Creative and performing arts schools are increasingly facing the challenge of developing curricula to address an employability agenda in higher education. Arts entrepreneurship education is thought to address this need because it supports the unique nature of the work circumstances of creative and performing arts graduates. As an emerging area of research, arts entrepreneurship education faces the challenge of not only being relevant and important to creative and performing arts education but of being robust enough to contribute to a “paradigm shift” (Beckman, 2011, p. 29). With this in mind, this article attempts to clarify a recurring theme of arts entrepreneurship education, this being the development of an “entrepreneurial mindset.”

We argue that if an entrepreneurial mindset is to be considered an essential aspect of arts entrepreneurship education, educators need to have a good understanding of what it means and how it might be taught. We examine data from four interviews with arts educators who have responsibility for teaching arts entrepreneurship in creative and performing arts schools. Their experiences enable us to clarify the meaning of an “entrepreneurial mindset” in a creative and performing arts context in higher education and to make suggestions about teaching and learning.

The premise of this essay is that the study of ethics is an essential component in teaching all forms of “non-market entrepreneurship,” that is, all forms of entrepreneurship not undertaken solely for commercial purposes. In non-market entrepreneurship, such as arts entrepreneurship, social enterprise, or social entrepreneurship, at least one other purpose instead of or in addition to profit motivates acting entrepreneurially. In this essay we show how we add an ethical component to teaching social entrepreneurship in a discussion-based seminar in an American university. The thrust of our effort is to require students read Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor” and the Father Zossima portions from The Brothers Karamazov, originally published in Russian in 1863 as a seminal work in the golden age of Russian literature. Through the instructor’s structured and directed discussion of the text, students are presented with the argument that a personal ethic of “loving humility” as embodied in the character of Father Zossima might serve as an appropriate ethical guide for non-market entrepreneurship.