Creativity plays a growing role in our economies. Success in the future is not about technology, government, management or even power; it is all about people and relationships. Scientists, artists, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and other self-motivated, creative people are challenging the traditional structures of the 20th century society. The creative class is more important than ever, and healthcare professionals are a great example of citizens of this new class.

Without creativity, traditional jobs tend to commoditize, and they finally fly to emergent economies, at a great loss for cities and countries. Healthcare hasn't seen this trend yet, but it will. Innovation and creativity is the only way out.

In the last years I've been involved in a series of efforts to promote clusters of biotechnology and medical technologies. When you try to promote a cluster, you struggle to understand a very well-known cultural phenomenon: why we see clusters of technology and creative people in certain cities, while other cities remain culturally isolated and intellectually poor?

If you are interested about the answer, I've just read “The rise of the creative class”, by Richard Florida, an astonishing book explaining why creativity matters more than any other thing, and how this creativity correlates with economic prosperity.

When reading it, and seeing how innovation accounts for the wealth of any city, I remembered the “it’s the economy, stupid” quote, pronounced by Bill Clinton in his 1992 presidential campaign… It has become a catch phrase to expose problems. When talking about prosperity in our modern world the time has come to rephrase the sentence. Do we want our society (and our health systems) to prosper, live well and stay ahead in the global economy? It’s the innovation stupid.