The Creative Compact

For all you pessimists out there who believe our country has lost its edge and its position as a global leader, Richard Florida, author of “Rise of the Creative Class”, has a proposal that outlines our nation’s path back to the role of respected world leader.

Florida is calling for a new Creative Compact – a Creative Economy analog to the great social compact of the 1930’s, 40s & 50s, which expanded and accelerated the Industrial Economy and led to the great golden age of prosperity.

During that time, the Industrial Society was spurred into existence by a new social compact known as the New Deal which brought capital and labor closer together, by encouraging the development of mass production unions, linking wage increases to productivity gains, by improving health and safety in the workplace, and by creating social security for older people and basic social welfare service for the truly needy.

Florida’s paper suggests that we need a new social pact, attuned to the demands of the Creative Economy. He offers 10 principles as the starting point for a much needed national and global conversation.

#1. Every Human Being is Creative
#2. Encourage Entrepreneurship across the Board
#3. Expand Innovation
#4. A Social Agenda for Creativity
#5. Restructure Education for Creativity
#6. The University as Creative Hub
#7. Make Every Community a Creative Community
#8. Leverage the Local
#9. Recommit to Openness and Diversity
#10. A Global Agenda

By devoting its energy to this kind of effort to spread the benefits of the creative economy across the globe, the United States can reclaim its status as a truly open and free society and lead the world and its people in becoming a more prosperous and less divided place. More importantly, it can reassert itself as a risk-taking society, one which encourages entrepreneurship and experimentation by caring for its people and providing for their basic security – physical, social, political, and economic.

If you’d like to read the full paper go to:
http://www.creativeclass.com/article_library/search.php?searchKeywords=creative+compact