Archive for December, 2008
A new book by a team of urbanists from the London School of Economics examines how seven older industrial cities in Europe have worked to reinvent themselves. Here’s one recent summary (h/t: Karen King).
The cities – Sheffield and Belfast in the U.K., Bremen and Leipzig in Germany, Turin in Italy, Bilbao in Spain, and Saint-Etienne in France – were all industrial behemoths of the 19th century… Each of the seven subject cities used differing combinations of strong local leaders, businesses, universities and community groups, to invest in downtown neighborhoods and housing and reposition their towns for the high-tech age. Saint-Etienne’s derelict former arms factory became home to a cluster of clever new engineering companies. An advanced technology park with 6,000 new jobs helped recast Bremen as a hub for science. Crucially, the cities developed local initiatives to raise workers skills and provide access to new jobs. Mass transit systems got an upgrade, too. Saint-Etienne, for instance, laid on a new downtown tram line for locals. Officials also polished their cities’ cultural and public spaces. Local government funding in Bilbao, for one, helped transform a derelict patch of riverside into a cultural landmark, with the voluptuous-looking Guggenheim Museum at its center. The returns have been eye-catching. Unemployment dropped in all but one of the towns between 1990 and 2005. After dropping since the 1970s, the populations of five of the cities began recovering between 2000 and 2005.
Today, CEO-Read announced it’s “100 Best Business Books of All Time.” Among the top 100, The Rise of the Creative Class.
Congrats, Rich!
How has The Rise of the Creative Class shaped your area’s approach to community and economic development? Has the book changed your perspective on creativity and talent management? How? Share your stories with our team.
To learn more about the guide for the top 100, click here. The guide is set to be released in February 2009.
How many of you are startled and even a bit frightened at the lack of attention the rapidly worsening global warming crisis is receiving in the U.S. in particular? Yes, there is vague talk from the incoming U.S. President about global warming, but, in fact, the U.S. government is trying everything in its power to boost consumption and raise housing prices in an effort to reignite the housing bubble. Obama is talking about massive infrastructure programs and yet, when you examine the plans, it is largely about building highways with some money for energy conservation in government building retrofits. All of this will be done on a wave of deficit spending that is likely to pauperize the remaining U.S. middle class.
Highway building and energy conservation measures will fail to rein in global warming because hydrocarbon energy is too inexpensive in the U.S. Odd isn’t it, only six months ago, because of the price increases, the U.S. was treating energy conservation as a serious topic. Miles driven were dropping, people were demanding better mass transit, and the move back to the city was being celebrated. The price mechanism was addressing the global warming problem, though it did affect the poor disproportionately. Today, with gasoline prices down, miles driven are increasing, and once again traffic jams and the behemoth SUVs are back.
There is an obvious measure that can address our fiscal deficit and global warming – raise gas taxes, say $0.50 immediately, then after three months another $0.25, and again another $0.25 in another three months (the more one increases, the stronger the signal to consumers is). The phasing in of the increases would provide warnings to auto buyers to choose more fuel-efficient vehicles. This would be a serious response to global warming and the fiscal deficit, but there are no voices demanding such an obvious policy.
You don’t need to be a member of the Creative Class to see how disconnected from reality the policy discussions in Washington, D.C. are. No discussions of raising taxes to address an enormous and spiraling deficit. No discussions of serious policies to discourage the consumption of fossil fuels. The U.S. is today operating on what I term “crackpot optimism,” which I will discuss further in future posts.
I’ve been thinking and writing a bit about the need for a new type of housing that is flexible and rented rather than owned. This seems to fit the bill, as reported in the New York Times.
