The Aesthetic Imperative

Competition has pushed quality so high and prices so low that few manufacturers can survive on performance and price alone. To produce value, they must give customers something to please their sensory side. Aesthetics is the killer app.
Public policy professor Richard Florida recalls serving on a Pennsylvania economic development advisory panel. "At one of our meetings," he notes in his book The Rise of the Creative Class, "the states Secretary of Labor and Industry, a big burly man, banged his fist on the table in frustration. Our workforce is out of balance, he steamed. Were turning out too many hairdressers and cosmetologists, and not enough skilled factory workers like welders and machine-tool operators."
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