was to implement these kinds of practices, would they be.

Bill Kerr: [00:40:00] Practices that are useful and helpful in this, in this setting, trying to conjure up that more balanced and, and fuller perspective of global talent is really important for making the right decisions and choices. 

Kate Rothwell: I couldn't agree with you more. Bill, thank you. It's such a pleasure to have you on our show.

Kate Rothwell: So once again, thank you to all of our listeners to listening for listening to service sound bites. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share and be sure to come back next time. If you've got questions or comments, feel free to drop us a note at soundbites@sirva.com. Until then, this is Kate and Bill.

Kate Rothwell: Don't forget, Sirva provides everything you need to move talent and deliver experience. See you next time.