My supervisors

My main supervisor is Anne Lorentzen and my secondary supervisor is Phil Cooke.

From my previous post “How not to get a PhD“ it was stressed the importance of the supervisor for a successful completion of your PhD. Well, I’m quite happy with my both supervisors. It’s not unusual in Aalborg to have two supervisors, which I like, because you get two different mentors.  

I’m not going to start saying good things about them, because although they currently don’t know I have this humble blog, perhaps in the future they will find out.

I will just say they’re good academic people. Anne is quite enthusiast about our project, and I love that. Phil Cooke, is an outstanding scholar. It’s amazing talking to him and see how intelligent he is.

They both have very different backgrounds, and different beliefs and interests. So is great to have them. I think they will be complementary for my work. Last week we had PhD course and it was very interesting. I have learned a lot.

My presentation at the conference.

Here is the power point presentation I prepared for the conference. It was really exciting and I meet many great people in the conference. It’s so exciting to find that many other academics are studying these issues. I also enjoyed the atmosphere of Prague.

In my presentation there were 3 other presentations, and I got 3 or 4 questions that I loved to answer. Many never heard about the “experience economy” so it was nice to see their faces.

Regional Studies Association 2008 Conference.

I’m going now to Prague, Czech Republic, for the Conference. I’m quite nervous for my presentation. I will upload, later. I’m afraid I will be working on it till the last minute.
My conference paper, wanted to go on a direction I could not take due to my questions. It will be soon online too.
It’s quite exciting to go to a conference where I’m going to talk for the first time, it’s not my first presentation in public, but is the first one in a Conference.

Richard Florida at Googleplex

Richard Florida visits Googles headquarters to discuss his book “Who’s Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life.” This event took place on March 28, 2008

This is an hour presentation. It has been fantastic listening to him. There are many things that I could comment about it. I like the idea of the importance of taking decissions on where to live. I have been also surfing Florida’s site Who’s Your City, and I specially enjoyed the maps sections.

I have to say that the two main critics I had about him have him addressed. The first one, is that the there is no correlation on this issues, as he says in the economic phenomenon things are very complex, ”association” better fits the term. The second thing, is that while looking at the new megaregions, he’s using number of patents to measure innovation. Which I consider with too many flaws, specially at the international level, but in the video he said something: “Using number of patents is quite a rude thing to do, it could have been done better…” 

That by the way, is something that I commente on his blog. I wonder if I could ever influence a 0.01% him? That would be cool.

How not to get a PhD

One of my professors suggested me the book “How to Get a PhD“. Then I run into this website who was talking about “How to not get a PhD.” Because I’m starting I really appreciated this information, the book I have no read it yet, but the article was quite fun.

It summarizes 7 ideas, that I would like to keep present: 

 ”Be aware of the seven ways of not getting a PhD:
· not wanting a PhD;

· overestimating what is required;

· underestimating what is required;

· having a supervisor who does not know what is required;

· losing contact with your supervisor;

· not having a ‘thesis’ (i.e. position, argument) to maintain;

· taking a new job before completing.

It’s interesting to remember that there is a great number of PhD students who can’t or don’t want to finish their studies. One needs to keep these 7 things present.  

Joel Kotkin vs. Richard Florida. II

This post is like a continuation of Kotkin comes to Denmark to kick R. Florida

So my colleague H.P. pointed me out that Florida quotes Kotkin in “The Rise of the Creative Class” to support his argument. I totally overlooked at it! In fact, Florida quotes him a couple of times, and it looks they’re perfectly in tune.
Googling a little bit about their relationship, I found that Florida last summer gave his opinion about the “Kotkin-Florida debate” as he says, quoting Bill Fulton to support that Kotkin came after him without any reason and that Kotkin’s arguments are getting old. I don’t know what to say about that. I mean these guys don’t really like each other.  

The thing is that they are working in different spheres, they both bring their contributions, but sometimes is just hard (at least for me) to put them together. I also feel that Kotkin has his feet more on the ground, but he just focus on criticizing instead of giving ideas. For example, Kotkin and Florida meet in Pittsburg last February. They agree in immigration, entrepreneurship, and both disagree in building huge projects (like the stadium), but it’s they’re always putting disagreeing at the end.

Gotta love these guys.  

hard bloggin’ scientist

I subscribe to this Manifesto. Even if you do not mention it in your blog, I hope you also do.

The Creative Economy UN Report

I was talking with some colleagues and professors from MIKE, one of my old professors aware of my research handed the new “Creative Economy. UN Report 2008“. I was pretty impressed, a United Nations report?

It’s hard to believe that in so little time the “Creative Economy” concept has got such relevance. In fact, I had to check inside that they were really talking about the Creative Economy, as Richard Florida put it. As I said before I’m not a great fan of Florida, but of course I think I understand the importance of this “economy”. I mean everything in a city it’s not about infrastructures, local policy makers should understand that people also look for “cool experiences”.

In 13 November 2006, I dedicated a post titled “The Creative Class; in USA, Europe, Denmark, Spain and Aalborg“, that was in a temporary class blog some students used during a semester abroad. I mentioned that I was doing a study in Spain in the top 10 metropolitan regions using Florida’s methodology to find the most creative ones. The most important result for me was that there is not causality, between ”creative economy” and “the economy”, and that ”creative class” and ”non-creative class” flock together. That is cool places, or big metropolitan places, equally attracted “creative” and “non-creative” people.

We could say that maybe this is what happens in Spain. But I ask you: How well do you know Florida’s methodology? and, Have you ever attempted to do a city comparison study with it?. If you have done it, I will be 100% interested in hearing from you. If you have not done it…

 

Intrapreneurship, and its potential to create a fruitful discussion

Yesterday I presented to my group (2 professors and 3 other phd students) some of the ideas that I have working on. It was my first presentation as a phd students so I have to admit I was a little bit nervous.

I think the idea that most caught their attention was the “intrapreneurship” concept. Today I have been adding some things in Wikipedia about it. Well, I have a deadline to meet this May 10 to submit a paper for the RSA Conference. So, if you want to know more about intrapreneurship and how it can be connected to innovation and the experience economy, then read my next paper (next week) and stay around! 

What happens when the experience economy meets the recession economy?

For one month I have been a phd student. One of the subjects to analyze during my studies will be the experience economy, so I have been studying the issue for a while. Reading at the economics section of the newspaper today (like this article), I can clearly see what I have been thinking during two years, a economis slowdown is approaching. I did not know how big is going to be, in fact nobody knows, but things might get serious. I mean is quite distressing, for example the stocks of Sturbucks (the  most repeated example about experience economy), falling to 15$ a share when it was almost 40$ 2 years ago. Of course, the stockmarket it’s not a place to measure the experience economy, is just an example.

So it kept me thinking. How is this economic downturn going to affect the experience economy? I have been recently surfing the net for answers and I found people in this field are also concern about it. Stephanie Weaver’s blog, two months ago, asked the question

“What happens when the experience economy meets the recession economy?”

And invited several important people to answer as guest bloggers. Even Joe Pine participated. Probably all have a bias to answer everything will be fine, I mean history experts are not that well paid  But I think they make some good points.

I think this subject can be related with the discussion about innovation. The other day I was watching a small video with the P&G CEO Lafley on innovation and recession (uploaded on April 17, 2008). He claimed something like innovation will always be in their strategy (it would be weird for him to say otherwise), and I think he’s right. In my thinking, Innovation is about surviving, not about making huge profits. Therefore my conclussion about the experience economy, is that business before had to keep their eyes out to improve their business in the fields of products, services and experiences. Now with a slowdown, it would not make sense to forget about offering experiences and solely concentrate in products and services.