AVE complexes differ from extended-stay residences in that they offer both luxury hotel-style service and rental units, furnished and unfurnished, with condo-style amenities. A tenant can sign a lease for any time period 30 days or longer, and move in within 48 hours. Furnished units at the midrise AVE complexes — the other two New Jersey sites are Clifton and Somerset — are leased on a monthly basis, for daily rates starting at $145. … But it is the unfurnished units — leased for a minimum of six months, and ordinarily a year — that are emerging as a “hybrid” housing alternative … Set off in separate wings, and offering weekly social events for residents, in addition to the AVE concierge services, free cafe breakfast and fitness center access, they are evolving into small “neighborhoods”… On the professional side, the AVE complexes offer business centers with banks of computers, and fully wired conference rooms … The price range for such units is $2,595 to $3,330 a month, when leased on a yearly basis. A two-bedroom unit with a study goes for $3,600 a month. One-bedrooms start at $1,995 per month and go up to $2,550. By contrast, a one-bedroom furnished suite costs $145 to $165 a day, if rented for a month. For a two-bedroom two-bath suite with a direct view of the New York City skyline, the rate is $295 to $395 per day.
What a time to be in Ottawa! Just when the city dodged the bullet of the 2009 municipal budget, the city is hit with a blizzard and then a transit strike:
Sam Barr left his home near the airport at 5 a.m.
“I’ve been walking for 2½ hours to get to work now. It’s pretty tough,” Barr told CBC’s Steve Fischer after meeting him on Bank Street in the Glebe.
He was heading to the Elgin Street Diner downtown, the rendezvous point for him and his colleagues, who do electrical work.
In North America, particularly in the past 50 years, residential planning has been dominated by the concept of the suburb. A demographic that didn’t exist at the time of the first American census now represents over 50 percent of the American population in the 2000 census and is overwhelmingly where children are being reared in Canada as well – in an analysis of the 2001 Canadian census data, it was determined that 17 of the 25 fastest-growing municipalities in Canada are suburbs. Without the automobile opening up the option of living beyond the limits of mass transit, these kinds of demographics wouldn’t be possible.
As the strike lengthens and the (rather surprising) public vitriol towards labor unions grows, a city is getting to know itself by foot in a way that it hasn’t for some time. Pedestrian scale thinking is setting in and people within the region, many without cars, are being forced to re-think the way they navigate automobile-scaled environments.
This means that even moderate distance travel is now delimited by one of three things:
- Cash flow – Can I afford a cab to where I have to go and back? Can I do this every time I go out?
- Walking distance – How far is it? How long will it take to walk there?
- Network capacity – Can I get a ride from someone? Do I know someone going in that direction?
For those without the cash flow to support taxis as their primary mode of transportation, walking distance is the first option for individual movement – a position that it hasn’t enjoyed for quite some time. As I prepared myself to leave my house the other day, I also realized that I hadn’t thought about distance in those terms since I was 11 or 12. And that’s when it struck me:
This strike is to the average non-driving adult in Ottawa what life is like for any kid in the suburbs without a license. While being somewhat inconvenient, this strike also offers an opportunity to appreciate something that we might take for granted: the transportation reality of youth in an auto-scaled world.
If we find those delimiters challenging during this strike as adults, imagine the experience of a young person moving into a suburb with limited access to public transportation. Their movement is restricted exactly the way that mine is now, except compounded by parent-set boundaries, inexperience, and limited income – space is really a challenge for them.
So while it might be a bit to the left, what this transit strike really has me thinking is: how can we include the perspective of someone limited by those three things – cash flow, walking distance, and network capacity – in suburban planning practices? Not specifically for transit-strike situations like this, but overwhelmingly for kids in general?
And now, as always, some music.
A recession can be a good time to re-think corporate strategy, products, and especially R&D approaches. Indeed, what many companies want to achieve is the next breakthrough that launches the organization forward or in a new direction – a disruptive innovation.
The challenge can be to, (a) get enough people on board and (b) actually shake things up enough that change can happen.
In a recent Knowledge@Wharton article, the author highlights a presentation from Jeong Kim, President of Bell Labs at Alcatel-Lucent which describes in detail these challenges as well as how he has managed to surmount them.
