Synergies between Arts, Business and Entrepreneurship

A research on unconventional personas and environments to tackle complex problems of our digital age - by combining methods and thinking from arts, business and entrepreneurship.

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash, text added by me

Challenges:

• Explore the relationship between the fields business and arts
• Find similarities, differences and identify potential synergies
• Find tools and methods from these fields and how they connect
• Find current articles and examples which combine these fields

Arts, Business and Entrepreneurship (ABE)

My research started with making sense of arts and business. Initially entrepreneurship was not a separate field, however, it soon became apparent that business and entrepreneurship are also two fundamentally different mindsets. Finding definitions was rather difficult. In the end it was easier to let standalone-words describe what makes each discipline unique:

Brainstorming and explorative research for how each field is unique.

Drivers for merging arts, business and entrepreneurship

The first impression may be that art, business and entrepreneurship are separate fields, with different philosophies, knowledge, methods, goals and thinking. While this might hold true, my revelation was: they have even more fundamental characteristics in common!

Brainstorming and crystallizing what all three have in common.

Let’s go into explaining some shared characteristics and developments which drove the intersections of the three disciplines:

1. The broad adaption of Design Thinking powers the need for diversity in teams and changed the need for experts to “expert generalist”, people with a broader skillset and expertise from all ABE-disciplines. Design can refer to artwork, products or services. With Strategic Design, companies embrace a design-driven approach as their company DNA to solve problems with a people-focus (may it be an audience or user).
2. The internet and mobile devices amplify accessible knowledge exponentially and make exchanging ideas exchange easier. Particularly impressive is how this triggers change in developing countries (e.g. increasing literacy, more equality, political interventions and initiatives, increasing health and decreasing poverty). The above wordlist for arts can be read as a toolbox to express ideas and opinions. Empowered by technology, decentralization and open markets, now on a global scale.
3. Complexity was always around and can be derived from the most essential question itself: What is life? Since then, philosophers and artists were trying to answer complex questions. Later, scientist joined their journey. And now do entrepreneurs and purpose-driven companies. By joining forces from ABE-disciplines, we are equipped to find answers to the most complex problems. Where do we end up, when we put a nano-technologist, design strategist, art director and web developer in one lab?

“In fact life is the major source of complexity on Earth. Without life, our planet would look as dead as the moon or as friendly as the Mars.” [Jochen Fromm]

For this changing environment I suggest a new persona.

The Artistic Entrepreneur Persona

The Artistic Entrepreneur persona combines many aspects of the traditional artist, business-person and entrepreneur. It accepts and embraces the nature of complexity. Cultural diversity is its lens through which to look at the world. Driven by an entrepreneurial spirit, it combines thinking from different disciplines and approaches complex problems. Its fundamental values are respect, diversity and learning. It is not afraid to experiment, fail and learn. It uses all senses when creating value. Being a hybrid, it facilitates design, technology and strategy equally.

Synergies

When I look at art, entrepreneurship and business, I see a win-win-win, rather than an “either-or-situation”:

• Arts create beauty for our culture through imagination, driven by emotions.
• Entrepreneurship creates value for society through experiments, driven by making impact.
• Business creates profits for the market through strategic growth, driven by productivity.

Together, they complement each other in their ways of thinking, value-creation and available toolsets. When business is considered the engine of wealth, arts is the canvas to communicate and design change, while entrepreneurship is the fuel, transforming knowledge into possibilities and motivation for change.

from left to right: Arts + Entrepreneurship + Business

If the world is a canvas, business is an artistic medium for how we build the kinds of societies, communities, and households we want to live in. [Source]

Art and entrepreneurialism are two expressions of one shared desire: to leave the world a little different than you found it. [The Guardian]

However, while ABE seem to be a good, there are still many inequalities between the fields which need to be fixed. Such as public recognition of artists as hard-working and value-creating entrepreneurs, and the role of arts as an academic profession. And most importantly, the need for recognition of the people behind a title, who made conscious decisions with their wide spectrum of abilities and strong ambitions.

The businessman who follows trends ends up wealthy. But the artist who follows trends ends up empty. [Todd Brison, Medium]

While not all entrepreneurs are artists, all artists are entrepreneurs. [Artwork Archive]

Artistic training … should be viewed as a high level educational pursuit similar to the training of a doctor or lawyer. And because most artists are intelligent enough to have become a doctor or lawyer, there is simply no reason they cannot become vibrant, relevant, and meaningful contributors to society if offered the rest of the training they need to do so. [Institute For Arts Entrepreneurship]

Examples

Personally, I am amazed by the spectrum of possibilities how to realize synergies between arts, business and entrepreneurship:

• Complementing curricula of business schools with artistic fields, e.g. courses Creativity and Innovation, Strategic Design; and school of arts with business courses, e.g. Master of Art Business + Fine Art at Sotheby’s Institute of Arts (“designed for a new generation of artists looking for the entrepreneurial acumen that is necessary today to build a sustainable creative practice and professional life in the arts”)
• Bridge the gap between different kinds of thinkers and entrepreneur using accelerators, e.g. Dogfish Accelerator (film making + business strategy), NEW INC video (Arts + Design + Technology), Mahuki (digital business + cultural heritage at museum), Marathon Artists Lab(product development + music)
• Provokative design to challenge social constructs and behaviours like sex and intimacy by bold innovation agencies (Dear Condom and Essity x Fotografiska by House of Radon)
• Hiring artists and designers for former business functions or creating new roles, e.g. Product Designer, Graphic Artist, Artistic Director, Multimedia Artist/ Animator, Art Therapist, Photographer, Sound Architect, Creative Writer
• Hiring artists for business workshops or to improve business culture (e.g. leadership by design, office design, team events at the theatre)
• Companies contribute to cultural events, e.g. Redbull Flying Bach (classical music +breakdancing), Flying Revolution Movie
• Transformation of business and entrepreneurship conferences into festivals, e.g. Yestival, Leadership Festival
• Awareness of seamless integration and mutual respect of environment and architecture, e.g. combine new and old artefacts, Facebook campus
• Combination of traditional with creative, holistic methods, e.g. Design Thinking, rapid prototyping
• Creation of spaces for experimentation and artistic self expression, e.g. makerspaces, fablabs, design studios, innovation garages
• Use entrepreneurial methods to organize and create artistic acts, e.g. musical theatre accelerator (“develop, nurture, and expand plays, from conception to execution”, tackle problems of human nature such as procrastination)
• Initiate conversations across departments in universities and organizations, e.g. physicist share research problems with art professor
• Emergence of ecosystems and platforms with actors from different fields, e.g. cooperation between universities, design studios, organizations, public institutions, individuals, freelancers and other public initiatives
• Cooperation where brands co-design with artists for advertisment and product design, e.g. Beat headphones by Dre, fashion labels, sportswear with football players
• Popularity of business brands become similarly like famous music bands