This YouTube video offers up a creative (of course!) visual interpretation of job culture- then and now – and describes the many ways in which the working world is continually impacted by the creative class.
Whether you’ve been in the workforce for decades or just a few years, how has the rise of the creative class influenced what you need, require, and expect of an employer and your work environment?
Richard Florida will address the economic impact of the creative class on Thursday, April 23, at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory’s Kossiakoff Center in Laurel, Maryland. The event is sponsored by the Howard County Economic Development Authority. Said Pam Klahr, president and CEO of the Howard County Chamber of Commerce:
“The chamber is delighted to present this internationally acclaimed author and innovator to our community. Working with this diverse partnership to assure that we reach all segments of the county for this unique opportunity has been exciting.”
Richard’s message is critical to Howard County as the community develops plans for Columbia’s Town Center.
How has the rise of the creative class impacted your community?
Have a good gander at this which just crossed my e-mail inbox. It’s a statement by Thomas d’Aquino, Chief Executive and President of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, in response to reported comments by United States Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano:
“I am a longstanding friend and ally of the United States, but sometimes failures in our two-way dialogue cause me to shake my head in sadness and dismay. The claim that some of the 9/11 terrorists entered the United States from Canada is, quite simply, a myth – an urban legend that began with a handful of erroneous media reports in the days following the terrorist strikes. Subsequent investigations have established conclusively that all of the hijackers entered the United States from countries other than Canada, carrying documents issued to them by the United States government. Again and again, Canadian and American authorities have sought to correct the record. It is long past time to put this particular urban legend to rest.
“Canada and the United States have a long history of close cooperation on matters of security and public safety. As Prime Minister Harper said during President Obama’s recent visit to Ottawa, ‘There is no such thing as a threat to the national security of the United States which does not represent a direct threat to this country.’ In the aftermath of 9/11, Canada strengthened its counterterrorism capacity on many fronts. The goal of both governments has been, is and should remain a border that is open for commerce but closed to terrorism.”
Ugh. As an American who lives in Canada, I can’t understand where or how in the world Napolitano would get such deeply ill-informed and disturbing comments from, but then on second thought I guess I can. By all accounts she was a good governor with a thorough understanding of the “other” U.S. border. But this kind of thing only reinforces the notion that the U.S. remains inward-looking despite the very best intentions of the Obama adminstration which needs to clean this sort of stuff up.
Tune in to hear Richard Florida’s interview on NPR’s Morning Edition. On the table for discussion – Detroit, specifically the post-automotive era. Richard offers a relatively hopeful vision of how this city might pull out of its economic misery by attracting innovative start-ups and creative people to run them. Listen to the broadcast here.
What do you think Detroit could do to improve its future?
Richard Florida will present at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show Monday, April 20, in Las Vegas.
“The broadcasting industry has a truly unique opportunity to demonstrate the transformational capacity of creativity in business,” said Florida. “I am honored and thrilled to participate in the NAB Show, and look forward to talking with attendees about how the industry can grow significantly through innovations in content creation, distribution, and interactivity.”
The NAB Show is the world’s largest electronic media show covering filmed entertainment and the development, management, and delivery of the next generation of audio, video, and filmed content across multiple platforms – from televisions, radios, and computers to phones, the big screen, and beyond.
From iPhones to flat-screens, what’s your latest favorite gadget?
Update: Richard gave the keynote address at the NAB Show following Mary Tyler Moore’s acceptance of a Lifetime Service Award. Here are a few photos:
In a recent issue of the American Interest related to The Ends of Growth, we argue that, “Our focus on economic growth is misplaced and our leaders’ conception of the U.S. economy is misplaced. No wonder were in such a mess.” Defining Prosperity suggests that both republicans and democrats have an outdated understanding of our political system. The republicans have an absence of principle and the democrats have an obsolescence of purpose.
The next America needs to have an understanding of what America is. Economic growth, or its absence, is merely an indicator on the dashboard of our ongoing national journey. The engine that propels American capitalism forward is entrepreneurship; the fuel is opportunity; the work of foundations recycles the energy of society, making progress and widespread prosperity sustainable.
This century – the global century – will rest on sustainable development in global cities driven by entrepreneurs and fueled by venture capital. However, what will make this happen is the reconstitution of wealth on a global scale the likes of which has never been seen.
Wealthy individuals from around the world will have to learn from the American model that entrepreneurship leads to wealth, wealth needs to be given back to create opportunity for the next generation. The entrepreneurship-philanthropy-opportunity cycle is the inner dynamic of American capitalism and the source of its prosperity. The strengthening of it in the global economy is our most important job today.
Workplace teams with “socially distinct” newcomers perform at a higher level than those comprised of people who have been working together for a while, or of people of similar backgrounds. This comes from research by Katie Liljenquist, reported by Sarah Boesveld in the Globe and Mail a couple weeks ago (a similar report on her research is here if you can’t access the Globe).
Newcomers are often in a position to voice disagreement and create tension, she says, which tends to lead to looking at issues in new ways or renewing focus on the task rather than “chatting about the weekend.”
In her study done with two co-authors, they asked undergraduate volunteers from fraternities and sororities who knew each other to solve mysteries in teams, with or without an outsider. Those without the outsider reported strong group cohesion and having lots of “fun” but did not solve the mysteries as fast or as well as those with an outsider. Those with the outsiders reported that their group lacked “cohesion” yet they performed better.
Liljenquist believes these results are important for managers who put people into teams. Those teams who self-report good social cohesion and spirit should perhaps be re-evaluated for their effectiveness. And, managers may wish to attempt deliberately to make teams more diverse in order to improve efficiency.
