They’re the elite of Silicon Valley but they don’t live in Palo Alto. They’re expats at home for the first time in years, looking for new opportunities. Their employers no longer care where they work.

These are the digital nomads of COVID. People who can choose to work anywhere they want, and who are driving a reverse brain drain unlike anything seen before.

A recent survey from professional global network Advance found of the hundreds and thousands of Australians returning home in the wake of the pandemic, 15% were building their own business, and 12% were working remotely for the same company they were with abroad.

“Suddenly someone who was planning a high-growth startup is choosing to do it from their own country – this wouldn’t have happened without COVID forcing them home,” says Dawson.

Talent coming home

The once-hub for global startups, Silicon Valley was already having a bit of an exodus with workers moving to other parts of the US for weather, housing or tax reasons. And while California is still heavy with big tech, the question is where, or perhaps if, the next wave of entrepreneurs will group together.

A survey from US venture firm Initialized found post-COVID, 42% of startup owners thought ‘distributed or remote’ would be the most beneficial place to start a company, well ahead of second-comer the San Francisco Bay Area at 28.4%.

Dawson says the globalization of innovation was already underway well before the pandemic hit.

“In the first instance these are people who have formed connections overseas, now coming home and re-establishing networks.

“Some of them will then stay here having now been able to draw on their international networks and some will then go back overseas having reignited their home networks.

“In all of these cases it’s actually a net benefit.”

Examples include former Uber executive and now angel investor Chris Saad who returned to Australia in 2017, and now runs his business from home in Brisbane; and Alisdair Faulkner who returned to Australia after selling his company in the US in 2018 and is now working on his next venture based in Sydney.

Connecting local to global

Post COVID there has been an explosion in traditional workers becoming digital nomads – working remotely and traveling at the same time.

In the US, a study by workforce solutions firm MPO Partners found an increase of almost 50% from 2019. In 2020 some 10.9 million Americans described themselves as digital nomads. Much of the growth has been among traditional workers, taking advantage of the freedom many independent workers had before COVID.

Source: MBO Partners Digital Nomad Report 2020

For government policymakers, leveraging this highly connected, educated and mobile workforce to help grow the economy should be a priority.

Greece, for example, has offered a 50% income tax break to lure digital nomads.

A report from CSIRO on opportunities for Australia to leverage science and technology as part of its economic recovery found digital innovation would deliver an additional A$315 billion in Gross Value Added over the next decade “if Australia catches up to global leaders”.

Dawson says the challenge for governments is to step up the support for new business formation and encourage networks or connections between those returning home and business leaders who are already well-connected in the home market.

“You’ve got these people with global networks – let’s use them to enable local to connect to global.”

As we push into 2021, we need to consider our mindset for the year.

Many people I speak to are excited about the coming year.

Each one of us responded to the shock and challenges of the extraordinary events of 2020 in our own way.

Having gone through that, we all accept the reality of coronavirus and that it isn’t going away in a hurry.

Now that we have acknowledged and adjusted to 2020’s massive changes, for most people this year will prove to be better than last year.

In fact, having been prompted to reinvent ourselves, we can see the potential for positive change, not just in the world around us, but in ourselves.

Certainly many will feel trepidation about the deep challenges that will no doubt characterize this year.

Yet we can rightfully feel excited about the possibilities ahead.

2021 will undoubtedly once again be a year of deep change. But we can far more readily see how that can be primarily positive change.

Let us be excited about the possibilities, for ourselves and the world.

And take the actions that will make that potential real.

It is important to note is that data on the number of tests taken is not always up to date and is not consistently reported, but other than for China and Iran is likely to be reasonably accurate. I didn’t include Belgium in this chart as there is no recent data on the number of tests taken.

The deaths are represented as per 10 million population and the cases as per million population so they are visually comparable on a chart, though this means you need to mentally adjust for the factor of 10. It does however show, for example, that there is more than one death per 10 cases in Italy.

Exploring the differences

One striking feature is that Germany, Austria, and to a degree Switzerland, have far lower deaths per cases than other European countries. While they have very good health systems, arguably those of France and Italy, for example, are also good.

I looked at the proportion of the populations that are over 65 to see if the southern European nations have substantially older populations. Italy has the oldest age profile of these nations, with 23% over 65, but it is 20% for Germany and 19% for Switzerland, so not dramatically different.

Another major variable is how long the pandemic has been spreading. I haven’t tried to fit that onto this chart, but you can see the dates when 100 cases were reported below:
Spain – March 3
Switzerland – March 7
Italy – February 24
Austria – March 9
Germany – March 1
France – March 1
Netherlands – March 7
Iran – February 27
US – March 3
UK – March 6
South Korea – February 21
Australia – March 10
China – January 19
Canada – March 12

France and Germany reached 100 cases on the same date, so while Italy started substantially ahead of other countries, Spain and Netherlands, for example, have come from behind.

Proportions of tests, cases, and deaths

The cases per test and deaths per case are instructive. Where cases per test are high there could be insufficient testing and thus under-reporting of cases, as in Iran and China, however it is highly concerning that this is very high for France.

Deaths per cases are of course lower where the infection has spread more recently, such as the US.

What will be interesting is to track the development of these trajectories moving forward.

There are probably better ways to visualize this data, any suggestions welcome, and please add any comments on what may be driving the differences between countries here or on social media.