Richard Florida’s Global Creativity Index

Richard Florida, is Director of the Cities Initiative at the University of Toronto’s Martin Prosperity Institute. He and his research team have been ranking countries based on their creativity and economic competitiveness.  In this third report of the Global Creativity Index, Canada improved its standing from seventh-place in 2011, to fourth-place in a survey of 100 countries.

‘talent, technology and tolerance’

Charlotta Mellander is a professor of economics from Sweden and research director at the Prosperity Institute of Scandinavia. She is also a visiting scholar at U of T’s Martin Prosperity Institute. She says Canada’s ranking as fourth is good news. It goes together with positive aspects such as high rates of entrepreneurship and development and generally coincides with low rates of inequality.

Mellander says, like Scandinavia, which also scores well, the challenge is to continue to work hard on the aspects that we don’t score so highly on. She says investing in education and policy recommendations would go a long way to improving Canada’s standing as 14th on the Global Talent Index. Industry or occupational structures are important to review to nurture the knowledge economy. “How much do you pay people to think?” she asks.

‘Toronto is clearly a global hub’

Australia is the only country on the list that managed to get into the top 10 on the three major aspects of the index. talent, technology and tolerance, putting it in first place this year.. The research team will now sift through the results and investigate what is behind the successes they’ve found. In a time of economic decline worldwide, these insights may provide the necessary guidance to innovate.