NEST, the Creative Class, and Economic Development

NEST
Individuals as well as communities can be ranked and assessed on a scale based on realizing their potential in four categories: network, experience, skills, and talents.

Social Networks
Networks are not limited to physical connections such as road systems, electrical grids, and water wastewater systems. To the contrary, some of the most important networks in human society are those networks comprised of human relationships - social networks of individuals and communities.

Communities are part of larger networks, linked not only by geography. Communities of like size often share many things in common. Communities in similar situations have much to learn from each other. The value of developing a network of communities is the strength inherent in association. Cultivating a network involves short-term habits and activities that grow into an investment that will pay dividends over the long-term.

Experience
The experience gained in a classroom or by reading books is certainly valuable, in so much as the theory behind things reveals much about the nature of the thing. But such passive experience pales in comparison to the value of active experience. Accomplishing tasks in real life, or on the other hand, trying and failing, and learning from those mistakes, provides a value far beyond academic study.

Experience is cumulative and in the best of worlds, is progressive. That is to say, one can gain the same experience over and over, but each successive experience, while reinforcing, provides less and less value. On the other hand, one can actively seek and gain new experiences that build on previous experiences, providing either more depth or breadth of experience, either of which can have value, depending on the goals.

Skills
Skills vary based on complexity and depth of attainment. The science of doing something well is often based on mastering techniques that contribute to gaining a skill set. Individuals and communities attain skills through training and experience from those who have mastered skills at higher or deeper levels of attainment.

Talents
Talents reside in each individual, some are recognized and valued by society, while others may be very interesting, but have little economic value. Talents, when developed to their full potential, contribute much to our quality of life.

Talents can also lie hidden within an individual or a community. Unless brought out into the open, such hidden talents may as well not exist. Self awareness and discipline are keys to bringing talents to the surface, where they may then be developed to reach full potential.

NEST as a Structure to Understand Potential
NEST can be seen as a rational method to better understand the nature of potential. Living up to potential, at either the individual or community level, is a matter of conscious development along the four axes described above.

Starting out as individuals, we each have latent talents that we each develop over time (or do not) into realized talent.

Moving beyond talents to skills, we begin from birth to develop skills from the most basic skills to the enhanced skill levels.

With some time, experience is gained - both positive and negative. Moving from initial experience to new experience levels only comes with time.

Finally, the true achievement of potential is in society, intentionally learning to expand an initial social network into a professional social network.



The Creative Class

Communities are nothing more than groups of individuals who share something in common, from geographic location (neighborhood), to interests (affiliate association) to government (city or town). Communities can improve their odds for success by targeting high value individuals, a group of people that author and economic development guru Richard Florida called the “creative class” in a series of books and lectures earlier this decade.

Starting with his 2002 NY Times bestseller The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life, Richard Florida penned a work that might be called a 21st Century Economic Development bible.

For anyone involved in city government at the leadership level, or in an Economic Development role, even at the staff level, this book is recommended reading. Florida, a PhD in Regional Economic Development, formerly of Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh and now at George Mason University outside our nation's capital of Washington, D.C., demonstrated his pioneer spirit and big thinking by stepping out to create a new vocabulary for a change in society.

Often those who get to name something do quite well, and that seems to be Florida's path, as he was first to perceive, then name a shift in working behavior patterns. Florida recognized the advent of a new class of workers with new ideas about working and living as a new demographic category, which he labeled the "Creative Class."

Work life has evolved over the past 125 years, Florida explains, changing society as the nature of work has changed. Agriculture was the dominant category once, but the Industrial Revolution brought more and more workers into the city in search of more preferable Industrial jobs, making that the dominant category for much of the 20th Century.

But by the second half of the last century we began to see the rise of the Service Sector, where workers provided services to various segments of society. Florida notes that more and more, there are new Creatives, who do not fit into any of these previous three categories, and who represent a sea change in their approach to working and living.

