20 locations attracting the world’s top talent

It is a truth universally acknowledged that where the talent goes, investment will most likely follow. This year’s Insead Global Talent Competitiveness Index reveals the hotspots attracting the great and the good. When it comes to deciding where to make an investment in global real estate, there are few indicators more telling than a country or city’s ability to attract talent. A factor that goes beyond boundaries and borders, a true hotspot will be able to demonstrate that it can draw skilled people from around the world. The international business school Insead’s 2019 Global Talent Competitiveness Index has revealed where the talent is flocking, and why. The report, now in its sixth year, put together by Insead, the Adecco Group and Tata Communications, covers 125 national economies and 114 individual cities. The hotspots are ranked based on six pillars – four for input and two for output. The former comprises a place’s ability to enable, attract, grow and retain talent through access to everything from education and growth opportunities to the market landscape. The two output pillars are national performances in technical/vocational and knowledge skills. Based on these criteria, Switzerland tops the rankings for the most competitive country in the world when it comes to attracting talent, followed by Singapore, the USA, Norway and then Denmark. Nordic countries and small, high-income economies fared particularly well in the rankings, as did islands such as Singapore. As for individual cities, the USA topped the league, with Washington DC coming in at number one and Boston and New York also making it into the top 10. The report focused heavily on entrepreneurs in its 2019 iteration, given the rise of start-up culture the world over. It considered the point that entrepreneurial talent “cannot be reduced to some innate quality found in successful business founders and leaders”, but rather can be supported and nurtured by cities and countries at a more macro level. The report added that cities will play “increasingly central roles as entrepreneurial talent hubs” in the future, and added that the need for cities to set up incubators and accelerators “will become more and more relevant”.