I was looking up a reference to 37 signals approach to software and couldn’t resist looking at their entire portfolio of products. One product that I noticed is the 37signals Job Board.

Look at the jobs listed.

Now notice where the jobs are located.

Now think about where they are NOT located: the South East. Why is that?

I use this type of business intelligence when thinking about hiring actions. I also keep things like this in mind with life/career planning. Shouldn’t you?

Next, go over to the CNN/Money Magazine’s list of Best Places to Live. What do you see? Essentially the same locations.

So if you are thinking about starting a business or expanding your business, what are the implications on where you should locate your business? We like to talk about globally distributed teams, virtual teams, telework and all sorts of wishful thinking. It turns out that science is telling us that people work best in co-located teams of 5-7 people. This means you should plan on hiring locally to your office and expect the people to be local (within 20 minutes or less) of their team’s work area.

Now what does the two aforementioned lists tell you about the strategic location of your business?

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