New reports made for Europe shows as much as a quarter of the workforce are in fact one way or another engaged in or involved in, one or more forms of creative activities and one interesting finding is that they are almost all located in or around the major cities within an approximate radius of 60 to 80 kilometres.

The studies also showed that smaller cities and communities could improve their creative potentials if the access to major cities were made easier, faster and more accessible. The same studies also showed that the villages located close to major cities, score higher on the creativity index than sites located further away.

However the same studies showed that open smaller communities that had a highly co-operative and collaborative culture characterised by trust, has far more positive and creative development than communities with high levels of conflicts, class distinction, suspicion behaviours, distrust and jealously. It also seams to be that a multicultural environment together with fearless entrepreneurs that got strong local and global networks are the most important ingredients for the development of such local and small creative communities.

As used by George Mason University professor of public policy Richard Florida's theory of Creativity Index, as an principle, the driving force for creativity is the 3 T's, namely TALENT, TECHNOLOGY and TOLERANCE. According to Florida, if you're not in a creative city you won't attract top talents and it needs a fundamental creative base, based on the principle that ideas occur in places that are breeding grounds for creativity and growth like in creative industries, software and technology parks, clusters, incubation centres and technical collages and universities.

In today's global situation, human resources are key competitive factors for creativity and cities and towns that are using this as a grassroots theory for its developments and put their focus on people instead of infrastructure could in fact create a highly valued pool of creative human capital. On the long run however, talented people can easily move from city to city, country to country and continent to continent so its important to also have flexible immigration laws to allow import of human capital as well as support to the local industry to ensure the human resources stays in their local communities. Such support must include all private sectors ranging from entertainment sector to workplaces, where modern and fast transport system within and to and from nearby cities and communities should be part of any creative city planning.

As an example on the needs for human resources, in Germany - out of the total workforce of ethic Germans, 98.2% have school diplomas and 19.49% has Bachelor's degree or more diplomas. For foreigners living and working in Germany the same numbers are 78.8% for those with school diplomas but as much as 25.4% for those with Bachelor's degree or more diplomas which in fact might represent larger part of Germany's creative sector. In USA the same figures are 84.6% for school diplomas, 27.2% for Bachelor's degree and 6.9% for the more diplomas group, but not all 50 states could show same percentages as Texas had the lowest scores with 25.3% for the Bachelor's degree group. In Thailand nearly 80% complete grade 12 but only about 30% of students that takes the tests are accepted to enter universities.

Because Germany is topping any list with most successful creative cities in Europe, as well being the most successful European economy, using Germany as a good example is important. For more than 10 years, MISOLIMA has good working experience with UK, France and Germany and we can see that in mid-size German companies that are located relatively far from major cities (60-100 Kilometres) were still able to attract well educated skilled workers from other nearby cities and from countries such as Belgium, Austria, France, Poland and United Kingdom for their creative developments and work. Our observation is that as much as 30-40% of the creative workforce in some companies are in fact imported human resources.

Today EU business warns of skilled worker shortages and we know that Germany alone is still in need of at least 300,000 people with higher education which they have to get from other countries. Therefore Germany will again adjust their laws to fill this gap as they have estimated to loose billions of Euros due to lack of human resources and they are endangered by the fact that German companies are establishing their companies in other countries due to lack of locally available human resources - as a result some German companies would also find their way into Thailand.


HUMAN CAPITAL OR NO CAPITAL AT ALL

For the more than 10 years that MISOLIMA () has actively worked with Software and Technology park developments and R&D within software and embedded systems, we know that in Chiang Mai, creating human capital is in many cases a challenging task for the educational sector that would normally have to work tight with the private sector to get enough insight to global trends and needs in a highly competitive and creative market place, well noted if the global markets are to be set as the main goals. If the human resources are not available or the educational systems are not able to create such channelised human resources, the capital inflow would be reduces and only reflect the available general workforce. In other words, without the right human resources, companies would not be created and foreign companies would not invest in such countries or places, giving the end result that any co-operation between private sector and universities would become or close to, an impossible task.

According to the world Innovation Cities Top 100 Index, cities in Europe such as Paris(2), Amsterdam(3), Vienna(4), Frankfurt(6), Copenhagen(8), Lyon(9), Hamburg(10) and Berlin(11) was the top innovative cities with three US cities in between the top 11, namely Boston (1), New York(5) and San Francisco(7) followed by Toronto(12) in Canada. Singapore reached 31st place and the capital of Norway, Oslo was ranked as 46 while Thailand did not reach the list of top 100. However by using various local indicators used by MISOLIMA, Chiang Mai may indicate growth and innovation potentials but it would, in the case of creating Chiang Mai Creative City require more involvement from governments, businesses, individuals, non-profit organisations, surrounding cities and communities and maybe at this stage less by the education sector as universities in Chiang Mai are not yet surrounded by a creative ecosystem even though in many successful creative ecosystems, universities plays an important role and are an integral part of this creative environment.

