Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts

A lean startup process is an attractive route to business ownership for people with limited funds or who are risk averse, as such a process is designed to avoid significant loss and support success (Thickett, 2013). This article contends that ideal tools to facilitate this lean startup methodology of experimentation, reflection, and flexibility are social media platforms and third party selling. This reflective case study examines the author’s process using these tools to lean launch a niche web-based artisan business.

An on-going academic debate occupying Entrepreneurship researchers for the past several decades is concerned with defining what an entrepreneur is and what an entrepreneur does. The debate also extends to exploring the influence different types of entrepreneurs have on their environment. In the new creative economy, entrepreneurship has become a central issue for the regeneration of urban space. This essay first differentiates between economic and cultural entrepreneurs and second explores what influence cultural entrepreneurs, especially, have on urban developments. By using Damien Hirst as exemplar for the discussion of the entrepreneurial character and spheres of action, the analysis of his career demonstrates how difficult it is in practice to draw a line between artistic, cultural and commercial activities in the creative economy. Hirst’s approach to contemporary conceptual art and his factory-like art production are both controversial and successful as defined by the author. Nevertheless, there seems to be agreement that his entrepreneurial artistic work has had a profound impact on the revitalization of East London and thus can be used as model for urban planners. The author posits that Hirst is a cultural entrepreneur based on this model for creating/regenerating viable economic urban spaces who embraces the blending of the artistic and market spheres.

The demand for interdisciplinary and cross campus courses has increased substantially over the past few years resulting in increased program offerings and modifications to existing coursework in universities across the nation. This is very clearly evident in the arts realm. However, there is no clear agreement of knowledge, skills and abilities deemed important to the success of selfemployed artists and arts entrepreneurs. This essay presents qualitative data collected from personal conversations and other data collected over the past several years from students and faculty members engaged in lessons learned from The Coleman Foundation Faculty Fellows Program, a national initiative of The Coleman Foundation. Building upon the lessons learned from this initiative a framework is presented to embed entrepreneurship content across several arts subjects. Suggestions for conceiving and designing entrepreneurship course content are portrayed. The “modules” approach to the infusion of entrepreneurship within the arts and other disciplines are presented. Assessment methods to measure the impact of using such modules to infuse entrepreneurship are explained. Pedagogical constructs and pedagogical resources are presented. The implications for future research are postulated and suggested.