Bernard Lunn points to Wall Street as why there is so few tech startups in New York: "First, Wall Street absorbs too much of the talent. Second, Wall Street generates a short term in a New York minute mindset." (more)
Richard Florida writes that creativity, and hence innovation, flourishes best where there is sufficient stability to allow continuity of effort, along with political openness to allow creative subversive in all its forms. Modern democracies are geared toward economic innovation that has stemmed from British liberalism in the 18thC. Technological innovation is fragile and heavily dependent upon social and political order; Japan and China are good studies on how it can quickly be dampened and even squashed into stasis by restrictive political and social policies. (more)
Current social conservative politics have led to a welfare state that is increasingly focused on working families with children. This is true of the Howard Government and more recently in the US the $300 rebate (to keep the economy strong or some rubbish) was an extra $300 per child. Richard Florida argues the inverse is true:
Furthermore, one group that has been neglected by most communities, at least until recently, is young people. Young people have typically been thought of as transients who contribute little to a city's bottom line. But in the creative age they matter for two reasons. First they are workhorses. ... [and] Second, people are staying single longer.He argues that young people are a driving force behind dynamic creative economies, and are more important economically than the traditional suburban nuclear family to economic wealth and success for a region. (more)
I was a bit skeptical about buying Richard Florida's "Rise of the Creative Class" but decided I should read it before cementing an opinion. One of the deciding aspects for Florida determining if an area is open to the creative class is a Tolerance Index. Basically if an area is tolerant to gays, bohemians, immigrants, etc; then it is attractive to the highly mobile and prosperous thought workers. (more)