Those in this new Creative Class make a living using their brains, and many are highly paid. Unlike those before them, they tend to choose a place to live first, and a job second. They don't proceed from job interviews to the location where their new employer sends them. They identify an area first, then seek jobs in that area. Those areas chosen by the Creative Class seem to score high on what Florida calls the Three Ts: Talent, Technology, and Tolerance.

First, workers seek a high concentration of workers with talent like themselves, reasoning that there will be plentiful jobs in the area, and acknowledging that the average tenure for their types of jobs tends to be measured in a few years rather than in decades like their parents generation. They want to know that they will have choices when its time to move on, so they won't have to move away.

Second, workers seek a concentration of technology, the engine of economic growth in this new economy and an employer of choice for Creatives.

Third, they seek an Open Society characterized by tolerance for diversity. Florida cites such measures as the Bohemia Index and the Gay Index, two ways to measure and compare cities and rank them according to diversity and tolerance (if a society is tolerant of gays and hippies, it is likely to be tolerant of newcomers of various ethnic backgrounds, so the reasoning goes).

These creative types who live alternative lifestyles tend to congregate in cities that are open and accepting of diversity, and it's no coincidence that these same cities attract a large proportion of the Creative Class workers.

The bottom line lesson for those interested in Digital Transitions and Metropolitan Broadband is the connection here between having a technology asset such as a citywide wireless network and fitting in with cities like Austin, San Francisco, Boston, and Seattle.

In addition to ranking high on Florida's Creative Class criteria, all of these cities successfully attract creative workers in droves AND are out in front in terms of ensuring ubiquitous affordable broadband access, of both the wired and wireless varieties.

Economic Development

The best approaches to economic development highlight the attractive differences of a community, city or region.

Traditional approaches to economic development stress such attractions as regional assets, culture, sound infrastructure that supports and sustains economic activity, and even provide inducements such as tax breaks, tax credits, or even free land or office space.

In contrast, the Creative Class approach suggests a new approach, to gather together a dynamic community of talented individuals that has better potential than other communities.

With his three Ts approach, Florida suggests an economic development strategy that focuses less on hard assets, but seeks rather to attract Talent by leveraging Technology infrastructure and opportunity and fostering a Tolerant social climate.

The NEST model for Enhancement of Potential suggests an additional area of focus for a community. By first identifying, attracting and developing Talent, a community makes the most of what it has. By building in a program to add Skills and develop its human resources, a community goes further to enhance its potential. Through a deliberate program of gathering relevant Experiences, a community moves further and further down the learning curve and becomes ever more attractive, capable of supporting a growing array of jobs and industries, and weathering the inevitable economic downturns. Finally, by creating a Social Network of like communities and sharing knowledge and insights, a community moves ahead of its competition and becomes even more resilient, attractive, and in the long run, a sustainable society.

Community DNA and Brand

Like individuals, communities, towns, villages and cities start out with a defined set of talents, skills, and experiences. What they do with what they had to start with determines the extent to which they ultimately live up to their potential.

We all start out with a unique DNA, but we develop a brand as we go through life. It's the same with communities. Some are blessed with bounteous resources, others with natural beauty, still others with location: proximity to the sea, a river, a mountain pass or to valuable trade routes. Some are blessed with all these advantages.

But most communities are not so blessed. For those communities who are so lacking, they can find hope in the fact that all communities are comprised of individuals.

All communities have the potential to develop an environment that will bring out the best of those individuals. All communities have the potential to attract the best and the brightest based on the atmosphere they create in their local areas.

As Dr. Florida suggests, cities like Austin, San Francisco, Boston, and Seattle staked a claim to be leaders in the new economic order by their focus on human capital. By creating a brand as attractive destinations for the best and brightest of the new Creative Class, these cities and others who choose to go down this path seek to grow and build in the areas that will have value in the 21st century.

Digital Transitions and Metropolitan Broadband Networks are strategies to create the foundational technology base on which a community can establish its own brand as a Creative Class community.

Whether or not investing in digital infrastructure and new digital business processes attracts any new creative class talent, it remains a strategy to draw out the most potential of the community along the lines of the NEST model.

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