The Flight of the Creative
Class
Richard Florida, New York: Harper
Business, 2005
Agenda
• Creative Class: Definition
• Why the Creative Class Is Important
• The Creativity Index
 Talent
 Technology
 Tolerance
• Some Comparative Figures
• Building a Creative Society
The Creative Class: Definition
• Employed in specific areas:
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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.
The Creative Class:
Characteristics
•
•
•
•
•
•
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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.
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!
When is a Job “Creative”?
• When it involves expert thinking
• When it involves complex
communication
• Not the same as university education
The Creativity Index
Talent
Technology
Tolerance
Creativity
Talent
• Human capital
• Augmented by density (i.e., cities, centers,
regions)
Technology
• Need I say more
Tolerance
• Explains “flow” of human capital
• Related to Ashby’s 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.”
Some Measures
• Talent = f(creative-class, human-capitalindex, scientific-talent-index)
• Technology = f(R&D-index, innovationindex)
• Tolerance = f(values-index,selfexpression-index)
Talent
• creative-class-index
 Proportion of workforce engaged in creative
work or that number plus technicians (ILO)
• human-capital-index
 Proportion of a country’s population with
bachelor’s degree (1999-2001 OECD)
• scientific-talent-index
 Number of researchers per million people
(UNESCO)
Technology
• R&D-index
 R&D 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
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)
The Figures – Top 5
Country
Creativity
Sweden
Japan
Finland
US
What
does
this
mean?
Switzerland
Talent
Technology
Tolerance
0.808 0.642
0.819
0.964
0.766 0.702
0.785
0.811
0.684 0.728
0.626
0.698
0.666 0.601
0.827
0.571
0.637 0.541
0.625
0.744
The Figures – 6-10
Country
Creativity
Denmark
Talent
Technology
Tolerance
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
The Figures – Some More
Country (Rank)
Creativity
Canada (11)
Talent
Technology
Tolerance
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
More Interesting Countries (NAFTA, EC)
Country (Rank)
Creativity
Czech Rep. (21)
Technology
Tolerance
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
0.808 0.728
0.827
0.964
Sweden
US
Sweden
0.030
0.214
Georgia
Romania
Top
Talent
Finland
Bottom 0.127 0.031
Romania
China
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?