Travels from District of Columbia, USA
Richard Florida's speaking fee falls within range: $30,000 to $50,000
The best-selling author of The Rise of the Creative Class, social scientist Richard Florida is one of the key forces driving urban regeneration. Renown for his cutting-edge research, he has spent more than a decade helping city planners revitalize communities and convert some of the country’s declining urban areas into inviting places to live.
Florida serves as the Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management; additionally, he is a Global Research Professor at New York University. He rose to “intellectual rock stardom” with widely read publications like The Rise of the Creative Class and Who’s Your City amongst five other titles, all of which speak about how innovators are a category in themselves.
Florida’s focus on creative and bohemian classes has generated extensive attention and action; he has been named one of the world’s most influential thinkers by MIT Technology Review, one of the world’s global thought leaders of 2013 by GDI, and one of the most followed scientists by the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science).
Florida’s most recent work can be read in The Great Reset, which examines how crises and recessions spur eras of growth and prosperity, and what we can expect for the U.S. as we move away from the 2008 Financial Crisis.
Author and Thought Leader
Richard Florida is author of the global best-seller The Rise of the Creative Class and Who’s Your City? a national and international best seller and amazon.com book of the month. His new book, The Great Reset explains how new ways of living and working will drive post-crash prosperity.
He is author of The Flight of the Creative Class and Cities and the Creative Class. His previous books, especially The Breakthrough Illusion and Beyond Mass Production, paved the way for his provocative looks at how creativity is revolutionizing the global economy.
Florida is senior editor for The Atlantic and a regular CNN contributor. He has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Economist, The Globe and Mail and The Harvard Business Review. He has been featured as an expert on MSNBC, BBC, NPR and CBS, to name just a few.
Richard has also been appointed to the Business Innovation Factory’s Research Advisory Council and recently named European Ambassador for Creativity and Innovation.
Florida’s 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.
Florida is one of the world’s leading public intellectuals on economic competitiveness, demographic trends, and cultural and technological innovation. International diplomats, government leaders, filmmakers, economic development organizations and leading Fortune 100 businesses have benefited from his global approach to problem-solving and strategy development.
He is one of the world’s most sought after speakers on global trends, economics, prosperity, competitiveness and growth. Combining in-depth analysis, cutting-edge trends, a fascinating personal story, and just a touch of self-deprecating humor, it’s no wonder Florida was recently named one of Esquire Magazine’s Best and Brightest, alongside luminaries such as Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Sachs.
Richard Florida gets to the true root of prosperity: human creativity. Pushing Wall Street and the housing market aside, he proposes that our ability to harness our imagination is the true source of our success, citing it as the common factor behind every invention and technology humans have built and developed.
Surveying recent economic trends, he makes his case that we are entering a new economic paradigm grounded in one of humanity’s most defining qualities. “It’s the thing that distinguishes us from every other species,” Florida declares. “Creativity is the new economy.”
Leading urban theorist Richard Florida discusses the vital role of creativity in our society and the rising economic paradigm that sees at least 40% of U.S. workers employed in the creative sector. His various presentations examine how this new economy can reverse the growing inequality plaguing 21st century America and what communities can do to ensure their city is a vibrant flourishing entity that attracts top talent.
Combining in-depth analysis, cutting-edge trends, compelling personal stories and a touch of humor, it is no wonder Richard Florida is one of the world’s most sought after speakers, alongside luminaries such as Bill Clinton, Bill Gates and Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O’Connor. As a leading public intellectual, Esquire Magazine recently named him one of their Best and Brightest. Richard has also been appointed to the Business Innovation Factory’s Research Advisory Council and recently named European Ambassador for Creativity and Innovation.
Suggested Speaking Topics:
SPEAKING.COM: What do you want people to learn/take away from your presentations?
FLORIDA: Simple. Every human being is creative. If we want to grow our businesses, economy and communities, we have to tap into the creativity of everyone – not just the Creative Class
SPEAKING.COM: What kind of special prep work do you do prior to an event? How do you prepare for your speaking engagements?
FLORIDA: We schedule time with the client to understand their needs, goals and expectations for the presentation. Then, my team and I tailor my message to meet those expectations, with the hopes of providing inspiration for the audience but also practical insights to the challenges that they face.
SPEAKING.COM: Have you had any particularly memorable speaking engagements / unusual situations arise while on the road?
FLORIDA: Sure, I have been honored to speak along side President Bill Clinton, President Barack Obama, SAS Founder and CEO Jim Goodnight and Bill Gates. My most memorable road experience was taking a helicopter ride to a speaking engagement in Siberia.
SPEAKING.COM: What types of audiences would most benefit from your message?
FLORIDA: Businesses, consumer brands, cities, non-profit organizations, foundations and governmental bodies
SPEAKING.COM: Which of your keynote speaking topics are your favorites?
FLORIDA: I enjoy speaking about creativity, cities, economic development, urbanism, consumer profiles and targeting and real estate trends.
SPEAKING.COM: What inspired you to start doing speaking engagements?
FLORIDA: I love having the opportunity to shape the fields of business, economics, urbanism and economic development. I believe the ideas that my team and I are putting forth are helping us build more creative, inclusive businesses and communities. Speaking affords me a platform to share those ideas.
