Toronto Lures Florida

A noted researcher, whose insight into the “creative class” has been lauded by the Harvard Business Review as a major breakthrough idea, has been officially welcomed to the faculty of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.

Richard Florida will be a professor of business and creativity and the Academic Director of the newly established Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management. The Institute will be housed at the MaRS Centre in Toronto’s Discovery District until new facilities are built adjacent to the Rotman School by 2011.

Prof. Florida is well known for his work on economic competitiveness, demographic trends and cultural and technological innovation. In the last five years, he has penned the international bestsellers, The Rise of the Creative Class and The Flight of the Creative Class, which launched an intellectual revolution that has changed the way companies, nations and communities compete and thrive.

The Prosperity Institute, which was previously announced as the Centre for Jurisdictional Advantage and Prosperity, is a $120 million project made possible by a cornerstone $50 million investment in the Rotman School by the Province of Ontario. Currently, the study of how jurisdictions, including provinces, become magnets for companies to start up, locate and grow, and for talent to study, live and work, has been fragmented across many diverse fields. Over the past decade, the Rotman School has assembled the largest academic research group in Canada dedicated to the study of jurisdictional advantage.

In addition to his academic role at the Rotman School, Prof. Florida is the founder of the Creative Class Group, a global think tank, which is based in Washington, D.C. Previously he was the Hirst Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University and a former senior scientist with the Gallup Organization. He taught for nearly two decades at Carnegie Mellon University and has been a visiting professor at MIT and Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He earned his bachelor’s from Rutgers College and his Ph.D. from Columbia University.

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