Florida says that 30 percent (40 mn) of American workforce come under this creative class. Of this there are two broad types
A. Super Creative Core : 12% of all US jobs. Wide range of occupations - science, engineering, education, computer programming, research, with arts, design, and media arts workers forming a small subset. THEIR PRIMARY JOB IS TO BE CREATIVE & INNOVATIVE. ALONG WITH PROBLEM SOLVING, THEIR WORK MAY ENTAIL PROBLEM FINDING.
B. Creative Professionals : Classical Knowledge-based Workers, those working in healthcare, BUSINESS & FINANCE, the legal sector and education. THEY DRAW ON COMPLEX BODIES OF KNOWLEDGE TO SOLVE SPECIFIC PROBLEMS. *(These people are more likely to be taught by a textbook with the complex body of knowledge as the base, while the Super Creative Core have no limits)
He adds a small subset of Bohemians to these two large groups.
Florida concludes that the Creative class will be the force behind the growth of economy and expected to grow by over 10 mn in the next decade *( Indians are mostly into industrial or labour jobs, even the aspirational jobs are Medicine & MBA - professional jobs rather than the really creative jobs of research, computer programming - not coding =P, engineering is just not seen as a creative job, there were special programs in Bocconi for management of such industries and I am sure there are in other developed industries too. India is supposedly the IT Giant and yet most commercial software developers are in Silicon Valley, while Bangalore and other cities are simply solution providers - a step in the value chain of somebody else who is creating the real value, Although we are better most other developing countries we need to be make more conscious steps)
Florida's theories have sparked a lot of debate & discussion. It proposes that the new emergent class will cause the shift away from typical agricultural or industrial based economies and there will be a general restructuring into much more complex economic heirarchies. *(Alvin Toffler talked about something similar in his book the Third Wave, where he says that after the Agricultural Revolution & the Industrial Revolution the third revolution to hit humanity and change it was the Information Revolution - I will cover more about the third wave in my next blog)
The Nebulous creative class has been on a rise for atleast the last four decades with shifts towards technology and R & D and the internet (and related fields) occuring in post-war economies of most countries. *(Another correlation I can think of is the growth in the semiconductor technology which also grew exponentially in the last 4 decades and has changed the way information is handled, hence it became like a positive loop, more technology --> more information --> more research --> more technology, all at lower costs than before)
A number of cities and regions have been identified with these economic trends including California's Silicon Valley, Boston Route 128, The triangle in North Carolina, Austin, Seattle, Bangalore, India, Dublin, Ireland and Sweden. *(Luckily Bangalore is there on the list, thank all those parents who pushed their aimless kids into engineering, did something good for the country, but what we need to do is form similar hubs in other domains, in R&D, education, Science etc.)
Florida argues that the creative class is economically relevant as it's member have the ability to create and increase economic outputs with new ideas, new high-tech businesses, and regional growth.
The creative class occupations are described as jobs which create new meaningful forms. People in design, education, arts, music, and entertainment who economic function is to create new ideas, new technology and/or creative content.
Another sector of the creative class is that they are quite "knowledge intesive" meaning they require high amount of formal education. Examples are people in healthcare and business managers considered a part of creative professionals whose primary job is to think and create new approaches to problem.
Creativity is becoming more valued in today's society. *(I love how societies adapt to the economic requirements, infact I believe it is economics and economics which is the basis of human civilization) Employers see creativity as a channel of self-expression and job satisfaction in their employees.
Around 30% of Americans workforce is now part of the Creative Class, increase of 10% over the past 20 yrs *(Outsourcing??)