SPEAKING.COM: How do you keep your audience engaged and actively listening during your keynotes? Do you use case studies, personal stories and/or in your speeches?
FLORIDA: I do not speak from notes or presentation slides; this helps me to build a rapport and relationship with my audience. Likewise, I use personal stories, case studies and the most recent, cutting-edge research to support my key messages.
SPEAKING.COM: What are some of the successes you’ve helped clients achieve?
FLORIDA: For brands and businesses, from IBM and Google to Converse and BMW, I’ve offered insights and strategies from how to target the Creative Class consumer to managing today’s Creative Class worker. For cities, real estate professionals, non-profits and governmental entities all over the world – literally all over the globe from Vancouver and Hong Kong to Sydney, Austria and Warsaw Poland – I have outlined the changing trends in our economy, communities and built environments.
“It was fantastic to listen to Richard…the performance not only fulfilled our expectations but opened a new stage of inspirations for our Ministry to work on the development of regions.” Patrycja Artymowska, Office of President, Poland Ministry of Regional Development
“Your substantive insights on ‘Creative Cities and Urban Development Reform’ contributed greatly to the deliberations at the Conference.” Toshihiro Tanaka, Country Director, United Nations Development Program
“An urban-development expert…His ideas about revitalizing cities by attracting artists and high-tech workers have influenced a generation of urban planners.” Andrea Sachs, TIME
“…he’s changed the framework for discussing social and economic inequality.” Herbert Muschamp, New York Times, Year in Review
“……Florida’s work is challenging many of the verities of the field.” Salon.com
“Never before have I seen anyone capture so succinctly the values and desires of the new ‘creative class’ and the essence of human capital and the creative ethos.” John Seely Brown, Former Director, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and co-author of The Social Life of Information
“The creative-capital theory turned out – at least after preliminary testing – to provide the best explanation for Austin’s high-tech transformation.” New York Times
“Florida’s research and experiences over the past decade have given him the foundation on which to build a new view of business reality…” Herbert Muschamp, InformationWeek
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
Speaker rating
Comments about seeing this speaker live? (This field not required to submit a star rating.)
Name *
Email *
Currently you have JavaScript disabled. In order to post comments, please make sure JavaScript and Cookies are enabled, and reload the page. Click here for instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your browser.
The Great Reset: How the Post-Crash Economy Will Change the Way We Live and Work
We′ve weathered tough times before. History teaches us that periods of “creative destruction,” like the Great Depression of the 1930s, also present opportunities to remake our economy and society and to generate whole new eras of economic growth and prosperity.
In The Great Reset, bestselling author and economic development expert Richard Florida provides an engaging and sweeping examination of these previous economic epochs, or “resets,” while looking toward the future to identify the patterns that will drive the next Great Reset and transform virtually every aspect of our lives.
He distills the deep forces that alter physical and social landscapes—how and where we live, how we work, how we invest in individuals and infrastructure, how we shape our cities and regions—and shows the ways in which these forces, when combined, will spur a fresh era of growth and prosperity, define a new geography of progress, and create surprising opportunities for all of us.
Order Here
The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent
The most valued workers today are what the economist Richard Florida calls the Creative Class, skilled individuals ranging from money managers to make–up artists, software programmers to steady–cam operators who are in constant demand around the world.
Florida′s bestselling The Rise of the Creative Class identified these workers as the source of economic revitalization in American cities. In that book, he shows that investment in technology and a civic culture of tolerance (most–often marked by the presence of a large gay community) are the key ingredients to attracting and maintaining a local creative class.
In The Flight of the Creative Class, Florida expands his research to cover the global competition to attract the Creative Class. The United States was, up until 2002, the unparalleled leader in creative capital. But several key events––the Bush administrations emphasis on smokestack industries, heightened security concerns after 9/11 and the growing cultural divide between conservatives and liberals––have put the US at a substantial dis–advantage.
The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It′s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community, and Everyday Life
The Washington Monthly 2002 Annual Political Book Award Winner
The Rise of the Creative Class gives us a provocative new way to think about why we live as we do today-and where we might be headed. Weaving storytelling with masses of new and updated research, Richard Florida traces the fundamental theme that runs through a host of seemingly unrelated changes in American society: the growing role of creativity in our economy.
Just as William Whyte′s 1956 classic The Organization Man showed how the organizational ethos of that age permeated every aspect of life, Florida describes a society in which the creative ethos is increasingly dominant. Millions of us are beginning to work and live much as creative types like artists and scientists always have-with the result that our values and tastes, our personal relationships, our choices of where to live, and even our sense and use of time are changing. Leading the shift are the nearly 38 million Americans in many diverse fields who create for a living-the Creative Class.
The Rise of the Creative Class chronicles the ongoing sea of change in people′s choices and attitudes, and shows not only what′s happening but also how it stems from a fundamental economic change. The Creative Class now comprises more than thirty percent of the entire workforce. Their choices have already had a huge economic impact. In the future they will determine how the workplace is organized, what companies will prosper or go bankrupt, and even which cities will thrive or wither.
Call us / email us / check availability and fee for your favorite speaker.
