Where you live doesn’t have to matter…

24 years ago, I was 16 years old, unemployed and living in a poor community in Manchester.

My parents couldn’t afford to send me to college so I had to try and find work which wasn’t easy in a place of high unemployment and lack of opportunities. I imagined a career for myself in hi-tech – and still remember my careers teacher telling me to forget it because of where I was from.

Last week, 24 years later, I was invited to speak at the MBA Association of Ireland business lunch at Hillsborough Castle, Belfast, where the Queen stays on visits to Northern Ireland and where the Good Friday agreement was signed. What was it that enabled an unemployed 16-year-old to break out of unemployment and end up being invited to speak at a prestigious event for senior business leaders?

The answer, I feel, is also the solution to today’s economic crisis and the problem of high unemployment and lack of job creation on both a national and global level. The last 24 years I’ve propelled myself forward purely based on know-how and having access to the knowledge economy. And the good news about this is: it doesn’t matter where you live.

In fact, the invention of the internet solved the root problem of unemployment, namely being born in the wrong place. Genetically you’re just as good as the person with the career – it’s just that they were born near the market and you weren’t. However, with the knowledge economy and the internet you can work from anywhere in the world – with the economy irrigated to where you are.

Therefore, solving the ongoing economic crisis and the resulting lack of opportunity isn’t a political problem or one which requires a government solution. It needs smarter business – opening multiple branch offices across the UK, across the EU or across the world, rather than vertically into a single building or region. It’s about re-designing business process and using growth to target unemployment hotspots and breathing life into economic deserts.

And that’s why I speak at places like the MBA Association. It’s great to see amazing historical places such as Hillsborough Castle in Belfast and hang out with the Queen (nearly). But what matters is spreading the word about smarter business growth – to set more people free from systemic barriers to have careers they were told they could never have – just like I was told 24 years ago.