08.09.06
| connected
Insights from San Jose Global Leadership Forum
Fifteen cities from across the globe using some version of a creative cities strategy to pursue their transnational ambitions met earlier this week in San Jose, capital of Silicon Valley.
CEOs for Cities board member and San Jose assistant director of economic and community development Kim Walesh brought them together on the eve of the Zero One San Jose Festival to collaborate on a number of questions they all face.
Cities represented include Zurich, Helsinki, Beijing, Melbourne, Shanghai, Guadalajara, Yokohama, Singapore, the cities of East of England, Liverpool, Toronto, Linz, the cities in the Basque Region of Spain and, of course, San Jose.
Here's my summary of important ideas emerging from the discussion:
1. The contemporization of diversity breaks up old ethic definitions and recombines into diversity of ages of interests.
2. Confidence is required for creativity.
3. Flipping negatives into positives is symbolic of what a city can accomplish, and therefore, are powerful confidence-builders.
4. Transnational cities are emerging. They are forming networks, exchanging talents and ideas with similarly capable cities, thereby building the capabilities of each.
5. The identity of these transnational cities exists independent of national identity.
6. People want to live near arts, culture, thinking, creativity and innovation. Districts that declare their intentions to encourage that kind of activity (and act on those intentions) will likely increase land value.
7. Intensity of location allows functions and people to spill into each other which is likely to spawn creativity. Fusion should be a goal. We should create environments that support “a meeting of the minds.”
8. Design can energize a city in a very short time.
9. The best festivals can produce “sparkling ideas” that inspire people to do great things.
10. Corporations increasingly go outside themselves for creativity – for great product design, for iconic buildings, for research and development. This increases the range of choices and allows the corporation to call on the devoted (and usually smaller) specialist.
11. The “new normal” is the remixable city, one in which people can create their own experiences out of pre-existing parts. By so doing, they change and add new value to the city.
12. Innovation thrives in a society in which the new and unexpected is accepted and embraced.
13. The better you get at doing something, the less likely you are to pick up on things happening on the periphery. In a hypercompetitive world, getting stuck looking at the world one way is deadly.
14. Competency gives you tunnel vision. We are shifting from managing competency to driving innovation.
15. We must walk the edge between strategic capability and strategic exploration.
16. Life in the digital age means building, tinkering, learning, sharing. We create meaning by what we produce and others build on.
17. Talent and capability-building are a non-zero sum game that we can all win.
18. The key is finding the specialized capabilities in local ecosystems and connect them together, then to foster local ecosystems and accelerate their capability-building by connecting to other similarly situated ecosystems.
19. Northing beats local culture for stimulating the formation of dynamic spikes by creating vibrant, creative places where art and science co-mingle.
20. Nurturing these new ecosystems requires leaders who honor risk taking, the emergent, and new ways of understanding. Listen with humility and create a milieu for challenging the status quo.