Connect with Fast Company

Want to get a quick take on how your city or region is faring in the all-out competition for talent? Start by determining the percentage of gays that are in your population. The "gay index" is the leading predictor of a city's ability to attract and retain knowledge workers, claims Richard Florida, founder and director of the Software Industry Center at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University and professor of regional economic development. It's not that gay employees themselves are critical for building a tech-savvy base of operations. It's that a gay population is a dependable indicator of the environmental factors -- tolerance, openness to diversity, and lots of urban-oriented amenities -- that are critical for attracting world-class workers.

This is just one of several eye-opening insights from Florida, 43, a pioneering cartographer of talent. Using focus groups, interviews, and an eclectic array of demographic data, Florida is plotting the sociological factors that enable cities to attract human capital. Chief among his findings: In an insecure, temporary, free-agent-dominated world, the crusaders of the new economy increasingly take their professional identities from where they live, rather than from where they work. "Not so long ago you'd meet a guy on a plane, ask him what he does, and he'd tell you that he's a software programmer at Trilogy," says Florida. "Now it's, 'I write code and live in Austin.' "

In the battle for talent, Florida argues that location is supplanting the corporation. "We've shifted from a company-centric economy to a people-driven one," he says. "People are turning to community rather than to corporations to define themselves." When smart, skilled job candidates visit a company, they don't just take in the work space and the culture. Increasingly, they check out the surrounding streets, the parks, and the night spots. They look for audial and visual cues, such as active outdoor recreation, a thriving music scene, lots of amenities, and high energy, which signal that this is a place where they can live as well as work.

Florida has a similar message for people who work in high tech and other hyper-growth professions: Place is just as important as salary and career opportunity. In his focus groups and interviews, virtually every person who made a job-based decision to relocate but neglected lifestyle factors such as recreational and cultural amenities said that they moved again shortly thereafter.

Florida's research is starting to yield compelling theories about what will draw talent to certain cities and about how companies that adapt to this change in the workforce will end up being big winners. In an interview, he mapped out the geography of talent -- and the realities that confront cities, companies, and people.

1. Virtual communities just aren't enough -- talent seeks out places with real assets.

Lots of Internet enthusiasts argue that the Web has made geography irrelevant, that people are finding their communities in cyberspace. In fact, in a talent-driven economy, place becomes even more important, because people still need to have lives. One of my students put it this way: "My work is a series of projects. My life is a series of moves. My parents had institutions that they were connected to. What can I connect to? My community."