Your thoughts? Has the best work you’ve contributed to come from teams of buddies or teams of people less familiar with each other, from different backgrounds?
Want to know how Toronto stacks up on the Creativity Index? Or how Ottawa compares to D.C. and is a leading creative class? Or, say, how Hamilton compares to its peers among industrial cities? The Prosperity Institute’s research engine is cranking. And researchers Ronnie Sanders and Mike Wolfe have released a blizzard of reports on how these cities and more stack up against their U.S. and Canadian competition. Click here for lots, lots more.
Alexandra Alter of the WSJ takes a look at the activities of civic entrepreneurs and artists pushing for rebirth in parts of the industrial Midwest. There are many interesting bits in the piece, here are a few:
Last month, artists Michael Di Liberto and Sunia Boneham moved into a two-story, three-bedroom house in Cleveland’s Collinwood neighborhood, where about 220 homes out of 5,000 sit vacant and boarded up. They lined their walls with Ms. Boneham’s large, neon-hued canvases, turned a spare bedroom into a graphic-design studio and made the attic a rehearsal space for their band, Arte Povera.
The couple used to live in New York, but they were drawn to Cleveland by cheap rent and the creative possibilities of a city in transition. “It seemed real alive and cool,” said Mr. Di Liberto.
Clearly Mr. Di Liberto is not reading economic data as a sign of life.
“Artists have become the occupiers of last resort,” said Robert McNulty, president of Partners for Livable Communities, a Washington-based nonprofit organization. “The worse things get, the more creative you have to become.”
Artists and architects are buying foreclosed homes in Detroit for as little as $100. In St. Louis, artists are moving into vacant retail spaces in a shopping mall, turning stores that stood empty for more than a year into studios and event spaces for rents of $100 a month. Artspace Projects Inc., a national nonprofit development corporation, plans to create 35 live/work spaces for artists on vacant property in Hamilton, Ohio, after converting an empty car factory and an adjacent lot in Buffalo, N.Y., into 60 artists’ lofts last year.
Cleveland is emerging as a testing ground for the strategy. With the collapse of the manufacturing industry, the city’s population has plummeted to around 430,000 residents today from nearly a million in 1950. A wave of home foreclosures has accelerated the slide. The Cuyahoga County treasurer estimates that 15,000 homes sit vacant — roughly one in 10. City officials tore down 1,000 homes last year, and more than 12,000 buildings await demolition.
In neighborhoods pocked by vacancies, artists have started filling the void. Last November, Katherine Chilcote, a local painter, bought a boarded-up, bank-owned house for $5,000 in Cleveland’s Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood, where one in four family homes has gone into foreclosure in the last three years. Thieves had stolen the doors, punched out windows and ripped out all the pipes, sinks and electrical wiring. Eight cats had moved in.
The 29-year-old artist and four friends spent months ripping up moldy carpet, laying down new tiles and hardwood floors, repairing walls and stripping peeling paint. She bought the empty, weed-filled lot next door for $500. She plans to build a sculpture garden there, with large, whimsical mobiles that twist in the breeze. She’s applying for grant money from the Cleveland Foundation to turn four more vacant houses in the neighborhood into artist residences and studios.
It will be interesting to see how this all turns out for Cleveland and others, especially with the great unknowns surrounding the auto industry and the recent “glimmers of hope” that some see in the economy.
BTW, don’t forget about Richard and Charlotta’s paper “There Goes the Neighborhood.” It is an interesting piece that puts some data to this phenomenon of urban pioneers.
The H-1B’s spousal complement, the dreaded H-4 or “dependent” visa, means if he wants to stay and work in America, his brilliant, cheerful and pregnant wife Samvita Padukone, 27, would be chained at home by work restrictions. “The H-4 is out,” he says, sitting next to Padukone in their Toronto home. “Because there’s no way that I would be comfortable – I mean, I don’t have the right, to tell my wife `You have to sit at home and be barefoot and pregnant.’ No one has the right to tell anyone that, let alone someone who studied in Singapore on scholarship.” …
The couple’s situation isn’t unique. Mavinkurve, who works on digital mapping and was recently promoted to head a team at Google’s California headquarters, says he is one of several Google employees stationed in Canada because of American visa restrictions. Noting that Alberta has targeted H-1B holders, he says “Canada is already showing signs of capitalizing on America’s misguided `walls.’” …
“It’s hard for me to know what `from’ means. I was born in Bombay and I have a lot of family there. But I grew up in Saudi Arabia, because that’s where my dad was working for a long time. And then at the age of 14 I went to America,” he says. “The baby will just, kind of, be born whenever, wherever we are.” Living here and working for a company in California presents its own, uniquely modern challenges” …
This past Saturday we went to a party in Miami hosted by a young gay couple who are planning on having a family – one’s a Canadian with long experience in financing sustainable investments in emerging economies, the other an American with strong ties to Miami. They’re looking at houses in Toronto – because it’s a great place to raise a family and because of the economic crisis.
Crises are times when the relative positions of nations and cities can, and frequently do, change quickly. The closing of European economies during the late 20s and 30s causes a massive movement of top scientific, entrepreneurial, and creative talent to the United States. I’m not saying anything like that will happen to the U.S. But when it comes to top talent, the margin can really matter. If talented people or their spouses face obstacles to working and living in the U.S., they will go elsewhere: some will return home, some may go to Canada. Enterprising companies will open up facilities where needed to attract this talent. Over time, these sorts of places can develop a self-reinforcing cycle of growth, developing greater abilities to attract talent.
