People and Talent (HRACS) Flashcards
What did economists and geographers used to think was the driver between economic success of a city?
Access to specific resources…
- fertile farmland
- forests
- mineral deposits
- being next to rivers, harbours and good transportation routes was also important.
Firms began to realise as factories moved…so did workers.
What did cities used to do to try an attract factories (what they thought caused wealth)?
Promising firms... - cheap land - low taxes - relaxed labour - environmental regulations ...often called smoke-stack chasing.
What happened?? (the shift of the economic driver of factories to something else…)
The economy has shifted from being based on natural
resources or manufacturing to ideas and innovation.
What is this new knowledge economy?
Based on intellectual capital and generates growth and wealth not by extracting things from the ground or assembling goods but by creating new products and new markets and by coming up with better ways to design or build existing products.
Firms follow the talent…
Ideas drive the economy, instead of resources, physical strength or big manufacturing plants, prosperity increasingly rests on attracting skilled knowledge workers or talent.
These people are not tied to specific places but are instead highly mobile in the global economy.
So instead of places attracting factories and workers following factory jobs, talent clusters in certain attractive places and firms follow the talent.
Why was Richard Florida confused?
Pittsburg was a booming city in the industrial age.
But 1980’s and 1990’s the city was losing companies, jobs and over half its population.
Confusing- lots of technology companies, sports teams and cultural facilities- should be attractive for people and companies?
Talented students were not interested…but rather a different set of amenities and activities.
Through Florida’s research, he discovered that certain things were important on their own not but enough for economic development and prosperity.
Technology is important but insufficient if you don’t have talent.
Scientists and engineers are important to create ideas but you need other talent, like entrepreneurs and managers to promote and commercialize those ideas.
What two groups are the creative class made up of?
Super-creative core- “scientists and engineers, university professors, poets and novelists, artists, entertainers, actors, designers, and architects.
People who work in a wide range of knowledge-intensive industries such as high-tech sectors, financial services, the legal and healthcare professions, and business management.”
Using statistical analysis Florida points how much of the US workforce is the creative class as of 2003?
About 38 million Americans
Roughly 30% of the US workforce.
In trying to determine the most attractive places for members of the creative class Florida uses three main statistical indices…
Bohemian index which charts the concentration of working artists, musicians, writers, designers, and entertainers across metropolitan areas.
Gay index which is a measure of the fraction of the population that is gay.
Foreign born index to measure diversity by finding out
the percentage of people in a city that were born in another country.
Give an example of knowledge economy in action?
Apple- didn’t invent computers but through knowledge, innovation and design, they improved upon them to become successful
Creative vs manual
Idea of sitting down all day then wanting to go out and vice versa.
