Leadership Lookout

Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class and the director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, has given us some new terminology in a recent article in The Atlantic and in an interview last Monday on NPR’s “OnPoint” with Tom Ashboork.

A “talent-rich ecosystem” is one in which “well-educated professionals and creative workers (who) live together in dense ecosystems, interacting directly, generate ideas and turn them into products and services faster than talented people in other places can.” Phew! That means the mega-regions (such as the Boston-New York-Washington Corridor, the Char-Lanta Corridor, Greater Chicago, the Tor-Buff-Chester Corrider, Greater Tokyo, Europe’s Am-Brus-Twerp, and India’s Bangalore-Mumbai area) will become increasingly more attractive to talent. Look at that list of new names for mega regions. How swiftly the world is changing!

The author goes on to say that “big, talent-attracting places benefit from accelerated rates of ‘urban metabolism,’ . . . successful cities, unlike biological organisms, actually get faster as they grow.” So now we’ll have mega-regions, corridors, and urban metabolism to add to our talent considerations.

So we’re thinking about how this impacts us as leaders looking for talent and how it might impact us as individuals managing our careers. Thoughts?

Filed under: Book, Discussion, From Rebecca, Podcast, Recommended