Brain Gain

How innovative cities create job growth in an age of disruption

Selected by American City & County for the 2014 Leadership Book Club

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By the authors of Broadband Economies and Seizing Our Destiny

Brain Gain, now in its second edition, explains how innovative cities create job growth in an age of disruption. It is based on more than 20 years of research by the Intelligent Community Forum into cities and counties that have found the keys to long-term economic, social and cultural growth as the global economy changes drastically around them. The second edition adds new content on the ICF Method, the development framework that has powered the success of places Eindhoven, Netherlands and Tallinn, Estonia, to Austin, Texas, Waterfront Toronto and Taoyuan in Taiwan. It addresses crucial issues from improving education to the urban-rural divide, artificial intelligence to immigration, the new rules of the digital economy to the immense growth potential of small-to-midsize communities.

Brain Gain is a survival manual for cities and regions on how to build economic prosperity and meet social challenges in an age of technological change.

Why has the global economy created a projected jobs gap of 75 million persons? Why are jobless recoveries now commonplace and why are middle-skilled jobs being erased? Brain Gain explains how innovation combined with Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is driving global economic change and has created a new force to be dealt with – the global connectivity of the broadband Internet.

Brain Gain probes the big issues of work and well-being, the innovation economy, offshoring, immigration and the future of big cities and small towns as they deal with the broadband economy. Innovation and advances in communications technology destroy jobs but also create new ones, cities must decide if they want to take actions that will provide a brain gain or a brain drain.