The impression is that academics in Chiang Mai are seldom accused of being creative. So it is ironic that some universities today are striving to become an integral part of the creative city concept. As they compete for students, they are taking on roles not unlike those of the great European creative design houses. In this sense, universities are not creative in their own right, but their more elitist incarnations provide an imprimatur of authority and desirability often justified by using outside consultancy (qualified or non-qualified) as their own in-house capabilities does not reach the main goals and potentials mostly because universities were never really home to socially radical and disruptive ideas and especially not within the rapid creative changes of our intellectual times.

GUALITY ASSURANCE OR NO ASSURANCE AT ALL

In Europe and elsewhere, Quality Assurance (QA) is an important factor for any kind of creativity as QA involves the whole product lifecycle. That should be remembered whenever we are tempted to be involved in QA and/or the research assessment exercise, the implicit prescriptions of an academic culture of collusion and compliance are threaten by outside intellectual creativity generated by the government and private sector. So it is still worth asking whether some universities can survive the lure of creativity as without the fundamental needs, openness, trust and co-operation with the outside world of universities, there is still far to many questions for universities to answer on real reasons of involvement's in creating a Creative City concept.

Human resources, know-how and languages are however key competitive factors for creativity where cities and towns that are to create a Creative City concept, must in theory focus more on its people then on infrastructure and general structures in it self. It seams to be that in Chiang Mai there is a missing link between the ambitious vision made by universities and targeted needs in the private sector where education are sometimes not at the level required from a graduated creative workforce. As a result the private sector takes an important role, and maybe the most important role in Thai educational system which cost the private sector both time and huge amounts of money. In addition to this, in Thailand the labour laws says that the trial period for staff is 120 days and after this period they are considered as fix employees. However in complex creative projects, educating even university-graduated students can take years before they are considered as qualified independent workers.

STUDIES ON HUMAN CAPITAL NEEDED

According to MISOLIMA that stays behind MISOLIMA Software and Technology Park (MSTP) developments located in Chiang Mai's Wiang Phrao district, a more detailed study in English language based on human capital would be needed for Chiang Mai and surrounding districts, as the northern city is now preparing for it's own Chiang Mai Creative City agenda. Such detailed study is essential document for anybody wanting to invest in a Creative City concept and it should become an local version of Creativity Index.

If we look at what happened in US, Japan and Europe during the 1950s, most people would move into larger urban cities, but today this trend has changed and we can see that after some governments decentralisation policies and where overloaded cities became a problem for many people as many would also suffer from pollution allergies etc., - their dreams has become to move and live in rural areas that has easy access into larger cities if necessarily.

In Thailand however, about two thirds of Thai's lives in rural areas but the educational system in Thailand requires young people to move into the cities such as Chiang Mai to get their higher education. As an result about one third of Thailand's 67.4 million people lives in cities due to availability of work and education, and out of those more than half lives in and surrounding areas of Bangkok. Chiang Mai however are the second largest city in Thailand with about 250,000 city residents and the closest populated area of Chiang Mai provinces in northern direction are Wiang Phrao, the home of MSTP with a population of almost 53,000 consisting of 11 sub-districts and 108 villages.

Now if we look at today's situation, there is no Thai cities listed in the Innovation Cities Top 100 Index even though the pool of human recourses might be there but so often creativity stops due to lack of opportunities, developments and funding.

On the other hand, the index named the Global Talent Index, which uses multi-layered analysis involving areas such as;

• Demographics
• Quality of compulsory education systems
• Quality of universities and business schools
• Quality of the environment to nurture talent
• Mobility and relative openness of the labour market
• Trends in foreign direct investment
• Proclivity to attracting talent

... Sweden scored a rank of 5 with 44.7 points and Thailand got the rank of 22 with 29.8 points. The interesting here is that country such as Norway did not even make it to the top 30 where on the 29th rank we found Indonesia with 22.3 points and Iran at rank 30 with 20.5 points. On the top 3 we found USA, United Kingdom and Canada.

Today we know that the Creative City concept is important not only for innovation to flourish but also for creating creative industries, improving quality of life and enhancing local policies, but all this has also a price to be paid as it has also social consequences. The Creative City concept gives however a very good prospect of innovation and economic development which is based on creative minds - represented by the creative class and industries.

TO BE OR NOT TO BE...

Finally Chiang Mai has no guarantee for success because creative city policies run a significant risk of failure due to the fact that no elaborated methodology exist to effectively transfer one successful concept in one city to another city. This means the Chiang Mai Creative City concept is on a try and fail basis (as many other ambitious projects over the past 10 years) where if the cards are not played right and many years of experience to come does not find its roots into a creative ecosystem, it will for sure fail. Morever, a Creative City concept require a capacity for permanent and rapid innovations which does not exist in Chiang Mai today, hence this must be solved as creative innovation would constitute the main activity in all branches of activity and industries which again requires huge investments from the private and government sectors, years of planning, education, training and practice and in all this, the crucial part is to solve how to create competent creative human resources with good foreign language skills, international know-how and understanding of documentation's on all stages, know-how in international laws and practices, QA, planning and experience in understand customers needs from all over the world ... are all even a larger challenge that Germany has overcome many years ago but are still learning, adjusting and improving.

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