Richard Florida provides unique insight into the values and lifestyles that will drive the 21st Century economy. Florida is one of the world’s leading public intellectuals on economic competitiveness, demographic trends, and cultural and technological innovation. Serving as Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, a Global Research Professor at New York University and the founder of the Creative Class Group, he works closely with governments and companies worldwide.
Florida is author of the global best-seller The Rise of the Creative Class (2002) and Who’s Your City? (2008), which was also an Amazon book of the month. His book, The Great Reset (2010), explains how new ways of living and working will drive post-crash prosperity. His latest book is entitled The New Urban Crisis: How Our Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle Class and What We Can Do About It (2017).
Perhaps the world’s leading urbanist, “as close to a household name as it is possible for an urban theorist to be in America,” according to The Economist, Florida shares how self-motivated, creative people are challenging the traditional structures of society and details how the emergence of this new social class is profoundly transforming work, leisure, community and everyday life. Esquire included him on its annual list of “The Best and the Brightest,” and Fast Company dubbed him an “intellectual rock star.” MIT Technology Review recently named him “one of the world’s most influential thinkers” and TIME magazine recognized his Twitter feed as one of the “140 most influential in the world.” In 2013, he was named a Global Thought Leader by the Gottleib Duttweiler Institute, alongside Al Gore, George Soros, Jeffrey Sachs, Elon Musk and Deepak Chopra.
Florida is Senior Editor for The Atlantic, where he co-founded and serves as Editor-at-Large for Atlantic Cities, the world’s leading media site devoted to cities and urban affairs. He is also a regular columnist for The Globe and Mail. He has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Economist and The Harvard Business Review. He has also been featured as an expert on MSNBC, CNN, BBC, NPR and CBS, to name just a few. His ideas on the “creative class,” commercial innovation and regional development have been featured in major ad campaigns from BMW and Apple, and are being used globally to change the way regions and nations do business and transform their economies.
Success in the future, says Florida, is not just about technology, government, management or even power, but about people and their dynamic and emergent patterns of relationships. Florida helps audiences understand how the locations of certain talent pools influence daily life in those areas and how the success of these areas is often dependent on the talent available.
Richard Florida previously taught at Carnegie Mellon and George Mason University, and has been a visiting professor at Harvard and MIT. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from Rutgers College and his Ph.D. from Columbia University.
