Homeland Creativity

In the fall of 1957 the Soviet Union successfully launched two satellites, Sputnik I and II, into the Earth’s orbit. This came at the height of the Cold War, and Americans saw this Soviet achievement as a reflection of our weakness in math and science. As a result, Congress passed the National Defense Education Act in 1958, providing $887 million in grants, loans, and fellowships to improve domestic math, science, and foreign-language studies. A quarter century later American businesses—alarmed by the remarkable success of firms such as Sony, Toyota, Honda, and Panasonic—began to emulate Japanese management practices on a massive scale.

In a new book titled The Flight of the Creative Class, Richard Florida analyzes the most recent threat: America’s loss of creative talent. Building upon his best-selling book The Rise of the Creative Class—in which he made a compelling case for the role creativity plays in economic development—Florida now argues that the United States is losing its ability to attract and retain talented and creative individuals. But the author does not marshal sufficient evidence to support his theory. He draws upon lots of anecdotes gained from travels promoting his earlier book and comments from students attending his wildly popular campus lectures—engaging and stimulating stories, but no substitute for a cohesive argument.

Florida does explain insightfully how new visa and immigration regulations adopted in response to September 11 are leading to severe reductions in the number of foreign students studying in the United States and to the flow of expertise into the country. According to Florida, “For the first time in modern memory—perhaps in the history of our country—top scientists and intellectuals from elsewhere are choosing not to come here,” leading to the erosion of our scientific talent. The author even suggests that “the real foreign threat to the American economy is not terrorism; it’s that we may make creative and talented people stop wanting to come here.”

Much of Florida’s spatial analysis of the distribution of creativity is based on his Global Creativity Index (GCI), which uses technology, talent, and tolerance to measure a nation’s creative competitiveness. His definition of creativity emphasizes a broad range of industries that he considers creative, a methodological improvement over mea-sures of educational achievement but not as precise as economists’ measures based on commercial patents, research and development expenditures, or number of start-up businesses.

It’s time for Florida to refine his concept of creativity, which currently encompasses just about all of the arts and professions. It is simply not true that everyone employed in an artistic industry is involved in a creative task; designing the cover of a magazine is not the same as proofreading it, yet Florida would treat both activities as equivalent parts of the media industry.

Florida points to our fourth-place position on this index—behind Sweden, Japan, and Finland—as evidence of scientific vulnerability. But it’s hard to imagine how Finland, the home of Nokia, will maintain its leadership role in cellular phones now that South Korea’s LG and Samsung have emerged as mobile-phone powerhouses. Florida is enchanted by the creative potential of Australia, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand—English-speaking nations that are likely to reinforce American creative industries rather than undermine them. He is especially excited by Wellington, New Zealand, where filmmaker Peter Jackson has built a sophisticated production complex; but a nation where sheep dramatically outnumber humans has a long way to go on the economic-development ladder.

Florida is best when he discusses the way in which creative talent concentrates in a handful of cities and regions around the world. He describes how “places” have superseded corporations as the organizing unit for talent. However, he believes that the concentration of talent in a handful of large urban regions is leading to a growing gap between “winners and losers” in the competition for skilled workers. Florida argues that “the economic divide in America is reflected in a new geography of class” and proposes policies to “decentralize and spread the benefits of this economy,” even suggesting that “older cities are the perfect places to build further extensions of the creative economy.” Here the author demonstrates that he’s a much better urban geographer than public policy analyst. Designing policies to influence the migration of talented people from cities to small towns would entail a reversal of a century of demographic and economic trends.

Moreover, the reason why talent is drawn to large cities is to benefit from interaction with other bright, creative people. Florida believes that dispersing talent is a way to foster regional economic development, but just the opposite is true. There is a reason why upstate New York is a collection of bleak old industrial cities with a distinguished past but no future, while the New York metropolitan region is a magnet for brains and creativity from all over the world. Intellectual creativity thrives in a milieu that is tolerant, as Florida has noted numerous times, but it also depends on a culture of innovation and opportunity that is rarely found in rural communities and small towns.

The most striking aspect of the book is that only a small portion of it actually deals with global competition for talent. Florida is fundamentally an evangelist for creativity who believes that every person has the potential to be creative, if only society would provide the conditions for that creativity to blossom. This is a very narrow approach to economic development—much less human development—since literacy, technical competence, capacity for teamwork, and a work ethic are just as necessary in the twenty-first century.

There’s an uncanny resemblance in Florida’s writing to that of Abraham Maslow, the psychotherapist whose work on the fulfillment of human potential centered on a hierarchy of human needs, with creativity near the top of his hierarchy. The successful implementation of creative ideas and innovative products depends upon people and organizations who can execute with precision and skill, often by not tampering with a new idea or excellent product. In Florida’s ideal world, the waiter in a first-class restaurant might be encouraged to add his or her own spices to the entrée regardless of what damage it does to the chef’s recipe.

Florida has done a superb job of identifying a critical challenge facing us, but he sees global competition as a zero-sum game, in which our losses are another nation’s gains. The world economy is increasingly integrated, with cities as the “human switchboards” of the twenty-first century. Ideas and information flow instantaneously across national borders. It’s no longer possible, or even desirable, to maintain a monopoly position when it comes to brainpower and creativity. The success of the United States will depend on strong links between our creative urban centers and those in Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Florida wisely emphasizes the need to encourage the flow of people in and out of America, but even with that goal accomplished a handful of regions in a handful of nations will be responsible for new ideas and services. Rather than treating global competition for creative talent as a threat to the United States, the emergence of global hubs of creativity around the world is likely to strengthen it by generating public and private initiatives to support new ventures, studios, and laboratories. Just as the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik I and II triggered a massive investment in science and math education, the global market is already compelling universities and communities here to invest in facilities and programs to attract the talent that will produce the innovations of the twenty-first century.