The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida -- Rotman School -- Lifelong Learning, June 7, 2002, 10:05 a.m.
Richard Florida
These participant's notes were created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker's presentation(s) and comments from the audience. These should not be viewed as
official transcripts of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions about content should
be directed to the originator. These notes have been contributed by David Ing (daviding@systemicbusiness.org) at the IBM Advanced Business Institute ( http://www.ibm.com/abi ).
Introduction
Carnegie-Mellon, founder of the Information Technology Center (sponsored by IBM, and others)
Author of six books
Rise of the Creative Class, published last week
Discussed in Salon, 2 weeks ago.
#67 on Amazon list
How can you understand why cities do well and prosper over time?
The book is to #25 on Amazon today.
Want to have a conversation today.
Already did two interviews today.
Not necessarily new about the places we live, and the places we work.
Want to talk about workplaces, and how to manage creative people
Heros: Drucker, Daniel Bell, Jane Jacobs, Jimi Hendrix
Bottom line:
What's really new in our economies and our work?
Not technology, not venture capital, not new economy.
There are aspects of how people work that have been around for a long time, and they're just becoming more important.
Book open with a time traveler.
Person for 1900, move to 1950.
Take a person from 1950, move to today's world.
Who would see the greater change?
From 1900:
Planes, trains
Different technologically, but people would work the same
9 to 5, work in the office, white men
Activities bowling league, etc.
From 1950
Technologically, almost the same
Even keyboard on computer is about the same a typewriter.
Same car, train, plane
But the entire social complex of the work has changed.
Changes have been social and cultural.
Women, gay people, blacks, Hispanics in authority
Working in flexible schedules
See men jogging down the street in underpants
Women rollerblading in brassieres.
Instead of moving to suburbs, people moving back, renovating neighborhoods.
Person wouldn't know how to change over time.
Why did this happen?
Creativity has become the greatest foundation to economic growth
In the past, economic wealth came from factors of production: steels
Measure steel per man-hour
Today, video games, biotech -- industry of the mind
Eyeglasses: Father worked in Victory Optical, worked way up
Brought home glasses, $15 in store.
Now, $450, not only glasses, but a fashion item
SUVs, bicycles, restaurants
There is almost not good today that doesn't have a creative content.
Where does creativity come from?
Can't mill it.
It comes from human beings.
We are the factor of production.
What makes human beings different is that we move around.
We can choose where we live and work.
Two weeks ago, shared the stage with Jack Welch
Wanted to ask Jack about what it's like to work with HBR.
Got into a debate about lawyers.
At GE, same plant and equipment, factories, everyone can get access to the same people
The difference is quality of creative people.,
Two years ago, talked to 50 governors.
Wanted to talk to Jesse Ventura.
Carly Fiorina doesn't want stadiums, etc.
HP goes where the highly-skilled people are.
Human resource of creative.
Creativity is not reducible to information, technology, or entrepreneurship: these are dimension.
Technological creativity: invention, creating new products, R&D
Closely related to innovation is the "bohemian index".
The number of bohemians, artists, is highly correlated to competitiveness.
Increasingly, creative people want to be around each other, in environments that stimulate creativity.
The rise of the creative class
A new class
Like the bourgeoisie, who traded, and were capitalists.
Like the great industrial working class, who were labour to create things
Now, the rise of a new class.
In the U.S., there are 38 million members of the class, 30% of the entire U.S. workforce.
Greater than the entire working class
Artist, designer, entertainer, architecture -- the super-creative core of this class
The places that attract these people
Health care, lawyers, etc...
Has expanded from less than 5% at 1900, at 1950 10%, at 1980 less than 18%.
Numbers have now doubled, beyond the working class.
Think back to Organization Man, White Collar Person
Creative class is replacing those groups.
This is how we can understand the change
creativeclass.org -- articles and excerpts are on the web version
How to manage creative people
Example: Live in Pittsburgh, governor is head of homeland security, invited to sit on the Team Pennsylvania, advise on the future of economy
Not enough welders and pipefitters, won't work in machine tools, even though $25
They're going to cosmetology school and become hairdressers.
