We need to find ways to transform the more than 60 million service jobs, which make up 45 percent of U.S. employment, in the same way - rewarding workers financially, encouraging and empowering creative participation, creating professional communities, and so on. We can look to any number of new companies - from Zappos, to Starbucks, to American Apparel - for examples of how this idea might play itself out. We need to do more to make service jobs into higher-paying family-supporting jobs of the future.

I think we'll start defining wealth and success differently and develop new approaches to consumption. Things that have always signified wealth and security - home ownership, new cars, luxury goods - have become a burden for many people and will be replaced by more experiential consumption like travel and recreation, self-improvement, and so on. By divesting themselves of certain big-ticket possessions that have been keeping them tied down, people will gain a new freedom to live more meaningful lives. Changes in consumption and lifestyle are key to Great Resets.

Every single human being is creative and maximizing that creativity is critical to happiness and economic growth. Economic growth is driven by creativity, so if we want to increase it, we have to tap into the creativity of everyone. That's what makes me optimistic. For the first time in human history, the basic logic of our economy dictates that further economic development requires the further development and use of human creative capabilities. The great challenge of our time is to find ways to tap into every human's creativity.

Ideas are the currency of the new economy.

Places that succeed in attracting and retaining creative class people prosper; those that fail don't.

Economies and societies invariably remake themselves in the wake of a crisis. It's a necessary component of rebound and recovery. Outmoded industries and tired consumption habits make way for new goods and services, new careers and forms of employment, and population realigns itself in the landscape. All these developments are connected to lifestyle changes.

Toronto won't topple New York or London as a financial center, nor will it dethrone Los Angeles as the international entertainment capital, but with its large and stable banks, numerous knowledge-based industries thriving in the surrounding mega-regions, and an increasingly diverse population, it will gain ground. And with employment opportunities in the largest centers eroding, it can make a big move on top global talent. It stands as a model of an older, once heavily industrial Frostbelt city that has not only turned itself around but continues to grow and thrive.