**2. Arts and entrepreneurship**

The starting point in approaching the study of entrepreneurship in the arts consists inevitably in defining the concepts of art and entrepreneurship, artist and entrepreneur. With regard to entrepreneurship, it translates into actions aimed at the creation/discovery of entrepreneurial opportunities [3]. Instead, art is the result of artistic actions through which artistic talent is expressed by using a certain artistic language. These are the key points to approach the study of entrepreneurship in the artistic context.

Many scholars tried to provide a definition of "arts entrepreneurship." Scherdin and Zander ([4], p. 3), argued that in the arts "entrepreneurship is about the discovery and pursuit of new art ideas, using a multitude of artistic expressions and organizational forms as vehicles by which to express and convey these ideas to the public." Rentschler ([5], p. 3), suggested that, through arts entrepreneurship, are fully expressed creativity, which is "the specific mission of arts," and innovation, namely "the specific tool of entrepreneurs [6]." Thus, combining creativity and innovation, it leads to the creation of "something new (and appreciated) in the area of culture" ([7], p. 260). Considering this, in entrepreneurial terms, it is possible to identify the activities that can be placed within arts entrepreneurship, drawing a continuum whose extremes are the artist that work by adopting "entrepreneurial habits of mind" and the "new venture creation in the creative industries" ([8], p. 6; [9]).

To date, according to Beckman ([10], p. 8), "arts entrepreneurship … is not a discipline" and it is not based on a single theory; rather, various theories and practices, "developed in business and the social sciences" contribute to its development ([8], p. 5). Moreover, the identification of the industrial contexts embraced by arts entrepreneurship is problematic. In fact, creative industries, cultural industries, and the arts are not completely overlapped (e.g., [11]). Often scholars make reference to the creative (e.g., [12, 13]) and cultural industries (e.g., [14–20]), examining artistic issues. Many papers examine the phenomenon within the "core creative arts" [11] (e.g., [10, 21–24]), while others focus on narrower competitive areas within the arts (e.g., [25, 26]) or are limited to specific arts (e.g., [27–30]).

Based on these observations, the chapter reviews arts entrepreneurship literature, trying to trace its future evolution.