The problem is that success creates a virtual construct, a paradigm of “How to Do Things,” inside of which new thinking cannot flourish. Kim calls it “The Curse of Knowledge.” Cross-discipline teaming “is one way of breaking the Curse of Knowledge,” he says. Another is “experience pairing,” or matching a senior employee with an individual who has considerably less experience, but a fresh perspective on how to solve problems.
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Kim offered a case study from Alcatel-Lucent – Lucent Technologies at the time – on how to inject a spirit of disruptive innovation into an existing and stagnant culture. Lucent’s optical networking division was severely underperforming and the company fired the unit’s top managers. “I was really convinced that the reason I was put in there was that nobody else would do it, and they needed somebody to blame,” says Kim.
The division was moribund: Financial results were disappointing and morale was low. Kim shook up the management team and took the survivors to an off-site retreat that featured whitewater rafting. “First thing they do is say, ‘Why are we doing this …?’ After a while, they get really bored.” The exercise, intended to foster teamwork and cooperation, was designed with the help of a psychologist. Instead of cooperating, the managers began splashing one another with their oars, “like little kids.”
But the exercise-psychology experiment wasn’t over at the end of the rafting run. “After six or seven hours of whitewater rafting like this, they were tired.” That evening over dinner, people let their “at-work” guardedness down and spent time learning about one another.
The next day included all the off-site strategizing and white board sessions one might expect, but Kim says the interaction was more genuine and productive than if they had met as they were previously, a grouping of near strangers. In the first quarter following that meeting, he says, the group posted revenues of $510 million, $560 million the next quarter, then $730 million, then $970 million. The point, he adds, is that “teamwork is so critical for the success of a company.”
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“You have to make an investment in capital, human knowledge and networking,” says Kim. “That’s the way to get ahead.”
A key point to remember here is that there are many ways to invest in “human knowledge and networking.” There are also many ways to “disrupt” existing norms in order to shake out a more disruptive innovation.
Workplace change could be one – having employees to sit in different places, or around different people. Another option would be introducing new employee activities (whether rafting or something else that gets people interacting and connecting to different people and in different ways).
What efforts (if any) at “disruptive innovation” are you seeing?
The Toronto Star’s Sandro Contenta provides a sneak peak of our study of future of the Ontario economy, led by Rotman School Dean Roger Martin and myself.
The $2.2-million report is expected in February. Florida and Martin say it’s too early to discuss specific recommendations. But in separate interviews, they make clear they will focus on strengthening the Toronto “mega-region,” investing massively in infrastructure, greatly expanding post-secondary education, and managing a seismic transformation that will eliminate most manufacturing jobs, but may also threaten social peace. “If we don’t do this adjustment right, if we lose social cohesion, we’ll never get it back,” says Florida, director of the Martin Prosperity Institute, affiliated with the University of Toronto.
The full story is here.
We just returned from Moscow where Richard was the keynote speaker at the Federal Agency on Youth Affairs, Government of The Russian Federation alongside other notables including Virgin’s Richard Branson, Apple guru Guy Kawaski, and best-selling author John Naisbitt. The conference focus was the role of innovation among the country’s youth, with audience members ranging in age from 14-25 years old. We enjoyed a fabulous dinner at the famed Cafe Pushkin and Kawaski was lucky enjoy to get his shoes shined by Branson. What do you think of Moscow’s Creative Class?
Richard and Rana at dinner at Cafe Pushkin with Naisbitt, Kawasaki and our hosts
Opening Keynote by Richard
Rana and Richard with conference organizer, Mikhail
One of our esteemed CCE bloggers, Nisi Berryman, is featured in the December 2008 issue of Metropolitan Home magazine, generously opening the door of her home to give us a glimpse into the creative environment in which she lives. View the piece online or download the PDF version in its entirety. Bravo, Nisi!
Tell us, how brave are you with color in your own home?