15 Nov 2003
Sat, 15 Nov 2003
Brain-Gain vs. Brain-Drain Cities
No surprises here. Indeed, halfway into it when I wondered when they'd start quoting Richard Florida, they quoted Richard Florida. The major comparison is between Cleveland and Seattle, an interesting contrast between turn of the century leading cities. They put Pittsburgh on the brain-drain list. No surprise there either.
Going the entrepreneurial route myself, I can attest to the difficulties encountered in a place like this, where just finding an audience that can comprehend what you are talking about is difficult, let alone the relative advantage or disadvantage from a hiring standpoint.
Around here, when you tell somebody that you are doing your own thing, a startup or something like that, you get the distinct feeling from the looks on their faces that they think you are an insane man. When I lived in Seattle or Boston, that was more a cause for high fives and congratulations.
That intangible cultural aspect is the biggest challenge that all of these rust belt incubators face. It's not really that there aren't fundable ideas, or people; it's that getting a critical mass of them together in one place, and having them all be part of the same risk-taking soup is nearly impossible. They were pickled in the wrong juice, and changing the pickling formula takes decades.
And it goes to the core of the culture. When I take my dog outside at 10 PM, there's not a light on in my entire neighborhood. If I go out to find something to eat at 10 PM, more than half the restaurants are either closed or stopped serving food. They're smart business people. Very few people here eat at that hour.
In Seattle, if you go out at 10 PM looking for food, you'll find a host of places ready to serve you, and they're bustling with folks that just came out of work. But why would anybody work that late unless they were heavily invested in the business?
Posted at: 11:20 | permalink
