Charging the magnet

By Gerald L. Bepko, Chancellor of IUPUI

This week, the Indiana Health Industry Forum and the Central Indiana Life Sciences Initiative kicked off the formation of a joint Workforce Attraction and Retention Taskforce with a presentation by Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class. A professor of regional economic development at Carnegie Mellon University, Florida argues:

“The key to economic growth lies . . . in the ability to attract the creative class . . . a fast-growing, highly educated, and well-paid segment of the workforce on whose efforts corporate profits and economic growth increasingly depend. Members of the creative class do a wide variety of work in a wide variety of industries—from technology to entertainment, journalism to finance, high-end manufacturing to the arts. They do not consciously think of themselves as a class. Yet they share a common ethos that values, creativity, individuality, difference and merit.”

Florida observed that economically successful regions attract the “creative class” because they have “low entry barriers for people.” People feel like they “fit in” easily. They offer participatory recreation (nightlife and outdoor amenities) over passive, institutionalized forms. They value their authenticity (historic buildings, established neighborhoods) and uniqueness (arts and cultural features). They encourage creativity and innovation. They appreciate and cultivate diversity in all its manifestations—from food, to music, to alternative lifestyles.

The key for the Indianapolis region and its business, government and community leadership is to work together with schools, colleges and universities to provide an intellectual “magnet” that will make our region a place where high-energy, well-educated, creative people want to live and work. Indianapolis already has many ingredients to be attractive to the new “creative class,” and IUPUI clearly has an important role to play in raising Indiana’s educational attainment level, in attracting research and development activity, in converting research knowledge into new technologies and products, and in stimulating a diverse arts and cultural community.

The raw materials for economic growth are here in the IUB/IUPUI corridor in such projects as the Indiana Genomics Initiative and the Central Indiana Life Sciences Initiative. Those initiatives give promise for magnetic appeal in the life sciences. The Network Operations Center for Internet2 and other high-speed networks are located at IUPUI, soon to be in the new Informatics and Communications Technology Complex. Another important feature is created by Eskenazi Hall, the new home for our Herron School of Art. And the increases in the number of students studying at IUPUI, as well as the even more dramatic increases in the number of persons graduating each year from IUPUI, a very large percentage of which stay in Indiana, also contribute to charging the magnet. We hope to create cultures of excellence that will cause our well-educated people, our creative class, to stay—and others to move here—so that Indiana can take back its congressional seat lost to the sunbelt seats in the last decennial census.

IUPUI goes a long way toward establishing a creative class all by itself. “Explore IUPUI” tomorrow, our campus-wide open house, will be an opportunity to see our creativity and what we mean when we say, “IUPUI: The Future is Here.”