Richard Florida’s work on mapping talent and cities is quite interesting. I heard Richard several years ago shortly after “Rise of The Creative Class” came out and was intrigued. At the time I was living in Cincinnati – loved my job but was less than happy with where I lived. Recently, I had the chance to hear him discuss his new book Who’s Your City during a presentation at Google and was even more impressed. And, btw, now I live in Portland and LOVE where I live. Portland is a great example of a city with lots of creative talent but a bit lacking in jobs – yes, this is the structural talent dilemma. Richard Florida really gets this and regardless of what aspect of Talent you intersect with I think you’ll find his research fascinating.
Below are a couple of graphs that in combination tell us quite a bit about the distribution of creative talent.
The first graph looks at the distribution of creative types by city – pretty straight forward.
The second graph maps talent according to personality types. The most interesting category here is “open to experience”. These would be people who are curious, more comfortable with risk and possess a desire for continuous learning and newness.
So, why is this important? As “place” has become increasingly important to people – #1 according to Florida, it will be increasingly important for companies to get comfortable with distributed talent networks. Location….location….location! As in business, now, so in life. Quality of life has become a priority and each of us defines this differently – but we also share in how we look at where we live as a major definer of what that looks like. Florida’s research is being used by cities to better understand which businesses to attract given its talent clusters – desire to attract or retain. It is quite important for companies to understand where certain types of talent clusters tend to form and grow as they look at business decisions that are uniquely dependent on human capital. Chances are, however, that not every company can be, will be, or move to where the talent is. The choices are either spend a lot more trying to get the talent needed, spend a lot more on developing the talent you have, or celebrate what makes the talent you desire successful and work with them wherever they may be.
Note: According to Florida, the Creative Class is about 1/3 of working Americans (according to 2002 stats) and includes science, engineering, architecture, education, arts, music, creative professionals – biz, finance, law, and healthcare. Overall, the Creative Class is defined as “people who engage in complex problem solving that involves a great deal of independent judgment….”
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