Stickiness of entrepreneurs: an exploratory study of migration in two mid-sized US cities

Examples of these creative class workers include super creatives such as science, engineering, programming, research, as well as arts and media workers, and creative professionals such as healthcare, legal, business/finance, and education workers.

For example, creative workers can consist of 33% of the U.S. workforce (Peck, 2005), including accountants, lawyers, paralegals, purchasing agents, medical doctors, physician’s assistants, dental hygienists, semi-routine financial, and personal services providers.

In an early ranking of creative cities, Kansas City ranked 19th and Indianapolis ranked 38th out of 43 large metropolitan areas (Florida, 2002, 355–357). In 2014, a Biz2Credit “Best Small Business Cities” ranked Indianapolis 14th and Kansas City did not appear on the list of 25 cities; a 2014 Milken Institute “Best Performing Large Cities” ranking placed Indianapolis 26th and Kansas City 77th. More recent rankings include WalletHub, 2019 “Best Large Cities to Start a Business,” which ranked Kansas City 27th and Indianapolis 50th out of 100 cities and Forbes 2019 “Best Places for Business and Careers,” which ranked Kansas City 51st and Indianapolis 58th. Such rankings suggest that these cities may face difficulty attracting talent. Yet, the data trend presents otherwise. At the metropolitan level, both have continuously gained population every decade in the Post War period, while other metropolitan areas in the mid and central regions such as Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, and St. Louis, saw population decline.

Compiling performance indicators to rank cities may be easier to digest than many pieces of data. Rankings can vary in rigor, construction, coverage, and content selection (see Fisher, 2005; Kolko et al. 2011) and there can be ideological debate about underlying assumptions. For more, see Ham et al., (2004) and Doshi et al., (2019).

Of course, some professionals within each occupation may be creative, but others in the same occupation may not. For instance, some accountants can give strategic advice to management decisions, which involves creativity, but some may work on routinized tasks.

In most cases, founders were available and in others, senior executives were interviewed (for example, when the founders were retired). With senior executives, we still asked about the origin of the company, as well as strategies and decision related to the location, and we found that senior executives were knowledgeable about the early origins of the business and founding situation.

The life course approach in focus groups may have limitations related to not providing enough time or individual opportunity to share thoroughly. Also, people in group settings may alter behavior because they are in a group, e.g., preferring to highlight positive reasons for relocation, such as this is where I wanted to be and I found a job here, than reasons such as unemployment elsewhere.