If you asked a bunch of founders what the number one thing they look for in a startup hub is, you’d probably get a few different answers.

The one thing they’d agree on is the need for the right people. Whether that’s investors, employees, customers, or partners.

It’s one of the reasons we see founders flocking to locations like Silicon Valley, New York, and Shenzhen. But the overwhelming concentration of startups in these areas has also resulted in fierce competition for funding, customers, and an ongoing ‘war for tech talent.’

This is causing more and more founders to step back and consider new and emerging tech hubs over the traditional tech meccas.

One of the UK’s growing tech hotspots is Manchester. Flick through the first few pages of this year’s Global Startup Ecosystem Report and you’ll see Manchester climbing the ranks as an emerging startup hub. In fact, it’s one of 11 global ecosystems flaunting four or more billion-dollar companies.

Secondary cities don’t have the established ecosystems of their major city pals, but size isn’t everything. In Manchester, the startup community is smaller, but more easily penetrable. Living costs are lower, and everything you need is within a much smaller radius – from office space to air travel.

A circular economy of talent

The talent market is a pretty bleak place to hang out right now. There’s lots of jobs, not enough people to fill them, and a gaping digital skills gap .

Universities in Manchester continually churn out top-class graduates with a range of specialties . Research at the University of Manchester ranks as world-leading, and it’s the top institution for social and environmental impact. Plus, graduates don’t ditch once they’ve finished their studies — 51% of them stay local post-graduation . And it’s no wonder. This year Time Out Magazine named Manchester the third best city in the world .

One graduate who never left is David Leitch, cofounder of Peak . The company specializes in AI-led decision-making for business and has been named one of the top 25 midsize companies to work for.

Despite the pandemic, Peak has nearly doubled in size. Access to a steady stream of capable applicants from the local pool has made this possible.

There’s a really strong academic community here and an excellent pipeline of talent. We’ve built brilliant relationships with the universities and worked with lots of graduates. The local code camps have helped us fill our technical roles, too.

Without the eye-watering overheads, budding entrepreneurs can bring their ideas to life at a reduced cost. Meanwhile, young professionals are being priced out of larger cities with astronomical rents.

“I think people are coming for the universities, and staying because they want to build a life here,” David told me.“A lot of my uni friends felt a pull towards London once they graduated, but I’m seeing more and more of them relocate to Manchester.”

Networking that actually… works

A few months back, I found myself at a networking event in an edgy Manchester bar. It was one of those industrial places where the lighting fixtures hang over your head like you’re about to get sucked up into a UFO.

Within 10 minutes of arrival, I had been greeted by three strangers. And 20 minutes later, I was bantering with a group of writers about our undying hate for SEO.

Major city startup scenes can feel impenetrable for new founders. It’s harder to stand out in a bigger crowd, and you probably won’t get hugged by your fellow networkers, either. Smaller communities make it easier to reach the right people.

This sentiment is echoed by Andy Etches, cofounder of sports tech platform, Rezzil . Working with brands such as Adidas, Nike, and the Premier League, the company helps world-class athletes play smarter. According to Andy, being based in Manchester helped them secure local and international partnerships.

“You’ll probably meet a million more people in a big city, but how many of them will be relevant to your business?” He continued:

It’s easier for us to connect with new organizations because we’re not competing with a million other voices. The company that does our filming is a 10-minute walk away. I can walk from our office, board a plane, and arrive in Ibiza sooner than I would in London. And for half the price.

As David and the team at Peak discovered, you may not have to leave your office building for those opportunities, either. “Our first location was a coworking space, which was also home to Tech Nation. We entered the Rising Stars competition and connected with so many awesome businesses. Those early relationships still benefit us today.”

It goes without saying, you don’t become Europe’s fastest-growing tech city without funding opportunities. Back in 2018, GC Angels was set up to target the early-stage funding gap across the Greater Manchester region. It now has over 300 investors in its network and a portfolio of 33 businesses across the digital, creative, and technology industries.

A beneficiary of this continued investment in Manchester is Peak who, in September, raised a $75 million Series C funding round led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 with all their existing investors participating alongside.

Who cares about location in a post-COVID world?

Both Rezzil and Peak have flexible remote working policies. When you can start and grow a business from anywhere, it begs the question of whether location still matters. Andy shared:

Nothing will ever compare to a founder showing up in person and demonstrating their product. Being in Manchester means we can do that on a local level, and internationally. The city is so well connected that we can always be where our partners and customers need us.

Employees are lusting after that face-to-face time, too. A recent study by Accenture found that a whopping 83% of employees favor a hybrid work setup .

“People get energy working around others,” David shared. “More and more people are returning to the office. With COVID protocols in place, we’re pretty much back to full capacity.”

Peak’s office is located right in the heart of the city (close to Piccadilly, for you locals).

“From the 12th floor of our office, you can see all the way to the Peak District,” David tells me.

It’s pretty motivating when the lift doors open and you see loads of cool things happening. When we expand to the US we won’t be moving our head office. We’ll always be headquartered in Manchester.

The lure of major cities is unlikely to fade for new founders. There’s a sense of safety that comes with an established scene, where those before you have succeeded.

