Introduction
When you think of the word entrepreneur what springs to mind? Do you envision in your mind a Donald Trump look-alike who is middle aged with an aggressive personality and an expensive suit? I did initially until I found that the word entrepreneur encompasses many varying traits and is not as stereotypical as I once assumed. This assignment aims to enlighten the reader with an academic perspective of what cultural entrepreneurship entails and how various traits and characteristics are found in different types of entrepreneurs.
The concept of a cultural entrepreneur
The concept of a cultural entrepreneur is one in which culture is connected to enterprise. According to Peterson (2004:17).
“Culture is the relatively stable set of inner values and beliefs generally held by groups of people in countries or regions and the noticeable impact those values and beliefs have on people’s outward behaviours and environment”
The definition of culture actually transcend into the concept of entrepreneurship in that according to Malone (2002).
“An entrepreneur is a person who has an overwhelming need to control and organise his or her life. So profound is that need, and so deep is the commitment that the entrepreneur is willing to bet everything, including their life, to reach that goal”.
Entrepreneur is often deemed a fix identity (Rae:2007). For example, definitions include “a person who creates organisations” (Gartner: 1989), “the enterprising person (Gibb: 1987) and “ the person who recognises and acts to exploit an opportunity” (Shane and Venkataraman: 2000;Stevenson and Jarillo: 1990).
For Kirby (2003) “ it entails the ability to create and build something from practically nothing. It is initiating, doing, achieving, and building an enterprise or organisation, rather than just watching, analysing or describing one. It is the knack for sensing an opportunity where others see chaos, contradiction and confusion…”
What is highlighted is that their own definitions did not mention anything about business even though Entrepreneurship is often dominated by economic theories. In fact they spoke of the diversity of entrepreneurs from all walks of society filtering into different sectors from politic to entertainment to culture by looking at the characteristics that instilled such drive within them. Their environment and indeed their “culture” would inadvertently affect their entrepreneurial prowess.
The concept of a cultural entrepreneur and enterprise
As mentioned in the introduction the concept of a cultural entrepreneur is one in which culture is connected to enterprise. Spinosa et al (1997) argued “entrepreneurs are history makers who change the world around them through action”. There is not a concrete definition of what a cultural entrepreneur is but in my opinion it entails being motivated by something creative for individualistic and potential eventual commercial gain. An example of this would be James Dyson founder and chairman of Dyson. The objective for him was to create and innovate a product that was better than the last creation and because of this passion he continually developed ways to enhance his product in an attempt to create the best vacuum within the industry. The initial agenda was not to generate wealth but a better product. I think that this differentiates a cultural entrepreneur from an entrepreneur in general. Schumpeter (1934) characterised the entrepreneur as an innovator rather than a profit seeker. With “the capacity of seeing things in a way which afterwards proves to be true ……learning in his natural and social world so that actions can be simply and reliably calculated”. The characteristic are similar but the motives vary from individual to individual.
Another example of a cultural entrepreneur is Annette Naudin currently the course director of the MA Media Entreprise course she has vast experience within the creative sector and ran her own textile business for 7 years. Her experience within the industry has provided her with a wealth of creative industry knowledge, which she now shares with her pupils. I believe she is another example of a cultural entrepreneur as she has the entrepreneurial prowess and experience and obviously thrived in her sector based on the years spent in the textile industry but she opted to become a course director to impart what she was passionate about, the creative industry. Other cultural entrepreneurs are people like Bill Gates and Bob Gedolf. Though people like Joy Roxborough who created and developed Island Joy Cards can also be viewed as a cultural entrepreneur because she developed a product that she was passionate about, as identified earlier the differentiation really depends on what is relevant to the person analysing the concept but in my opinion cultural entrepreneurs are driven for more than monetary reasons.
Characteristics and motivations of a cultural entrepreneur
What characteristics motivate an entrepreneur to take on a new venture and risk everything? Within today’s society many people are so used to the security of a annually paid job, family time and constructed leisure that they are fearful to venture out into the entrepreneurial world. According to Hisrich and Peters (1989:72) “the motivations for becoming and entrepreneur vary and are hugely dependent upon the person but the primal focus is that of independence and being one’s own boss. This is what enables many people to endure the psychological and financial risks attributed to successful ventures”. According to Rae (2007), Edith Penrose (1959) considered enterprise to be a psychological predisposition on the part of the individual to take a chance in the hope of gain, through risk taking behaviour.
Dr Atkinson a leading business psychologist identified the key traits of entrepreneurs and he found that the desire to win was a huge reason for the entrepreneur’s resilience and drive. I believe that the cultural entrepreneur deviates from this theory in that the objective is to be creative and passion about the product produced or the service/skill provided. The drive is to progress and enhance not necessarily competitively “win”.
According to John Howkins the creative/ cultural entrepreneur has some of the following characteristics:
According to Gibb (1987) entrepreneurial attributes within a UK context are:
The characteristics are numerous but the underlining theme is that the attributes of a cultural entrepreneur are positive and only possessed by few people. Often the difference between a “normal person” and an entrepreneur is that the normal person has dreams of grandeur but the entrepreneur makes them a reality.
Entrepreneurial approach
According to Rae (2007), the entrepreneurial learning is a dynamic process of awareness, reflection, association and application. Which involves transforming experience and knowledge into functional learning outcomes. The close connection between the processes of entrepreneurial learning with those of opportunity recognition, exploitation, creativity and innovation (Lumpkin and Lichtenstein: 2005) can be used to gain self-direction in planning, problem solving and implementing tasks successfully.