Central perks

IT WAS Mr Forte the hotelier who reputedly first coined the mantra 'Location, location, location'. But it is a maxim which Mark Dixon, recently voted Britain's second most successful entrepreneur, has done well to heed.

Realising in the late 1980s that property would be the final bastion to fall in the IT-driven revolution, he invented the business centre, in which companies can rent everything from workstations to conference rooms to showers.

Eight years later, the growth of his company Regus has been so phenomenal that he is now opening two centres a week, as well as bases all over Eastern Europe and in Russia. He is also responsible for Europe's largest business centre which open in Slough at the end of this month. Asia and Silicon Valley are next on the list.

"Property has never been attacked properly, but it's being attacked now by companies like Regus, trying to convert an immovable object into something that starts to work for the customer," says Mr Dixon, 38, who set up his first business, Dial-a-Snack, at the age of 16.

His strategy for business centres developed after he had sold his first successful enterprise, making hamburger buns, for pounds 800,000. Back then, he had already seen the way the employment marketplace would develop, moulded by the forces of technology, social and environmental pressures, and globalisation.

He explains: "In the business world of tomorrow, no company, or very few companies, will own property, run property or have anything to do with property. It won't be on their balance sheets; it won't be part of their business. They will just contract or buy it from people like us, like you'd go to the supermarket and take something off a shelf.

"Property isn't working at the moment; not for the user, for whom it's expensive and inefficient and not a core business; and not for the investor, who gets very low yield. If you make it work for the user, they will pay more for it."

The technology is there to facilitate the virtual office: he points to plasma screens and voice-activated video-conferencing which, he predicts, will revolutionise the way business is the future. "You'll have all your data in one place instead of carrying it round. You just have a password or a PIN number. You won't see people lugging round their laptops any more."

Listening to the customer is vital, he claims, when it comes to property. "It's normal to book a car or a hotel room. We believe that in three years it will be a normal thing to book an office. Companies want to be able to pick up the phone and say 'I want 50 workstations in Moscow'. It's as simple as that."

Ironically, Mr Dixon believes that insecurity has been his main driving force: he never went to university, and sees his career not as an achievement but a pursuance of learning. "I'm a driven person, and insecurity is a marvellous thing. My father's been on at me right up to till two years ago to get a proper job. He would have loved me to go to university, but I had other plans. It's fascinating, running a bigger and bigger business. It's about taking a concept and continually developing it in an industry that's very moribund."

Regus already boasts business centres in sites such as Canary Wharf, the International Financial Centre in the City, and the World Trade Centre in Manchester, as well as a centre in Santiago, Chile and the Lufthansa Center in Beijing, China.

Inevitably, his focus has shifted from building up the business to anticipating future trends. Phase one was to establish centres both in the UK and in difficult-to-reach places for those who wanted to set up business. He personally scoured Eastern Europe for prime sites, knowing that his services would be in demand. "If your company sends you over there, you've got to start from scratch. I had been looking at it for years, but it took me a long time to find the right buildings."

Phase two has been to build up a network of centres and establish a standard.

Mr Dixon sees phase three as setting up teleworking centres which, he hopes, will become as common a sight as village post offices once were. He relishes the challenge, and he's confident that success will tumble into his hands. "It's like a Christmas tree where all the needles are just about to fall off. Within the next five years, I believe there will be more changes in the property industry worldwide than in any other."