Richard Florida

Why organisations work with Richard Florida

• His “three Ts” framework (technology, talent, tolerance) remains the most cited model in talent geography, drawn on by city governments and corporate location strategists worldwide.
• He named and quantified the creative class, the 40-million-strong workforce whose location and lifestyle decisions now drive regional economic growth.
• Through the Creative Class Group, he has advised BMW, Audi, Microsoft, Facebook, and Starwood Hotels, alongside city and regional governments worldwide.
• He co-founded CityLab, now owned by Bloomberg, and contributes regularly to The Atlantic and the Financial Times.
• His 2017 book The New Urban Crisis examined how the same forces driving creative-economy growth also produce inequality and segregation, giving leaders a more honest account of the trade-offs in talent-led strategies.

Biography highlights

• University Professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and School of Cities, which he helped found
• Visiting Distinguished Professor at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management
• Author of The Rise of the Creative Class, winner of the Washington Monthly Political Book Award and a Harvard Business Review Breakthrough Idea of 2004
• Co-founder of CityLab, now owned by Bloomberg
• Ranked #19 on the Thinkers50 list of the world’s most influential management thinkers in 2017
• Founder of the Creative Class Group, advising BMW, Audi, Microsoft, Facebook, and Starwood Hotels

Biography

Talent used to follow jobs. Florida’s research, beginning with his 2002 book The Rise of the Creative Class, demonstrated that the relationship had reversed. The most ambitious workers were now choosing cities first, gravitating to those that combined what he called the three Ts: technology, talent, and tolerance.

The Rise of the Creative Class won the Washington Monthly Political Book Award and was named a Harvard Business Review Breakthrough Idea of 2004. The book quantified a workforce of 40 million Americans whose decisions about where to live were beginning to drive regional economies. It became the foundation for how cities and large employers think about competing for human capital.

His 2017 book The New Urban Crisis confronted what creative-economy growth had produced. In cities like New York, San Francisco, and London, the same forces driving wealth creation were also increasing inequality, deepening segregation, and hollowing out the middle class. Florida calls this winner-take-all urbanism. The book gave civic and corporate leaders a sharper account of the trade-offs in talent-led growth.

Florida is University Professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and School of Cities, which he helped found. He is also Visiting Distinguished Professor at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management and a Distinguished Fellow at NYU’s Schack Institute of Real Estate. Through the Creative Class Group he has advised BMW, Audi, Microsoft, Facebook, and Starwood Hotels on talent and location strategy.

Key speaking topics

• The creative class and the geography of talent
• Talent attraction and retention in the post-industrial economy
• Cities as engines of growth and inequality
• Real estate and corporate location strategy in the creative economy
• Innovation and the conditions that produce it
• The future of work in superstar cities

Ideal for

• Chief Human Resources Officers and heads of talent making decisions about where to recruit, locate, and build culture
• Real estate developers, REITs, and corporate location strategists
• City leaders, mayors, and economic development agencies competing for investment and talent
• Boards and CEOs of large employers reassessing geographic footprint after the shift to hybrid work

Audience outcomes

• Florida’s creative class framework, including who it covers and where the category is now concentrated globally
• Detailed data on which cities and regions are gaining and losing talent right now
• A diagnosis of why creative-economy growth also generates inequality and segregation, and what cities are doing in response
• Specific implications for location and recruitment strategy in their own organisation