Arts Entrepreneurship vs. the Sum of Its Parts

As a member of the editorial board for Artivate, a journal on entrepreneurship in the arts, I was asked to write a short reflection on what “arts entrepreneurship” is, exactly, and how we might think about the phrase and the field (or bundle of fields) it represents. Full text is below, and other essays in this series are available in the Artivate issue archive.

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”Arts entrepreneurship,” like its close relative ”arts management,” has a complex pedigree and a sprawling footprint. Its frameworks and practices span many disciplines. Its areas of focus include the person, the process, and the outcome of entrepreneurial effort. But while we argue about the various branches and twists of this evolving ecosystem, we may be missing the forest for the trees.

As an older sibling of arts entrepreneurship, arts management offers some useful markers to find our way. Arts management has been aptly labeled a “borrower’s field” (DeVereaux and Vartiainen 2009, 8; Brindle and DeVereaux 2011, 5) as it draws from many disciplines in both theory and practice – visual and performing arts, humanities, business, political science, social science, and on and on. But arts management could also be labeled a “burrower’s field” as its practitioners, scholars, and supporters often dig their way into emerging and established domains in search of money, shelter, and positive attention.

Centuries ago, the arts found support by burrowing toward the values and vanities of affluent merchants, nobility, or organized religion, and borrowing the trappings of status and class. In the mid-20th Century, artists and arts organizations burrowed toward public purpose, growing philanthropic wealth, and nationalism, borrowing the tools and tactics of the evolving not-for-profit sector. More recently, the arts have burrowed into urban renewal, educational achievement, health and wellness, social cohesion, and a range of other favored foci of philanthropy and policy, often borrowing the processes and practices of each related field.

So it’s no wonder that “arts entrepreneurship” faces a similar kerfuffle about what it is and what it isn’t, and how we might practice, promote, or study it. The larger concept of entrepreneurship is certainly burrow-worthy as the current coin of the realm for many donors, investors, funding crowds, policy-makers, and college administrators seeking same. Entrepreneurship has also proven borrow-worthy, with an evolving set of processes and practices holding deep resonance with creative endeavor, and particular value to passion-rich but resource-poor initiatives.

But what are we talking about when we’re talking about entrepreneurship? And what are the unique and specific attributes of arts entrepreneurship? In his Delphi study on the first question (Gartner 1990), William Gartner identified eight themes that ran through various definitions of entrepreneurship. The themes (as I sort them) focused on the person (The Entrepreneur, The Owner-Manager), the process (Innovation, Organization Creation, Uniqueness), or the outcome (Creating Value, Growth, and Innovation serving as both process and outcome).** These three perspectives on entrepreneurship track well with evolving discourse, which explores the qualities and attributes of entrepreneurial individuals and groups (person), the iterative and innovative methods of acquiring and integrating resources (process), and the unique and emergent forms of value created (outcome).

However, understanding the reasons for and reach of arts entrepreneurship’s sprawling identity only helps us see the trees. The forest is defined by how its elements are inseparably intertwined.

What if the unique and compelling aspect of arts entrepreneurship is not its separate parts, nor the paths between them, but its complete integration as a system? What if the person, the process, and the outcome inform and transform each other in ways we cannot observe or explain when considering them separately?

Systems scholar Russell Ackoff insisted that a “system is more than the sum of its parts; it is an indivisible whole. It loses its essential properties when it is taken apart” (Ackoff 1973, 664). Christian Bruyat and Pierre-André Julien suggest a similar perspective when they emphasize entrepreneurship as an inseparable dialogue between the individual and the new venture creation, where both are transformed and transforming. To them, “entrepreneurship is concerned first and foremost with a process of change, emergence, and creation: creation of new value, but also, and at the same time, change and creation for the individual” (Bruyat and Julien 2001, 173).

There is potential in the perspective that arts entrepreneurship cannot be defined by the traveler, nor the road, nor the destination, but rather by the journey that combines all three.

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** The remaining theme, Profit or Nonprofit, captured the continuing discussion of whether entrepreneurship was purely profit-focused, or could have other goals, as well…suggesting a theme that is about person, process, and outcome all at once.

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SOURCES
Ackoff, Russell L. 1973. “Science in the Systems Age: Beyond IE, OR, and MS.” Operations Research 21 (3): 661–71.

Brindle, Meg, and Constance DeVereaux. 2011. The Arts Management Handbook: New Directions for Students and Practitioners. M.E. Sharpe.

Bruyat, Chirstian, and Pierre-André Julien. 2001. “Defining the Field of Research in Entrepreneurship.” Journal of Business Venturing 16 (2): 165–80.

DeVereaux, Constance, and Pekka Vartiainen, eds. 2009. The Science and Art of Cultural Management. Cultural Management and the State of the Field. Helsinki, Finland: HUMAK.

Gartner, William B. 1990. “What Are We Talking about When We Talk about Entrepreneurship?” Journal of Business Venturing 5 (1): 15–28.