The North's Biggest Technology Export

Every time I hear somebody talk about the North's "brain drain", I find myself thinking that we discuss it in a very strange way.

We talk about it as though it were weather. An unfortunate fact of life. Something to be observed rather than questioned. Bright young people leave. Ambitious founders relocate. Graduates head south. That's just what happens.

But why?

Not why do people leave. People leave places for all sorts of reasons. Adventure, family, opportunity, love, boredom. That's normal.

The question I've never understood is why we've become so comfortable with the assumption that leaving is somehow the natural conclusion of ambition. Why does a talented software engineer in Leeds still get asked whether they'll move to London? Why does a founder raising capital in Sheffield eventually hear some version of the same advice? Why is success in the North so often treated as a stepping stone to success somewhere else?

This isn't really about London. London is an extraordinary city. It deserves its success. The odd thing is how thoroughly Britain has organised itself around the idea that one city should sit at the centre of almost everything.

Capital flows there. Media attention flows there. Political influence flows there. Large organisations cluster there. Over time, people begin to flow there too. Not necessarily because they want London specifically, but because that's where the routes seem to lead.

The result is a subtle but powerful message that many Northerners absorb without even noticing it.

- Stay and you've chosen a regional path.
- Leave and you're on the main stage.

You hear it in conversations about careers, investment, scaling businesses and personal success. Ambition, we're told, is limitless. It just happens to be pointing in a very particular direction. South.

What strikes me is how absurd that would sound in many other countries. Imagine telling a successful business owner in Munich that real success means moving to Berlin.

Imagine suggesting that every ambitious entrepreneur in Houston should eventually relocate to Washington. The proposition would seem ridiculous.

Yet in Britain we've spent so long living with centralisation that we barely notice it anymore.

The North does not have a shortage of ambition. It never has. What it has often lacked is the infrastructure, visibility and connectivity that make ambition easier to pursue locally. That's a very different problem. One is about people. The other is about systems.

And systems can be changed.

Perhaps that's the real challenge for the next decade (one of several). Not persuading talented people to stay. Not guilting founders into building businesses in particular places. Simply making it possible for somebody with ability, drive and a good idea to build the life they want without feeling that success requires a one-way ticket south.