The Rise of the Creative Class: and How its Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life

The Rise of the Creative Class: And How its Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life is a book written to examine how and why creativity is being used and let loose, which was written by Richard Florida. It starts off explaining how creative people have changed the world in the last 50 years and then goes on to breaking down what creativity is, who uses creativity, and where you can find people using creativity. If you are a scientist, an engineer, an architect, a designer, an author, a painter, a musician or your creative skills play an important role in where you are engaged in such as in commercial, education, law. Then you are one of the creative classs members. Peoples creativity is the key factor of the economic development. After the industrial society, with the coming of the era of creative economy, social and cultural values all around the world have been changed quickly. Unlike many other books, Richard promoted the idea that the creative class can be divided into two main components: the Super Creative Core and the Creative professionals. On the one side, people in the Super Creative Core represent who design products and then are widely made and sold. On the other side, people in the creative class have the values of individuality, meritocracy, and diverse & openness. To catch the readers eyes, Richard also raised a quite interesting discussion-the relationship between hi-tech and homosexual, which resulted from tolerance surroundings.

Moving along, creative is defined as mental process involving the discovery of new concepts and new ideas. The leaders/managers/organizations want to figure out what make people decide where they want to live and work, and what really matters in this decision making process. In this book, Richard pointed out the creative class does not like the other people, who want to get high-wage and live in low prices. In contrast, the creative class abundant high quality amenities and experiences, and openness to diversity. According to the point, it encourages leaders/managers/organizations to attract more and more creative class through business investments. No matter the leaders or the job seekers, they should know creativity and talent are the key sources of wealth. Whether the business will success depends on the creative class. A successful creative class in the business must posse 3T-techonology, talent and tolerance. Firstly, the business must have a strong technology base such as large-scale investment in technology. Secondly, with the respect of the choice in the lifestyles, the business can attract and retain more and more talents. Thirdly, the tolerance of diversity may offer many varied attractions such as immigrants and homosexual. To put it most simply, a city or a business needs to develop humanistic atmosphere, which is conducive for overall economy development. As a job seeker, the need to press for access to the creative class allows of no delay, which can makes them natural- indeed the only possible, leaders of the 21st century society. There are three most interesting ideas I have learned from the book. The creative class may not always consist of people with advanced education. Instead, so long as anyone with signs of original thought can continuously provide value to the society via brains work, they

can be put into the creative class, such as a hairdresser in traditional service industries. For now the creative class will just continue to grow and define themselves by their differences. Not just getting a higher wages than average wages in

manufacturing and in services industries, the creative class also has some anonymous advantages, which makes work becomes more enjoyable. Still, there is no denying that, the creative class has a small market share, but it has made a great contribution to the rapid growth of whole economy. For example, with the success of Harry Potter, J. K. Rowlings new-found wealth may go beyond the sum of all the authors wealth from the same region. In this new age of innovation and originality, compared with the traditional businesses in the past, the accumulation of wealth is unimaginable and inimitable. Hi-tech and homosexual, they are not on the simple cause and effect relationship, but some common factors, which are tolerance surroundings. Why Silicon Valley always attract large numbers of talented people? As everyone knows, most of the talented people have eccentricity, which is different from the common people. Americans dubbed them as Nerds. Silicon Valley is the only place where they can be appreciated and admitted and have the opportunities to work together with like-minded partners. According to the fact above, tolerance has an irreplaceable position in the aspect of attraction to the talents.