The challenge of being Richard Florida Saturday, October 30, 2004 Celebrity is not free. Misunderstanding is one of the costs that Richard Florida is paying. In Akron last week, Florida worked hard to defend his ideas from the distortions of his critics. Read more. Florida has brought a lot of this on himself, my guess. He has buffed himself up to celebrity status. Read more. He has made loose assertions, especially about gays. For example: "A place that is open and tolerant of the gay population is a place that anyone can make it." Read more. His language often doesn't advance his cause. He promotes the idea of a new economy with a language of class structure invented in the industrial era by sociologists long dead. (Worse still, to my mind, is the implication that we should be promoting an economy with a Creative Class that sits on top of an Uncreative Class.) His data analysis fails to convince more rigorous economists. For example, he makes some elementary mistakes in blurring the distinction between a correlation (A and B tend to appear together) with causation (A causes B). On the policy front, he has promoted some fuzzy ideas like the Memphis Manifesto. (With echoes of Marx and Lenin's 1848 Communist Manifesto in their ears, it surprising that critics on the right are riled?) By unintentionally positioning himself on the left, some critics on the right are now hammering away. Read more. Perhaps least understandable of all, Florida has taken some ideas that have been well-developed elsewhere and repackaged them as his own. The idea that creativity is an economic driver for advanced economies first appeared in the United Kingdom in 1998, four years before Florida published the Creative Class in 2002. (He makes no mention of the extensive work in the U.K. in his book.) The Blair government was the first to address "creative industries" as a separate cluster of related businesses. Learn more. To hold himself out as the author of this idea is, well, creative. Finally, Florida is a little short on practical implementation ideas. So, people have a tough time translating his thinking into action. As a consequence, some people misunderstand what he is saying. If you come out with a "Bohemian Index", is it any wonder that some critics ridicule the idea of gay marriage as an economic development strategy? Read more. posted by Ed Morrison |		This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. links Some Background on EDPro Weblog The purpose of this weblog is to help economic development professionals -- EDPros -- keep up with the changes sweeping our profession. Strap on your goggles. It's a whole new game. There are no experts any more. The only place to learn about economic development is from other EDPros who are doing it. One other point: the prevaling approach (paradigm, if you like) in economic development is shifting from competition to collaboration. There are a lot of reaasons underlying this shift, but here's the important insight: You, your community, and your region will do better by collaborating and sharing information. So, spread the word...Share the knowledge. Tell a friend about EDPro Weblog. If you are using a news reader, here is the link to syndicate this site: Here's the link if you are a bloglines subscriber: Speaking and workshops on Open Source Economic Development As the idea of Open Source Economic Development starts spreading, more people are asking about it. Visit the I-Open web site to learn more. My colleagues and I are happy to explain the basic concepts in a talk or a workshop. E-mail Susan Alshuler if you'd like to learn more about workshops and speaking. Background on Ed Morrison Download some background information on me here.

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