The%20Flight%20of%20the%20Creative%20Class

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The Flight of the Creative Class

• Richard Florida, New York Harper Business, 2005

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Agenda

• Creative Class Definition
• Why the Creative Class Is Important
• The Creativity Index
• Talent
• Technology
• Tolerance
• Some Comparative Figures
• Building a Creative Society

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The Creative Class Definition

• Employed in specific areas
• Science and engineering
• Architecture and design
• Arts, music entertainment
• Law, business and finance
• Health care
• Managers, professionals
• Related fields
• Once upon a time were called knowledge workers
• Now this group also includes interior decorators,
  information finders, brokers, and hairdressers.

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The Creative Class Characteristics

• 30 of American workforce
• Receive 50 of all wage and salary income
• Mobile
• Educated, but not necessarily
• Create knowledge, ideas, jobs
• Are attracted to regions and cities
• EVERYONE is creative, but not everyone is in the
  creative class.

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Why the Creative Class Is Important

• The creative sector generates 2,000,000,000,000
  in wages and salary annually
• Explains almost all the growth in jobs between
  1969 and now.
• The creative economy violates the law of
  conservation of material, which the
  materialistic economy obeys, by creating new
  material!

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When is a Job Creative?

• When it involves expert thinking
• When it involves complex communication
• Not the same as university education

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The Creativity Index
Talent
Creativity
Technology
Tolerance
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Talent

• Human capital
• Augmented by density (i.e., cities, centers,
  regions)

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Technology

• Need I say more

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Tolerance

• Explains flow of human capital
• Related to Ashbys idea of variation (Only
  variation can drive out variation) and to the
  idea of flexibility and agility
• Proactive inclusiveness
• Ottaviani and Peri A more multicultural urban
  environment makes US-born citizens more
  productive.

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Some Measures

• Talent f(creative-class, human-capital-index,
  scientific-talent-index)
• Technology f(RD-index, innovation-index)
• Tolerance f(values-index,self-expression-index)

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Talent

• creative-class-index
• Proportion of workforce engaged in creative work
  or that number plus technicians (ILO)
• human-capital-index
• Proportion of a countrys population with
  bachelors degree (1999-2001 OECD)
• scientific-talent-index
• Number of researchers per million people (UNESCO)

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Technology

• RD-index
• RD expenditures as percentage of GDP (1999-2002
  World Bank)
• Innovation-index
• Patents granted per million people (US Patent and
  Trademark Office 2001)

Notice dated info here
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Tolerance

• Values-index
• Degree to which a country espouses traditional
  as opposed to modern or secular values
• Self-expression-index
• Degree to which a nation values individual rights
  and self-expression
• Both are from World Values Survey (Ron
  Inglehart)

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The Figures Top 5
Country Creati-vity Talent Tech-nology Tolerance
Sweden 0.808 0.642 0.819 0.964
Japan 0.766 0.702 0.785 0.811
Finland 0.684 0.728 0.626 0.698
US 0.666 0.601 0.827 0.571
Switzerland 0.637 0.541 0.625 0.744
What does this mean?
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The Figures 6-10
Country Creati-vity Talent Tech-nology Tolerance
Denmark 0.613 0.597 0.385 0.858
Iceland 0.612 0.658 0.463 0.717
Netherlands 0.611 0.643 0.366 0.824
Norway 0.595 0.686 0.279 0.819
Germany 0.577 0.468 0.511 0.753
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The Figures Some More
Country (Rank) Creati-vity Talent Tech-nology Tolerance
Canada (11) 0.548 0.603 0.400 0.641
Israel (14) 0.525 0.371 0.670 0.533
UK (15) 0.517 0.567 0.327 0.657
Russian Fed(25) 0.339 0.521 0.112 0.385
China (36) 0.230 0.031 0.109 0.550
India (41) 0.177 0.085 0.137 0.309
Romania (45) 0.127 0.131 0.035 0.214
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More Interesting Countries (NAFTA, EC)
Country (Rank) Creati-vity Talent Tech-nology Tolerance
Czech Rep. (21) 0.382 0.317 0.148 0.681
Ukraine (27) 0.296 0.404 0.103 0.380
Turkey (39) 0.186 0.212 0.065 0.282
Mexico (42) 0.164 0.150 0.043 0.299
Ranges Top 0.808 Sweden 0.728 Finland 0.827 US 0.964 Sweden
Bottom 0.127 Romania 0.031 China 0.030 Georgia 0.214 Romania
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Lessons?
Can a simple set of scales capture something so
complex as creativity? Are the appropriate
indices selected? Are the measures accurate?
Valid? Reliable? What do the numbers mean in
terms of competitiveness, improvement
needed? What are the true independent variables
here?