But with that sense of safety comes an oversaturated market, high living costs, impenetrable startup networks, and a fight for talent that might as well be called a brawl.

Manchester delivers on talent, community, and investment opportunities. Don’t be put off by the city’s size; everyone who’s there genuinely wants to be (just ask the grads). And if we’re living and working in our cities, surely we should love them outside of office hours, too.

Find out more about all the opportunities the city has to offer both founders and tech talent.

4 things I learned about innovation by working under Intuit’s Scott Cook

In the case of many technology companies, when you’re talking about the founder , it is the person who successfully brought a great new innovation to the world.

They are often the big personalities behind the corporate stories; they are visionary leaders who drove the companies through transformative steps over decades.

The only difference in Silicon Valley is that there haven’t been many iterations or generations of leaders.

The founder ’s story isn’t in the archives , and neither is the founder . Many founders are still involved with the company .

There’s a little mystique to founders and often an aura of brilliance that can make them intimidating and difficult to work with.

I brought those worries and assumptions with me when I stepped into the role of chief i nnovation officer at Intuit.

There is an aura about Scott Cook, Intuit’s founder , and a big star power in how employees think of him around our campus.

I knew that most employees saw him as the “real” chief i nnovation officer, and my challenge was figuring out how to work with him in my new role. In fact, most days I had to tell myself: Breathe, Bharath, and don’t mess it up!

I shouldn’t have been apprehensive because I knew Scott Cook in my previous roles in the company and admired him a great deal.

But looking back, I now realize that his actions contributed as much to my success as my own actions .

In very short order , he became vested in me as a mentor, a founder , and a friend .

Becoming friends with the founder

In my early days at Intuit, one of my first assignments was to travel with Scott around the world to our office in India.

My objective was simple: to shadow Scott, meet with the local teams, and uncover new opportunities.

I was there to learn from him, and I assumed to be evaluated by him. And after our first day of meetings, Scott and I sat down for a debrief.

His plan for that discussion was something that I didn’t expect at all. I was getting ready to ask Scott how I performed during the day.

Instead, Scott asked me: “How did I do in our meetings today?” It was a startling question, coming from the founder to me, the new guy, but I quickly learned that this was a hallmark of who Scott was: A down-to-earth, curious and continuous learner who was always focused on giving the best to everyone else.

It set the precedent for the rest of the trip because he showed me that he was interested in working with me, instead of evaluating my performance as a brand new leader in the company.

Today, Scott remains heavily involved in coaching me, members of my team, and many teams across the entire company.

He pushes us on the customer of the future, the unique challenges ahead, and the opportunities to create novel solutions.

He has helped me build a culture where engineers, data scientists, product, program and design leaders, are thriving as they explore opportunities for the next decade of emerging technologies.

How to innovate like a Silicon Valley founder

Over the years, I’ve observed Scott’s methods and believed that they could be useful lessons to everyone who is focused on innovation.

I initially thought that Scott’s ability to listen and seek feedback was innate to who he was.

He has an ingrained sense of humility to know what he’s doing wrong and what he could do better.

But I’ve observed enough about his leadership style through the years to learn that it took a more intentional effort on his part to get to the openness that we see in him.

Here are four key techniques that I have learned by working with Scott over the years that work well to fuel innovation .

1. Listen with discipline

It seems simple, and yet it can be the toughest roadblock to overcome. Most people come into a room to listen to the founder, not to have the founder listen to them. But Scott listens.

He listens patiently, taking copious, detailed notes. By doing this, he rarely interrupts the team’s train of thought and he organizes his thinking to help a team see a broader perspective. And provides his thoughts and comments only after he has fully heard from everyone in the room.

By speaking toward the end, Scott creates a forum for a fully open discussion. Needless to say that I have fully adopted this technique!

2. Teach methods, not tactics

Scott has taught me the importance of creating and teaching methodologies, not tactics.

Methods teach your employees how to think to solve problems, tactics tell employees to implement solutions.

For example, Scott has led our organization to embrace a design-thinking model that we call Design for Delight that starts with an outside-in approach on understanding problems and brainstorming multiple solutions. This method is incorporated in our new hire onboarding, our internal workshops and even through trained “innovation catalysts” who teach the methodology to others.

3. Keep innovation teams small

As I settled in at Intuit in my early days, my charter was to create new products for new global markets.

I decided that I needed a team of 6 people to start each new product initiative – a very small ask. With my proposal in hand, I went to Scott and the CEO and asked to create two new product teams.

As I described above, Scott listened, nodded, and then said: “Yes…and I think, to get started, you should work in teams half the size of what you’ve proposed – start with 3 members for each new product.”

He thought smaller teams would move nimbly, lean on each other more and collaborate more effectively. It would force us to keep the problem we are solving uncomfortably narrow.

He was right, and it became a model that still serves us well today.

4. Fall in love the problem, not the solution

One of the things that Scott is probably best-known for at Intuit is his appreciation for our customers and their problems.

We call ourselves customer-obsessed, and Scott models that.

Stories of how Scott followed customers to their homes and watched them interact with our product are an important part of our history.

