Knowledge management - Richard Florida and the raise of the creative class

Résumé du document

Globalization, coupled with the technologies of communication, has changed our world deeply in less than twenty five years. Richard Florida, the American urban studies theorist, offers interesting analyses of these phenomena by studying what he called the creative class. Florida acquired his PhD in 1986 from the Columbia University, and he is now Professor of Business and Creativity at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. He is also the author of The rise of the creative class and The flight of the creative class and has authored a number of articles about creativity. In this essay, I will present Florida's work from the early nineties till today. He began his works on the changes affecting our society due to new technology and the consequences on the organization of a company. With the increase of importance and numbers of knowledge worker, he studied what he calls the creative class. His book The rise of the creative class describes this new social class and presents their expectations and way of life. During his researches, he emphasizes the strong links between the creative class and regional area. Florida's studies are based on the relation between an area or region and creative people and finds solutions to what a creative person can expect from his environment.

Extraits

[...] His conclusion in that innovation comes from the mix of human capital, diversity and openness to the diversity. Today number of cities are using Florida thesis to attract the creative class and boost their economic growth. However his works have been criticized on many aspects. Malanga critics Florida to not take anymore in account traditional indexes like taxes rate in his researches, which according to him still play an important place for the location of firms[xxv]. Then he suggests that Florida constructed his measure in order to have the results he wanted. [...]

[...] In order to demonstrate this, Florida has studied the links between innovation and diversity. For this purpose he creates two new indexes: the gay index and the bohemian index. He used those two indexes in relation with more traditional indexes to measures creation and human capital of area, like the number of patents, or percentage of bachelor or scientific and engineer in a population[xix]. The gay index has for aim to emphasis region open to diversity, new comers and non conformist people. [...]

[...] They use idea from the alternative to transform it in mainstream. They differ from bohemian people, that are to say mostly artist, even if live close to them. As we have seen creative workers are not motivate directly by money and security. They prefer to trade this against freedom. For example, creative people like to manage their own schedule. Because innovation is not something you can switch off after work and switch on back the next morning, the definition of a work day have been deeply reviews. [...]

[...] Florida defines the super creative core as person fully engaged in the creative process[viii]. They are pay to create new products and ideas, solve problems and find new to solve. This super creative core is composed mainly by artist, actors, entertainers, designers, engineers, university professor and all opinion makers. Then Florida define the rest of the creative class as creative professional, who have to thinks on their own in a knowledge intensive environment. Those workers have to analyse quickly information to make decision often on the spot. [...]

[...] Those transformations have permitted the raise of a new class which was minatory in the past: the creative class. Florida defines this new group of workers as them who are paid to solve complex problem, and so create value from their creativity. He estimates in 2000 that this class represents approximately 30% of the American workforce. Though all this interviews and work session, Florida have found three mains values linking up together those people. Those values are individualism, meritocracy and diversity and openness. [...]