John Hagel on Richard Florida
John Hagel's latest book, with John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison, is: The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion.
At Hagel's Edge Perspectives blog, he compares his thinking with that of Richard Florida, whose new book is called, The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity:
Here’s a paradox. Silicon Valley’s success hinges on an explosive mix of people and place. Yet, when most Silicon Valley denizens gather to discuss opportunities, conversation quickly narrows to a discussion of data flows and virtual platforms. ...
Richard Florida, on the other hand, is all about people and place. Better than anyone, he deeply understands that people and place shape outcomes in profound ways. …
In reflecting on Richard Florida’s wonderful and provocative book, I am struck by its complementarity with the Big Shift framework we developed in The Power of Pull. That’s not surprising, given that his previous work very much influenced our perspective. We also believe that we are in the midst of a longer-term profound shift in the economy, although we would date the shift much earlier than the current financial crisis. We would also place far more emphasis on the role of new generations of technology infrastructure, especially the Internet, in driving these changes than Richard does (the Index of his book has no reference at all to the Internet and the only infrastructure it references, true to the emphasis on people and place, is transportation infrastructure).
Yet we agree that people and place are becoming more and more important at the same time. The increasing spikiness of our world is driven at least in part by the growing importance of flows of tacit knowledge that typically flourish with physical proximity.
