- “Knowledge spills” are IRL meetings that can expand your network or help you learn new things.
- They are more common in industrial centers.
- This is one reason why the post-pandemic exodus from big cities could hamper future career prospects.
“Knowledge spillover” is just one reason why an exodus to big cities in the wake of the pandemic could harm people’s future career prospects.
Economists define knowledge spillovers as chance encounters – on the bus or in a bar, for example – that can expand your professional network or help you learn new things.
And they’re much more common in industrial hubs, Business Insider’s Aki Ito writes in an article about the hidden price of leaving big cities:
This is why innovation, as measured by patents, is higher in large markets and why companies in large cities tend to have higher productivity.
This is one of the reasons why large cities have been “underestimated” during the pandemic, believes economist Enrico Moretti.
A 2022 study on knowledge spillovers in Silicon Valley cited the work of developer AnnaLee Saxenian, stating that “the frequent face-to-face interactions and resulting knowledge flows made up much of this which has made Silicon Valley the dominant technology hub that it is. Today.”
The study used smartphone data to measure meetings and concluded that “face-to-face interactions – instrumented by meetings of workers in adjacent establishments in unconnected sectors – significantly increase knowledge flows” .
You can learn more about the professional benefits of living in a big city here.
businessinsider
