The Issue

The enormous growth of the knowledge and information economies that rely on incessant innovation and creativity has been well documented by Richard Florida and other authors.  R&D expenditures in the US alone have grown by 5,000% in the last 50 years and something like 10M people in the US are employed in scientific, engineering, and/or “bohemian” endeavors.  Over 40% of the world’s population engaged in the core industries of the creative sector work in America.   This constitutes a unique competitive national advantage for the US, accounting for $1 trillion of GDP.  Clearly, the care and feeding of the creative class is a strategic priority for every group that wants to stay—or find—the leading edge of highly sustainable economic health.

Becoming and maintaining a creative class status can be quite challenging.  According to Florida, a number of metrics (such as  the degree to which a city is welcoming to both gays and families) are directly correlated with its prospects of being a creative center.  This sort of openness to diversity does not exist everywhere.

A critical mass of creative work was achieved in certain cities  (e.g., New York and San Francisco metropolitan areas) a long time ago.  In some senses, not much attention to the issue is needed beyond improving upon the formal and informal structures that are working well.  No one is planning to replace Carnegie Hall with a parking lot. 

The Response

Art of the Future specializes in Thriving Communities, a rigorous method that municipalities, professional societies, real and virtual communities can use to look into the future to develop strategies to become or continue to hold a robust creative core. 

Thriving Communities use the talents of many members of a community—including voices that may not get a lot of attention—to weave together provocative visions of different kinds of community prospects.  Some stories will demonstrate how an area could become a potent creative center; some will show how life will remain as it is in some dimensions; and others will indicate ways in which a community could unwittingly become inhospitalbe to a creative climate. 

Structural  Dynamics is at the heart of all of these stories by linking a variety of cause and effect relationships that are unique to the community of interest in a way that shows how very different stories can result from relatively small changes in a number of the critical elements of the overall picture.

Art of the Future utilizes a form of social network analysis (SNA) to figure out who influences the possible outcomes.  SNA leads to the discovery of “nodal” individuals and groups who are highly connected to the thinking of the key constituencies of a community.  These people frequently know each other or know of each other even if they are at loggerheads.  Others may be less obvious individuals who, nevertheless, wield a great deal of influence.  Their insights, their hopes and their fears are the fertile soil from which a community’s future will spring.  Art of the Future finds the key people to talk to, explores their thinking and brings them together into energizing and appreciative strategic conversations.  In addition to yielding bonding results in and of themselves, these conversations explore the stories and the strength of the strategies for attracting and holding on to members of the creative class.

Art of the Future has particular expertise in designing Life Sustaining Environments.  Creatives thrive in highly energetic and varied environments that simultaneously afford social contact and privacy.   Combining insights from architecture, organizational theory, group dynamics, and leadership practice, Art of the Future knows how to work with planners and enthusiasts to turn communities into magnetic attractors of artistic and innovative people who generate vitality, invention, charm and revenues. 

The Process