A Funny Look at Economic Development

  DEFINITELY NOT SAFE FOR WORK.  Especially if you work in economic development for your city or region.  This clip explains how cities recruited new businesses in the Industrial Age.  Basically it comes down to massive bribes and bullshit.  Then high tech businesses emerged, and changed the game.  In 2002, Professor Richard Florida's book, The Rise of Creative Class explained that things now work much different in today's tech hub cities.  Hundreds of towns and cities worldwide sought to become "The Next Silicon Valley."  Nearly all of them of them failed, because Silicon Valley already happened.  It's like trying to become the next Lebron James.  You can't be Lebron.  What you can be is the best version of yourself.  That's what towns and cities nationwide are struggling with, shaking off Industrial Age thinking (like in the clip above), and figuring out how to become competitive in the Information Age were going into.  It's a whole different game.