Julie's Notes: Richard Florida's "Rise of the Creative Class" -- Part 1

"In today's economy creativity is pervasive and ongoing: We constantly revise and enhance every product, process and activity imaginable, and fit them together in new ways" (5).

Florida writes abundantly about the growth of our humanity over the past 50 years in contrast with the industrial and technological growth that happened in the first half of our century.

Now a days we define ourselves by our interests, who we surround ourselves with, what we are good at. In the 1950's we characterized ourselves by our professions: "housewife," "fireman," "doctor." These days we do not move to another city or state for a job usually, we move because we are interested in that city and we find jobs based on where we want to live. We are the creative class, thriving off of our many faceted interests and beliefs, no longer conforming to the assembly line, bowing our heads to the sign Don't Think, Just Work. 

Now, major corporations and manufacturers, even factories with assembly lines encourage the opposite. Toyota has a rule in place that allows the manual laborer to halt the line to filter out any malfunctioning part, so that the products are of the highest quality, never misshapen or with a potential to be hazardous. "A company will get nowhere if all the thinking is left to the management. Everybody in the company must contribute and for the lower level employees their contribution must be more than just manual labor. We insist that all our employees contribute their minds" (53). This quote is directly from the founder of Sony.

So what interests me is the people we have become, because we have now transformed the way jobs are. Work weeks are not the same, because the creative mind is spontaneous and doesn't turn on at 9am and shut off at 5 pm. We wake up sometimes at 4 am and have a brilliant idea for a product or a concept. 

Since we have transformed our idea of what a job is in this way, we also do not cling to any singular company; and we certainly do not rest in any one position. We stay at a job for two or three years, and then move onto something greater, or something completely different. 

The creative class thrives in cities like San Francisco, New York City (duh), Boston, D.C., Seattle, Austin. Even smaller cities like Boulder, Santa Fe, Gainesville, Provo in Utah, and Huntsville in Alabama. We thrive in these places  because we are "increasingly opting out of places where tradition is more valued and where the social norms of the organizational age still prevail" (11).

.......................................

"Artists, musicians, professors, and scientists have always set their own hours, dressed in relaxed and casual cltohes and worked in stimulating environments.....replacing traditional hierarchical systems of control with new forms of self-management, peer recognition and pressure and intrinsic forms of motivation, which I call Self-Control" (12). It seems artists have shaped this movement in the professional world, because human nature is more like uncharted waters instead of strict linear lines and grids.

So to connect all of this back to our question of Recession or Reset........we realize we are creative people, who cannot be tamed by the assembly line or merely manual labor or merely a CEO position without some kind of social life, hobby, interest, activity that feeds us as well. Feeds us creatively, feeds our soul, and hunger to create. In this economic struggle, Florida says we need to embrace what we have to offer instead of what we may lose if finances are tight. We need to reorganize the way we have been comfortable now that money is tight.

He describes the process of creativity: "Preparation, incubation, illumination, verification or revision" And the last step is never ending as we well know!

He says some really beautiful things about creativity. He describes the bravery it takes because usually when we fully express an honesty or a close-to-home detail, we are breaking the rules or going against the grain of that society or professional atmosphere.

Creativity "involves not only a passionate interest but self-confidence too. A person needs a healthy self-respect to pursue novel ideas, and to make mistakes, despite criticism from others. Self-doubt there may be, but it cannot always win the day. Breaking generally accepted rules, or even stretching them, take confidence. Continuing to do so, in the face of scepticism and scorn, takes even more" (31).