Q&A with Josh McManus, Founder of the D:hive and CreateHere, both place-based talent attraction and retention laboratories, located in Detroit, MI and Chattanooga, TN respectively. Josh is on the board of directors for CEOs for Cities.
In your experience, can startup tactics be effectively applied to cities?
Absolutely, my teams and I use start-up tactics in our work every day. From utilizing overlooked and inexperienced talent in Chattanooga, TN to produce the World's Largest Community Visioning process (26,263 surveys collected) to utilizing low-rent space and open innovation practices to build a talent retention and attraction laboratory in Detroit, MI, we are producing much higher percentage returns than many traditional community building institutions. In my experience, start-up tactics are not just fruitful but essential in post-industrial cities where scarcity of resources and disinvestment in the public realm often prevent scale funding without demonstrable success.
Attracting talent is critical. Tell us about how D:Hive is changing the talent equation in Detroit.
The D:hive is changing Detroit's talent equation by focusing on the basics of living, working and engaging in the city. Where as many recruitment efforts start with lofty social media campaigns and websites, the D:hive begins with a downtown welcome center in Detroit's traditional retail corridor. Our work looks at the entire needs continuum from tours of the city to rental real estate information to safety maps. Our big idea is that connecting people more quickly to other bright people, interesting places and work that they are passionate about will drive progress in the city. The non-profit sector has focused too much on funding programs and has often frowned on compensating connectors. At the D:hive, we believe that connections are everything and we're putting our money where our mouth is.
Why is this important to the future of cities? Of Detroit?
Talent retention and attraction is critical to any city as it's the life blood of creation. I believe that we've learned that co-locations of industry and retained wealth are far more fleeting that we ever imagined in cities. New talent brings new ideas, new businesses, new tax bases and new uses of existing infrastructure. In the past ten years, we've talked about the "creative class", we've talked about the "young and the restless" and we've talked about "brain drain" ad nauseum. What's interesting to me is that the handbook for making meaningful change on talent retention and attraction is still being written. For Detroit, and all other cities for that matter, the talent question will determine their fate. Without people, place-making becomes a pipe dream.
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