The Creative Class and Regional Growth: Towards a Knowledge Based Approach

Research in regional growth has been characterised by two trends in recent years. The first is that creativity and talents are seen as parameters for regional growth. The creative class approach has argued that competition for talents has increased as innovation becomes crucial for maintaining competitiveness. This has forced local and regional authorities to implement new political actions toward supplementing the traditional business orientated policies with policies orientated towards attracting and retaining people. The second trend argues that regional analysis and policy-making need to be disaggregated to meet the diverse needs of different regions and due to the particularities characterizing innovative industries drawing on different knowledge bases. This paper argues that combining the understanding of knowledge on a disaggregated level that characterizes the knowledge base approach and the perspective on talent that the creative class approach represents provide a promising framework for regional analysis.