Defining Opportunity Spaces

[Yvette Dubel]

Although I've been a bit quiet, there is much going on behind the scenes. Among the things in progress is the paper I've been developing about the context and lessons of Cultural Fusion. In that pursuit I have again revised the opening. This article is an excerpt from my paper/manuscript still in progress. The biggest change is that profit and social capital divorced :-( I was initially very sad about this, but alas social capital has a new love and it is a romance made in cyberspace!

“Every society, on every continent, regardless of ethnicity or socioeconomic conditions has contributed its own intellectual products to the collective out put of humankind, because the bringing forth of cognitive and creative impulses are as compelling as the bringing forth of offspring.”
Dr. Constance Hilliard
Intellectual Traditions of Pre-colonial Africa


I
SoulFood:New Framework for Defining Opportunity Spaces

Creativity and social capital are made for each other. When they are united, it’s as if they’ve fallen in love. Social capital is the value inherent in interpersonal networks. Its amalgamation with creativity signals a radical redefinition of the global landscape as the key to unveiling new facets of success. And as with a genuine romance, the result is a dynamic shift, a shedding of the old and a reaching out to the new — in this case, to inclusion of intangible economies and experience.

Consider the “Source Arts” (or the socially conscious driven creative class) as a core boutique market to be empowered with CRM (customer relationship management) Strategy solutions that deliver on the promises of the relationship and experience economies to invest in a global emerging market. Furthermore, this paper concerns itself with how this can employ glocalization to address regional issues on a global scale. This is not meant to suggest a one off solution for every community around the world, but rather a conceptual and implementation model powered by the right network of technological and process systems solutions that harness the individuals’ creativity and affection for place to develop community remedies that evolve.

In the U.S. the group broadly identified as the creative class, appear to constitute 30% of the workforce according to Richard Florida, but skilled labor is not the defining element in this discussion. Rather, it is the conscious pursuit of perfection, fueled by creative passion, and personal satisfaction in work undertaken that brings artistry into play, so artists will be treated as a specific niche within the “creative class.” He suggests that they are emerging as the dominant force in the economy and can already be spotted by their impact in shaping regional economies. Sustainable economic growth flows where they thrive because they will search to find communities that inspire them, and for places clinging to old models the opposite is true because businesses will sniff out the creativity they need in order to innovate. Small and midsized businesses need the group that Florida denotes as the “creative class” in his book The Rise of the Creative Class to provide the creative services that used to be provided by in-house staff in the corporate model. But it is not only businesses which need what these creative individuals have to offer.

The concept of [radical] inclusion extends this to include creative classes overlooked in Florida’s analysis.

[Radical] Inclusion is when Attention is paid ONLY to inclusion.... SoulFood Tradition guides the way in making all feel valued and welcomed.

This discussion is distinguished from previous work exploring the creative class and low cash customers by embracing traditionally low cash communities and recognizing the value of intangible assets (creativity and attention).