The Economics and Politics of Openness

The fuzzy concept of Openness is correlated with macroeconomic progress and microeconomically with superior ideas. I suspect/hypothesize mega-region economic growth -explained by economist Richard Florida in The Great Reset, p.144- can be symoblized by Openness of the kind Jack Layton expressed.

5 factor personality test

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

1.Openness to New Experiences

2. Extroversion

3. Agreeableness

4. Conscientiousness

5. Neurotic (or inverse Emotional Regulation)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openness_to_experience   - describes Openness-to-New-Experiences in more detail.

- inversely correlated to political conservatism

- inversely correlated with age (youth more open)

Macro-economic: prosperity is correlated with 5 factor personality model's Openness to New Experiences. 

p.210 "Openness to experience is the only personality type that plays a consistent role in regional economic development"

-book "Who's Your City?", Richard Florida: http://www.creativeclass.com/_v3/whos_your_city/

- see also p.196 diagram of geographic distribution of big-5

Micro-economic: superior ideas are correlated with Openness

studies show openness is correlated to quantity of superior ideas generated by teams:

The Effect of Personality on Collaborative Task Performance and Interaction

          http://doras.dcu.ie/2154/1/Camera-Ready.pdf

The Impact of Big Five Personality Characteristics on Group Cohesion and Creative Task Performance

          http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/public/etd-32198-18285/materials/etd.pdf

The conference board of canada's tip sheet on how to be innovative:

http://www.conferenceboard.ca/Libraries/EDUC_PUBLIC/ISP_brochure.sflb

- the first category seems to be about Openness, the second category seems to be about Conscientiousness.

Discussion:

Correlation does not prove causation. Two things can be randomly/by-luck correlated, or a 3rd thing can be causing both. But when I looked at how I could train people to be more innovative, I found microeconomic studies on openness that seemed to confirm what Florida was seeing on a macroeconomic scale. And Jack Layton's magic seemed to be his openness. And didn't he win in urban cores?

Openness by itself could also mean careless though, and I think that's what got some interim Liberal leaders in trouble. If you're open to new ideas, you also need to have a good process for vetting the ideas, and that relies on Conscientiousness. The Conservative Party symbolizes Conscientiousness well in my mind, but not so much Openness - somewhere around 50% on openness. When I hear about Conservative attack ads, the Conservative Openness score goes way down in my mind. I'm not sure why -either it reminds me of USA politics, or attack ads say more about the attacker than the attackee.

The NDP or Liberals symbolize Openness much better, or at least Layton did. I don't know about Mulcair - the feeling is much different. I think the Liberals -Bob Ray- score much higher on Openness in my mind than Mulcair does.

Openness - generate and gather new ideas

Conscienciousness - carefully process, vet ideas

Hypothesis: you need both to win our economic driver: mega-region cores.