[citation needed] Although creative professionals have been a part of the workforce for more than 500 years, several events during the past decade have altered industry and public perception of these workers.
The change in status began in the late 1990s when demand for creative workers was high due to the internet boom.
Pink describes information-era jobs as expendable and exportable, and offers that the MFA may yield more value for newer American workers than the MBA might generate in today's economy.
Author and cognitive thinking researcher Howard Gardner has defined a variety of intelligences related to creative workers.
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has described the process of creative work effectively in several books, including Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.