Richard Florida speaks on the importance of cultivating a "creative class" at a Nov. 14 talk in Toledo.

Nurture creativity to create economic growth: Richard Florida

There has been a major shift in what drives economic prosperity and the growth of cities, economist Richard Florida told an audience at the Toledo Museum of Art Nov. 14. No longer are people moving where jobs are located. Now, jobs are moving where the best-educated, most creative workers can be found.

In a talk on “The Rise of the Creative Class in Greater Toledo,” Florida, the Heinz Professor of Economic Development at Carnegie Mellon University, said the way to reverse the “brain drain” experienced by so many cities is to nurture creativity in all its forms to create a vibrant, dynamic community which young people will not want to leave and to which companies will be drawn.

Florida’s presentation was part of the unveiling of Toledo Mayor Jack Ford’s Strategic Plan for the Arts and Culture. The plan was written by members of the Mayor’s Task Force for Arts and Culture, whose members include Katerina Ruedi Ray, director of the BGSU School of Art; Elizabeth Cole, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences; William Balzer, associate vice president and dean of Continuing and Extended Education, who served as facilitator for the task force, and Colin Gearing, head of the design division in the School of Art, who served as graphic designer for the plan.

The thesis of Florida’s talk echoed what audiences at BGSU had heard from Honda of America President Koki Hirashima the day before: no longer are even factory workers seen as “cogs in the machine,” but rather as active participants in the process, expected to contribute their knowledge and creativity for continual improvement in operations. The Japanese were among the first to reverse the old system in which the heads of companies were believed to hold the wisdom, Florida said. “Now it’s harnessing the knowledge on the factory floor.”

Moreover, everything—from eyeglasses to cook stoves—has a design element these days, Florida said. And with the national move away from manufacturing toward more knowledge-based enterprises, creativity becomes even more important in the workforce, from lawyers to information technology workers to salespeople.

With the high labor-turnover rate in today’s market, he said, “place becomes the constant.” Rarely do employees remain with the same company all their lives, so companies need to be where there is a dense pool of available, qualified labor.

This was forcefully brought home to him when a high-tech company created by Carnegie Mellon to help preserve jobs and revive Pittsburgh’s failing economy moved to Boston. The announcement came when Florida was on sabbatical as a visiting professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he was stunned to open the paper one day to see a headline reading “LYCOS to move to Boston.”

“I was floored,” he said. “Why would they do this?” The answer, he said, forced him to reconsider everything. LYCOS explained that it was moving to “get access to the available pool of talented and trained workers that already were in Boston.

“This represents a massive change in American life,” he said. Previously, the requirements for business were availability of natural raw materials, good transportation for shipping products, and labor, he said. Today, it is knowledge, intellectual achievement and creativity that companies need.

At the turn of the century only about 5 percent of Americans were employed in the creative sector; by 1980, the number was still less than 15 percent. Today, more than 40 million Americans out of a workforce of 200 million are employed in the creative sector, earning $1.7 trillion in wages and salaries.
And yet economists have largely ignored this phenomenon, Florida said. President Bush wants to create a “manufacturing czar” to combat the loss of jobs to countries such as India, he said, but “every industry is a creative industry. It’s the whole economy,” he claims. It is by nurturing that element hat we will retain jobs in the United States.

Where does creativity come from? “It can’t be inherited or passed down. It can’t be dug out of the ground or produced in a factory. It has to come from within,” Florida said. “Creativity is the great equalizer,” he said. It knows no gender, race, ethnicity or class, and no sexual orientation.

“You never know where the next one will come from,” he said, giving the examples of Jimi Hendrix, “a young, African American kid from the streets of Seattle,” and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who claimed Hendrix as his inspiration (not, Florida pointed, some captain of industry or science) and built a museum in his honor in Seattle. Other examples included Steven Jobs and Steve Wozniak, founders of Apple Computers, who parlayed their fascination with electronics into one of the world’s leading companies.

He corrected a misconception that some readers have derived from his book, The Rise of the Creative Class and How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. “People are always asking me how they can lure the creative class to their communities,” he said. “But you don’t lure them. They’re there. Every single human being is creative in some way.”

Towns have now become the key organizing units to harness creative energy, Florida said. “Corporations used to match a person to a job. Now the city, the region is the glue that matches the worker to the job.” It is thus much more competitive and more difficult today, because the effort must encompass a much larger area than one company.

When he first began to take notice of this phenomenon of companies moving to find employees and the cities they chose, he and his colleagues began interviewing people to see what they were looking for when choosing a place to live.

Desirable qualities included such things as “energy, life and excitement, which they described as lots of people on the streets, playing Frisbee, roller-blading, eating at outdoor cafes, just being out and about,” Florida said.

People are looking for an integrated society as well, where gays, straights, people of multicultural backgrounds, families of all types and singles can feel comfortable. “People want to be in a community where they can be themselves,” Florida said.

Also on the list of desirable qualities was a lively arts scene, with galleries, museums and art events available regularly. Florida said he and his co-researchers developed a “Bohemian Index” when analyzing cities, which measured the number of artists, musicians and other creative types. Sure enough, there was a correlation between those cities with a high Bohemian Index and economic prosperity, retention of citizens and a strong business climate.

“Today it’s a people climate, not a business climate that counts,” Florida said. Cities need the “Three T’s: technology, talent and tolerance” in order to be successful.

To accomplish this in a city takes great political will, Florida said, adding that Mayor Ford seems to have such a will and that Toledo was one of the first cities to become interested in the approach when the Regional Growth Partnership contacted him a few years ago.

Florida advises that cities pour resources into supporting creativity, just as they do sports. His two key recommendations: first, “put a moratorium on megaprojects, and second, invest in the margin”—the artists, musicians, designers and all those who make up the “Bohemian Index.”