(April 28, 2005) - From Salon:

Your first book, "The Rise of the Creative Class," was so optimistic about the potential of what you termed the "creative economy," but this new book is almost alarmist in nature. You argue that the U.S. is facing a potentially crippling economic crisis if it doesn't improve the ways in which it attracts and retains creative workers.

I've studied competitiveness for 25 years and the current economic threat is by far the gravest competitive threat to ever face the United States. It's far more significant than the challenge posed by Japanese or Asian competition in the '90s because it's aimed at the crux of our advantage, which is our ability to attract the best and brightest talent. Everyone is frightened of letting terrorists into the country when it's actually more likely that they're keeping out the next Einstein. Look at the amount of attention given to Social Security, look at the attention given to building football stadiums -- and you can't even get a conversation going about attracting and retaining talent!

How did this book come about? At first glance it seems so different from the domestic focus on the American cities in your first book.

After I finished "The Rise of the Creative Class" I was invited to the Knowledge Wave conference in New Zealand. The speakers were Robert Putnam [author of "Bowling Alone"], [Stanford professor] Paul Romer, and me, plus all these heavyweights from around the world. Later they arranged a lunch with the director Peter Jackson [of "Lord of the Rings" fame] and a tour of his Wetta Studios.

When I asked him why he chose New Zealand to build his state-of-the-art studio instead of L.A. or elsewhere in the U.S., he said, "I decided I could build this incredible digital film production complex in Wellington. And not only could I attract talent from around the world because we have a great project and great people and a great location -- there's the sun and the beautiful surroundings and the beautiful city -- but it's small enough so there weren't the kind of distractions you would find in L.A." Distractions like a lot of congestion, people who don't come to work, people who don't have to work all day to afford a house ...

He said, "What we could do here is build a team, while in L.A. everyone is moving from project to project. What I'm trying to do is build an actual company that's around for a long time. It's for people who want to work for a company that has a continuous stream of employment." And he said he could get people from Australia, from Germany, from France, from the Soviet Union or the former East European block and from the United States. They all wanted to work at the studio.

And so I put that into my head and I started to think and I started to travel around a little more and it just dawned on me that the competition between Pittsburgh and Austin, Cleveland and Seattle, St. Louis and San Francisco, wasn't just a national competition. In fact, the competition for talent was global.

From Salon interview with Richard Florida

Flight of the Creative Class