Asked first year graduate students about this:
Would you work in a machine tool factory at $25, or a hair salon?
Hair salon: nice clothes, people can talk to you, can go to sushi, working on own schedule, maybe able to open own store.
Machine shop: they tell you what to do.
Students all choosing the hair salon
What do creative people want in their work:
Drucker: article on information revolution: The zenith of the new economy: You can not bribe the knowledge workers on whom these industries depend
Teresa Amabile, Harvard Psych: Creativity and Context -- creativity is an intrinsic process, using extrinsic rewards will be counterproductive.
e.g. columnist week for Information Work: Info Week only reports money on salary, but in survey, had lots of detail on what people like and don't like their job
2000, 2001, 2002.
What people want is challenge, flexibility, job stability, base pay
Base pay is #4 or #5
Stock options were #30, now #50
Motivated by doing great work
Just taught a class on software engineering
Open source software developer
You pay their salary, they get bored, and they spent their time developing open source.
Sun Micro in Ontario: Now need to figure out how to attract these people, and let them work on their open source project
Denise Rousseau, in public policy: Creativity people don't want the same deal. We want idiosyncratic contracts.
Any academic leader knows this: What motivates one person doesn't motivate another.
It's not that money is not important, it's necessary but not sufficient.
Money becomes important when people are dissatisfied
Raymond (Open Source): Money is a scorecard.
It's not the espresso bar, etc.
It's a business unit that has a direction, with responsibility
Insights into communities and city, and why they're important to people
People's prediction about policy and place
Technology will eliminate the constraint about place: Internet, fax, etc.
e.g. George Gilder: we'll be living on a mountain near a stream, or in countryside, away from cities.
This is the most naive, incorrect prediction in human history.
Place has become the fundamental organizing capability.
What does a company do?
It matches a human being to a job to be done.
In the U.S., the company did this by offering a person a job for life.
In the U.S. the average stay in a job is 3.3 years, 1.1 years for people under 30.
Companies are no longer effective in matching person
It's done by place.
For a company, a place creates a labour pool.
Explains Boston, Silicon Valley, Seattle -- to get access to labour pools
Place provides another function: place to find a thick labour market.
Since the job won't last forever, they pick places that have thick labour markets.
One fact: what makes economies grow
Not venture capital, ...
Regional growth is based in human capital
Edward Glaser, Harvard, can predict regions with human capital growth.
But forgot to think about ...
Economists say endowment of minerals, then resources, now human capital.
But now, human capital is mobile.
Why do we pick these places to live in the first place?
This the question analyzed over the past 5 years.
People don't move for jobs.
They move for LOTS of jobs: economic opportunity.
We look for an environment that is creative, energetic
People on the streets, art galleries, music, ...
We want stimulation
Creative people have always lived in places like this.
Father worked all day in labour, wanted to veg out in front of tv
Now, reverse.
When we look at regional growth, we create an index.
The bohemian index outpredicts any economic measure
The regions that can attract bohemians, will attract entrepreneurs.
Boston, Austin, ...
Of course, had universities, but so did Pittsburgh, Detroit, Cleveland
Silicon Valley is near San Fran -- Haight-Asbury, Monterey -- musical innovation first.
Picture Wozniak, Gates, ... going to bank in Toronto to Pittsburgh
In Silicon Valley, they were seen just as creative people
Austin, Texas: before Dell, there was Willie Nelson
Seattle, before Paul Allen, there was Jimi Hendrix
Third richest person in the world created the Experience Music Project
Paul Allen recognizes that in order to attract creative people, he can't just offer them a job.
Had leading design firms.
Creative person want diversity.
Young people ask on interviews: Do you offer domestic partner benefits?, when there are only 5% gay.
This means that people are open to diversity.
We want to know a person black or white or Asian gets the same shot, because they're good.
Look at populations of classes: multicultural.
"Gay index" driving the sales of the book
Predicts ability to innovate, better than any traditional economic method.
Coupled with bohemian index, can predict regions will grow and fail.
They signal the type of community that gay people want to be in.
They want realness and authenticity:
Jane Jacobs, 1961: New ideas require old buildings
Everything new starts in a garage.
New ideas require flexible spaces.
People want authentic, real neighbourhoods.
Powerful demographic shifts
CCMF will be building indicators in Canada.
How many people in the U.S. are in the leave-it-to-beaver nuclear families: 7%.
In more major metropolitan areas, there are more gay households than nuclear families.
Interviewed a black man with a white partner, adopted 5 kids.
More than 25% of gay households in the U.S. have kids.
Interracial, biracial families ...
Communities and companies need to adapt
This isn't a social movement
It derives from an economic fact
Toronto: 50% of population from other countries
Creative people are the factors of production
Questions
What happens when gentrification drives the people out of the neighbourhood.
Discussion with Jane Jacobs: What about people's neighbourhoods, which are now run down. Gentrification, which becomes boring, then people move out.
San Francisco: are driving out the creative people.
Austin mayor is promoting to not become a San Fran.
Jane Klubal: How much creativity do we have as people? Born or developed?
Creativity is innate.
The challenge is we're ignoring creativity.
His father wanted to own a hair salon. He loved painting and art, but he had to work in the factory for his entire life, because he felt he couldn't act in his creative life.
Where does style come from? The lowest economic strata. We tell them to flip burgers, which kills their creativity.
Work with a program: executive creativity.
On web site: Do you work for a creative company?
What happens when you bring your art into work? Do they laugh? Do they think you're crazy? Or do they frame it?
In the book: the dark side of meritocracy. Can you provide some examples?
The creative age has lots of contradictions.
The creative class is diverse, but a diversity of elites.
e.g. black people in the U.S. are being left behind, yet they're moving to the same creative class bastions.
Segmentation of society.
Our society is splitting into the creative haves, and creative have-nots.
Think about Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, and then all the rest left behind.
In U.S., see people with massive migration, and other places being left really empty.
We in the creative class have to address these issues ourselves.
We can't look to politicians.
We're 30% of the work force. We have the money. We control the media. We have access to the politicians.
Back to basics movement in education in Ontario.
When in Boise, Idaho, a woman took her to a school.
A group of people in a large classroom.
Had to wear a uniform, with Catholic nuns.
They roped a first grader into his chair
When did it happen that human beings learned in a classroom?
It's the worst thing.
I can't learn in a classroom.
Need to get out and do things and see things.
When you had to write it out, in textbooks, maybe.
Now, can get information everywhere.
Learning environments need to become community environments.
Doesn't give tests, exams, students do real things.
In heroes, Peter Drucker, Jane Jacobs. Didn't mention McLuhan.
Drucker: the key to the future is treating people as volunteers, with contingent commitments.
What motivates and mobilizes volunteers.
Balance between creativity and the need to manage risk, people going in a single dimension, as opposed to creative anarchy. When do your cross into dysfunctionality?
In the book, in the section on work.
The major reason people leave work is because of creative anarchy: feeling that managers don't have any control.
People went into a new economy company, because they wanted to be different.
What they found -- a great compressed learning -- it was like juvenile hall.
Want strategic direction with operational flexibility.
Balance between large-scale version, and getting people to work on different time scales.
e.g. professor at U. of Chicago goes to bed at 5 a.m., rides bicycle at midnight.
Need to develop measures.
This is way before Frederick Taylor.
We don't know how to measure.
Places like Seattle, Boston, all have mountains, lakes, trees. What are you going to tell the government of North Dakota or Manitoba?
Gave a talk in Dickinson, ND.
Small rural places, particularly ones in mining and resource extraction are in tough shape.
Have universities and colleges.
Can't build around trees and colleges.
Bozeman, Montana is getting to be exciting.
Boise Idaho around university, got exciting for HP plant.
Maybe cross-country skiing, road cycling.
Minneapolis is on the lake, in the top 10, with a tough winter -- broomball
Can turn disadvantages into advantages.
e-mail: florida@cmu.edu
Some content on this website may be subject to prior copyrights.
Please contact the author(s) prior to reproduction or further distribution of the materials.