He believed that customers engage differently with a product when they’re in the comfort of their own environment as opposed to a focus group, and we should bring those insights with us back to the office.

We’ve learned to “fall in love with the problem,” instead of the specific solution. This approach leads to us pivot on our solution as we learn more as we iterate the solution with our customers .

Even today, our 9,000+ person company still conducts follow-me-homes in all aspects of the business.

And in fact, it’s the insights on the problem that fuels the design for delight methodology that we use throughout the company .

I know that I have benefited immensely from Scott’s mentoring. And, he’ s taken his innate curiosity and turned it into a coachable process that has helped hundreds innovate successfully at our company .

And yes, there is still a little aura when he walks the campus. And our employees are anxious to sit in a room with him as much as they yearn to collaborate with him.

He has found a way to nurture innovation and has created a culture of innovation that has thrived at Intuit for more than 35 years.

And I think we’ve all learned that innovation is not reserved for a sudden stroke of brilliance, but rather can be harnessed, fostered and taught.

And maybe that’s the real creative genius of our founder, Scott Cook.

Returning to the office: How to let people connect safely

So you like our media brand Growth Quarters? You should join our Growth Quarters event track at TNW2020 , where you’ll hear how the most successful founders kickstarted and grew their companies.

Companies around the world are debating how and when to return to the office. Health and safety has taken on a whole new significance in the era of coronavirus. To bring people back safely, the options for office redesign are bewildering. How should desks be arranged to enable social distancing alongside the benefits of being in the same room? And do people need to return for five days a week?

Many companies are looking to have some employees work from home, some of the time. But unless careful thinking goes into this, companies run the risk of getting stuck in the middle, achieving neither the benefits of the traditional office nor the safety conferred by the home.

Consider, for instance, the 6 Feet Office . This concept, developed by a commercial real estate multinational, Cushman and Wakefield, aims to ensure that employees remain six feet apart at all times. It is achieved by spacing desks, creating one-way people circulation, and including visual signs in the carpeting around each desk so as to nudge people to keep their distance.

This idea runs the risk of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. As architecture scholar Kerstin Sailer has noted , its combination of distanced furniture, nudges, and warnings can also stigmatize social interaction, pushing all communication online, even in the office. If that is the case, why not just work from home?

Companies need to incorporate an essential lesson from the COVID-19 lockdown: Zoom works surprisingly well. But there are also lots of benefits to informal interaction – something a prearranged video call cannot replicate. In light of this, we propose a hybrid system of the best of both worlds. If fewer people are coming in to maintain social distancing, it is best to have all teams represented. And the office layout must facilitate connections between people rather than keeping them apart.

Planned vs unplanned communication

There’s an important distinction between planned and unplanned communication at work. Unplanned communication typically takes place via serendipitous encounters and, importantly, involves conversations across teams. Here proximity is needed.

This is because different teams are typically not part of the same reporting line, and so communication depends on unplanned engagements like overhearing each other talk or chance encounters in the corridor. This can have real business benefits. As one of us has documented in our recent book , unplanned social interaction across nearby desks in a Wall Street trading floor improved the use of financial models.

In the case of planned communication, remote conferencing technology has made proximity less important. The reason is that within-team communication typically happens on a planned and routine basis, so all it needs is a digital platform.

This message came out clearly from a panel event we organized at the LSE’s Systemic Risk Centre . Charles Bristow, global head of rates trading at investment bank JP Morgan, and one of the panelists, explained that “a team of people trading together on a single product are getting incoming inquiries through the same channels” and “use the same tools”. For that reason, communicating remotely is incredibly easy and can even be more efficient.

So physical proximity is primarily needed for unplanned communication. It means remote working can continue at little cost to planned communication. And it potentially means that if companies want to bring limited numbers of people back to the office, they should focus on having at least one member from every team. This will enable cross-team communication, which relies on physical proximity.

Keeping everyone engaged

Another important element of office design to take into account is the extent that it facilitates employee engagement – whether people leave their desks to come into face-to-face contact. This is important for building better relationships between colleagues and company culture.

To facilitate this, the focus on social distancing must distinguish between distance and accessibility. While distance reduces the extent that people can engage with each other and collaborate, research in architecture shows that ease of access and facilitating movement can partly compensate for distance.

As Sailer has established , in a house where every room is accessible to every other room via a door, connection is far easier than in one where you can only access a given room from the adjoining one. The same degree of distancing between people, in other words, can lead to vastly different levels of engagement.

To achieve this connectivity (while maintaining social distance), companies can leverage the staggered return of employees to remove some desks and create a corridor around the periphery of their open plan offices, giving employees the chance to easily access each other. Encounters and conversations can be further facilitated by nooks and corners outside such a corridor, so that employees can have quick one-on-ones without blocking circulation.

The return to the office after months of remote working gives companies a chance to make their setups more effective. They can incorporate the benefits of remote working, while ensuring people can interact and exchange ideas in a safer way than if they blindly replicated their pre-COVID work arrangements.

This article is republished from The Conversation by Daniel Beunza , Associate Professor of Management, City, University of London and Derin Kent , Postdoctoral Researcher in Management, Aalto University under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .