By Richard Florida
April 25, 2005

• Already in the U.S., nearly one-quarter of all scientists and engineers, 40 percent of all engineering professors, and more than half of all PhDs in engineering, computer science, and the life sciences hail from foreign countries...Students are a leading indicator of global talent flows. The U.S. has many brilliant young people, but not nearly enough to satisfy the demand this nation's powerhouse economy has created.
• The total number of immigrants fell by 34 percent in 2003, the steepest decline since 1953...The economic costs are considerable. Visa delays have cost U.S. businesses roughly $30 billion in two years, according to a June, 2004 study by a consortium of industry groups...Open flows of people to and from the United States create powerful reciprocal benefits.
• Make no mistake, the United States cannot pin its economic future only on importing the huge amount of foreign talent its creative economy demands. It must also tap into the indigenous talent it already has. At the heart of these apparently unrelated symptoms is an underlying sickness: the aggravation and intensification of the fundamental class divide in America...While roughly 30 percent of our national workforce enjoys the ability to use their creativity at work and get paid for it, they leave the remaining 70 percent holding on dearly to far lower-paying service or manufacturing jobsÑstalled in place on the ladder of socioeconomic mobility.
• In my view, it's not amenitiesÑnor bohemians, nor even gaysÑthat give places the ability to grow and prosper, though they can all signal that ability. What accounts for why places grow is a more fundamental characteristic: simply put, their openness, or what I refer to as 'low barriers to entry' for talent. It is important to understand exactly how tolerance and diversity act on talent and in turn on economic growth.
• What cities and regions really need to do is figure out where they fall on each of the three Ts — Technology, Talent, and Tolerance — and make strategic investment in them, especially where they are weak. For cities and regions that are weak on technology or talent, it means bolstering the capabilities in those areas. For regions that are weak on tolerance, it means becoming more open. To be successful, regions need to do all three Ts well and to offer people lots of options.
• Outsourcing is a natural consequence of economic evolution and that it alone poses at best a minor threat to American jobs and living standards. It's when outsourcing is taken together with the new global competition for talent coming from countries such as Sweden, Finland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and others that America's real competitive challenge becomes clear.