Creative class is not a class of workers among many but a group believed to bring economic growth to countries that can attract it's members *(Marketing of countries and perception management is critical, which is one of the reasons India has a chance of outstripping China someday but we seriously need to take care of some serious issues before we are able to do that, these are discussed in the form of 3 Ts below)
Economic benefits conferred to the creative class are :
1. New Ideas
2. High-Tech Industry
3. Regional Growth
The creative class has been around for centuries *(I still remember a presentation I attended in MDI by a guest lecturer called in by Prof. Pillania who taught us Strategic Management 1, the guy talked about the Medici effect and how the Medicis made Florence the starting point of the Renaissance and we all know what that did for Europe & the western world in large), the US was the first large country to have a creative class for IT in the 60s and 70s *(talk about first mover advantage). Europe now has a similar sized creative class compared to America, but now we can almost see an inter-city competition to attract the class *(I again would like to mention an article I read in the Bocconi ACME magazine BOB which indicated how Amsterdam is losing it's creative edge to Berlin which is becoming the new home of the Europeans Bohemes - Talk about studying a different ballgame)
Rindermann, Wailer & Thompson had a study published in 2009 where they studied 90 countries and argue that high-ability classes (smart classes) are responsible for economic growth, stable democratic development, and positively valued political aspects in the form of government effectiveness, rule of law and liberty *(I hate when I sound Elitist but Hey! this is how the world works, a country, city, state is as good as the amount of the ability in it's citizens)
Various works of Florida & one by Ross Honeywell indicate that cities that retain the creative class prosper while those that do not stagnate. *(Caveat for all those Shiv Sena supporters, I hope you are reading Amay) This research gained traction among businessmen, politicians and urban planners *(Time India acknowledged it too, How else do you explain the bursting growth of India being to a great extent being confined to the cities and suburban areas. In my opinion we need more SEZs and planned ones)
In cities and the creative class, Florida has elucidated three main prerequisites of Creative Cities. These are :
1. Talent - A highly educated/talented/skilled population *(Hmm!! I think Pune is going to go big soon)
2. Tolerance - A diverse community which has a 'live and let live' ethos
3. Technology - The technological infrastructure to fuel the required entrepreneurial spirit *(Major roadblock for India)
In the rise of the creative class, Florida argues that the class values meritocracy, diversity and individuality, and look for these characteristics when they relocate *(Ha ha, No wonder I want to move - Except for diversity most Indian cities fall flat on their face on meritocracy & individuality, Mumbai does seem to embody these ideals a bit though)
"The creativity Index" is another tool which Florida uses to describe how members are attracted to a city. This uses four parameters
1. Creative class share of workforce
2. Innovation (measured by patent per capita)
3. HighTech Industry (Milken's Institute's widely accepted Tech Pole Index)
4. Diversity (measured by Gay Index, a reasonable proxy for area's openness)
Florida also found a strong correlation between the cities and states that provide more tolerant atmosphere towards culturally unconventional people like gays, artists, and musicians (indicated by Gay Index & Bohemian Index) and the number of creative class workers than live there and move there.
Florida noticed that where people choose to live can no longer be predicted according to traditional industrial theories. *(will cities like Jamshedpur decay?) There is a gradual and broad shift in values over the past decade. Creative workers are looking for cultural, social and technological climates in which they feel they can best "be themselves"
The diverse and individualistic lifestyles enjoyed by the creative class involve active participation and experiential activities which are multidimensional. Florida uses the term street level culture to define this kind of stimulation. They would rather be participants than spectators.
CRITICISMS
Numerous faults have been found :
1. Hoyman and Faricy using Florida's own indices could not find any statistical evidence that cities with higher proportions of Creative Class correlated with any type of Economic Growth in 1990-2004 *(Hmm!!)
2. Markusen in 2006 stated that there is no group identity in the creative class and that the occupations aren't inherently creative, and it based largely on educational attainment and controlling for the same, the results become insignificant *(Should it be changed to the educated class then?? It is time for the Illuminati to come back?? Anyways words are just words and like I mentioned earlier, the quality of a city or state depends greatly on the ability of it's citizens)
3. Jamie Peck accuses Florida's theory of having no causality and having circular logic *(Well we don't know wether the chicken came first or the egg, but we know how chickens and eggs come right?? Isn't that good enough for us to make more chickens or eggs as we desire?)
4. Montgomery says that Florida has devised a set of indices which mirror more fundamental truths about dynamic cities or creative milieux *(I would be very interested in those more fundamental truths)
5. Similarly other questions have been raised outside the academia to question these theories
The creative class is simply a theory propogated by Richard Florida, I feel that it somehow resonates with me and being or atleast thinking that I am an educated man who sees himself as a learner and problem solver, I might have a strong bias to readily accept such ideas, it might simply be a self-serving bias. But otherwise also, I do think that the Agricultural & Industrial Era are past and in this information era the people who are able to structure information will be the ones with highest value in the economic system. Some of them - Wall street brokers, Inventors of softwares like the Google search engine will be able to capitalize on the information available to them, while others will not invest their resource - the information into fruitful areas and hence not get as high returns but anyways the opportunity to create high economic value lies mostly in the information domain and for the same you need people who can ideate. No wonder innovation is a buzzword in various domains!!
At the same time, if I may mention, the information diffusion curve is similar to the PLC and while the inventor of Laser may have created huge opportunities for the future generation by a completely new invention, the people who made money were the ones who used Laser once it was economic enough!! Google must've built upon it's preceding search engines and so much have Microsoft on it's preceding OS's. I feel there is a golden harvest region somewhere when a new idea is growing, just after the tipping point *(will do a blog about this too) and that is where the money is.
But if you are in it for the creativity and believe in 'art pour l'art' I salute you too, you are one of those people who make the world a better place for the future generations
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