What's Your Next Big Career Move?
Friday, 25. April 2008, 21:43:48
Richard Florida has an intriguing question and a twist to the old marketing nostrum - "Location, location, location".
Richard Florida is the author of the 2002 best-seller The Rise of the Creative Class, which received The Washington Monthly's Political Book Award, and more recently, in March 2008, a look at his hypothesis, called megaregions, in Who Is Your City? (Harper Collins).
"Are you plugged into a growth environment?", he asks. "Are you considering your next big career move?"
In "Who's Your City?," Richard Florida explains why this decision should be all about location, location, location - and profiles the top new regions with the greatest potential for career growth, and great companies.
Talent, innovation, and creativity - three crucial economic ingredients, according to Florida - are unevenly distributed across today's global economy. They concentrate in specific locations. The real source of economic growth comes from the clustering of talented and productive people. New ideas are generated and our productivity increases when we locate close to one another in cities and regions. The clustering force makes each of us more productive, which in turn makes the places we inhabit much more productive, generating great increases in output and wealth.
Because of this clustering force, a new constellation of cities and surrounding regions - not just in the United States, but in Europe and Asia - have turned into new engines of economic growth. Cities and their metropolitan corridors are morphing into new "megaregions," and magnets for great jobs and great companies alike.
Florida says that the day of the city or country as fundamental economic unit is over. Instead, he focuses on megaregions, broad swathes of cities and connecting suburbs found throughout the world. With satellite data showing lighted areas of the globe at night and finely tuned economic stats, Florida and other researchers have named over 40 different megaregions, with 13 in North America alone. A simple test for a megaregion? "A person can walk all the way across from one side to the other carrying nothing but a credit card and never get hungry or thirsty.", says Florida
Population is not tantamount to economic growth. Unlike megacities, which are termed as such simply for the size of their populations, megaregions are by definition places with large markets, significant economic capacity, substantial innovation, and highly skilled talent, as well as large overall populations.
A megaregion must meet three key criteria. First, it must be a contiguous, lighted area with more than one major city center. Second, it must have a population of 5 million or more. Finally, it must produce more than $100 billion in goods and services. By that definition, there are some 40 megaregions in the world. If we take the largest megas in terms of population:
* The 10 biggest are home to 666 million people, or 10 percent of world population.
* The top 20 comprise 1.1 billion people, 17 percent of the world population;
* The top 40 are home to 1.5 billion people, 23 percent of global population.
While haven't read the book yet, it's an intriguing view into global development and the rise and rise of opportunity, creativity, innovation and personal growth.
To me, in India, we have Bangalore, Hyderabad-Secunderabad, Mumbai - Pune, and the Delhi-Gurgaon-NOIDA-Faridabad areas. Could they qualify as proto or megaregions? Can these regions sustain themselves with regard to food, water and electricity? How about taxes? Will they be higher here?
You can find illustrative maps at
http://creativeclass.com/whos_your_city/maps/
Richard Florida is the author of the 2002 best-seller The Rise of the Creative Class, which received The Washington Monthly's Political Book Award, and more recently, in March 2008, a look at his hypothesis, called megaregions, in Who Is Your City? (Harper Collins).
"Are you plugged into a growth environment?", he asks. "Are you considering your next big career move?"
In "Who's Your City?," Richard Florida explains why this decision should be all about location, location, location - and profiles the top new regions with the greatest potential for career growth, and great companies.
Talent, innovation, and creativity - three crucial economic ingredients, according to Florida - are unevenly distributed across today's global economy. They concentrate in specific locations. The real source of economic growth comes from the clustering of talented and productive people. New ideas are generated and our productivity increases when we locate close to one another in cities and regions. The clustering force makes each of us more productive, which in turn makes the places we inhabit much more productive, generating great increases in output and wealth.
Because of this clustering force, a new constellation of cities and surrounding regions - not just in the United States, but in Europe and Asia - have turned into new engines of economic growth. Cities and their metropolitan corridors are morphing into new "megaregions," and magnets for great jobs and great companies alike.
Florida says that the day of the city or country as fundamental economic unit is over. Instead, he focuses on megaregions, broad swathes of cities and connecting suburbs found throughout the world. With satellite data showing lighted areas of the globe at night and finely tuned economic stats, Florida and other researchers have named over 40 different megaregions, with 13 in North America alone. A simple test for a megaregion? "A person can walk all the way across from one side to the other carrying nothing but a credit card and never get hungry or thirsty.", says Florida
Population is not tantamount to economic growth. Unlike megacities, which are termed as such simply for the size of their populations, megaregions are by definition places with large markets, significant economic capacity, substantial innovation, and highly skilled talent, as well as large overall populations.
A megaregion must meet three key criteria. First, it must be a contiguous, lighted area with more than one major city center. Second, it must have a population of 5 million or more. Finally, it must produce more than $100 billion in goods and services. By that definition, there are some 40 megaregions in the world. If we take the largest megas in terms of population:
* The 10 biggest are home to 666 million people, or 10 percent of world population.
* The top 20 comprise 1.1 billion people, 17 percent of the world population;
* The top 40 are home to 1.5 billion people, 23 percent of global population.
While haven't read the book yet, it's an intriguing view into global development and the rise and rise of opportunity, creativity, innovation and personal growth.
To me, in India, we have Bangalore, Hyderabad-Secunderabad, Mumbai - Pune, and the Delhi-Gurgaon-NOIDA-Faridabad areas. Could they qualify as proto or megaregions? Can these regions sustain themselves with regard to food, water and electricity? How about taxes? Will they be higher here?
You can find illustrative maps at
http://creativeclass.com/whos_your_city/maps/
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