**3. Methodology**

undermine the artistic value of what they created. Even scholars mostly neglected entrepreneurial aspects related to arts, with few exceptions (e.g., [2]). Over the last 20 years, something has changed: there has been an increasing interest in entrepreneurship in the arts. The main reason behind this seems to be the progressive reduction of public contributions to cultural enterprises in many countries such as Italy. This highlighted the need to operate according to entrepreneurial logic and to look for alternative sources of funding. Scholars with different backgrounds became interested in these themes, contributing to the formation of a quite heterogeneous emerging literature on entrepreneurship in the arts. This growing attention is also witnessed by some new academic journals dedicated to entrepreneurship in the arts, and specifically: "Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts" and "Journal of Arts Entrepreneurship Research." In addition, Scherdin and Zander published a pioneering book in 2011: "Art Entrepreneurship." The aim of this chapter is to clarify the phenomenon of entrepreneurship in the arts through a review of the literature of the last decades. In this way, we will identify the dominant issues addressed by scholars and we will trace the future evolution

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

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

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

of the studies.

**2. Arts and entrepreneurship**

12 Entrepreneurship - Trends and Challenges

of entrepreneurship in the artistic context.

"new venture creation in the creative industries" ([8], p. 6; [9]).

In order to review the literature on arts entrepreneurship, we followed a rigorous methodological approach, starting with the definition of precise selection criteria to identify the resources to examine and culminating in a qualitative analysis of them.

The first decision concerned the type of scientific contributions to consider. In this regard, we decided to focus only on articles, thus excluding books, book chapters, review of books, and papers presented at conferences. This is for two reasons: (1) to try to make the set of contributions to examine the most homogeneous as possible and (2) to avoid problems in defining the selection field (e.g., with reference to conference papers, which selection criteria should be adopted to select the conferences?).

The second decision concerned the journals to which make reference. We preliminarily considered top entrepreneurship and management journals, searching for the following expressions in the title, in the abstract, and in the keywords of the articles: "arts entrepreneurship," "art entrepreneurship," "art entrepreneur," "arts entrepreneur," "artist entrepreneur," "cultural entrepreneur," and "cultural entrepreneurship." Given the limited number of articles identified, we realized that the argument has not yet found enough room to justify such a focused analysis of the literature. Therefore, we decided to cover a broad spectrum of journals as outlined below. First, we considered the journals included in the Scopus database and, given the transversality of the theme, we selected the following thematic areas: "social sciences," "arts and humanities," "business, management and accounting," "decision sciences," and "economics, econometrics and finance." We searched for the same expressions mentioned above, but in the whole text of the articles and with reference to the period 1992–2016. This research has provided us with a significant number of articles, constituting our starting point. We made a first selection by considering articles published in journals included in the AIDEA and/or GEV lists2 (for the latter, only administration and management3 ), updated to 2016. In this way, we have been able to identify and exclude articles not

<sup>2</sup> The AIDEA (Italian Academy of Business Administration and Management) list includes journals of management, business administration, business organization and corporate finance, ranking them into four quality bands. GEV lists are arranged by groups of experts appointed by the National Agency for Evaluation of the Italian System of University and Research (ANVUR).

<sup>3</sup> We also considered some journals included in the "economics" section of the list, and namely: "Review of Austrian Economics," "Journal of Cultural Economics," and "International Journal of Cultural Policy." We also considered two journals that are not included in AIDEA and GEV lists, due to the relevance of the articles identified with respect to the theme under investigation: "Journal of Business Venturing Insights," and "Arts and Humanities in Higher Education."

focused on arts entrepreneurship. It was a particularly long and laborious operation, which led to the definitive set of articles to consider. In total, we selected 59 articles. In addition, we identified other 5 articles, particularly relevant with regard to the topic, cited in the articles previously selected and published in the journals we considered. Finally, we selected another article including expressions similar to those we were looking for.

questioning the importance of profitability (although companies in this context are mostly nonprofit), with the objective to "go beyond a reductionist obsession with the bottom line," introduces the notion of "entrepreneur as an arts administrator," who act as a "contractual intermediary (…) bringing together government, the private sector, and the public to best

Klamer [37] approached the problem from a different view, going beyond the idea of an integration of the two perspectives. The author suggested that the culture-business relationship cannot be addressed by claiming that the cultural entrepreneur should be necessarily able to combine "artistic qualities with business sense," in order to "attract customers for the arts without compromising the artistic mission and artistic identity" ([37], p. 147), [38] in [37]. On the basis of his argument, there is the conviction that art and culture cannot be simply

conflict between art and business and the consequent attempts to combine them do not give the idea of the "complexity of the artistic process." The main purpose of the entrepreneurs in the arts is not profit, but rather the realization of cultural values, and business is only a tool used in this end ([37], p. 154); this means that the cultural entrepreneur, in creating these values, should not in any way follow the logic of business ([37], p. 141). Ellmaier [40], adopted a similar economic approach, focuses on the labor market and intercepts, downstream of the phenomena of "marketization of culture" and "culturalization of the market," the transition from "cultural workers" to "cultural entrepreneurs," considered "sole service supplier[s] in the professional cultural field" with the objective to "try out their own combinations and

Another group of contributions focused on a different issue, which is the identification of similarities between the artist and the entrepreneur, and the explanation of how these similarities can be beneficial for their activities. For example, Daum ([41], p. 55), identified a number of connections between the two figures, noting that often entrepreneurs characterized by an artistic background tend to seek solutions to the "business problems by applying lessons learned from their artistic endeavors." He concluded that the two figures are much more similar than one might imagine, while usually with respect to the artists there is the prejudice to be "flaky" ([41] p. 57). Instead, Fontela et al. ([42], p. 11), deepened the role of forecasting, which characterizes the artist's work, but it is essential also for "entrepreneurial decision making"; therefore, the entrepreneur should think in a "less 'rational' and more 'emotional'" way ([42],

There is no doubt that around the figure of the artist there are prejudices, but it is also true that it is sometimes idealized. Cova and Svanfeldt ([43], p. 12), defined the artist-entrepreneur as "an esthetically visionary entrepreneur," "who innovates by vocation rather than by utility" ([43], pp. 12, 14). They argue that "as opposed to the self-made person, the artist-entrepreneur plays upon one's culture; and to the contrary of the team hero, the artist-entrepreneur is sur-

It should be mentioned, in this regard, the position of Lampel et al. [39], which instead point out that in the cultural industry entrepreneurs are facing challenges similar to those typical of businesses based on knowledge and creativity

According to Klamer ([37], p. 147), this view on the

Arts and Entrepreneurship: Disentangling the Literature http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.72014 15

realize a general cultural good."

conceived through the logic of business.4

p. 11).

4

Preece ([25], p. 104).

assert themselves on the market and in society" ([40], p. 3).

We categorized the articles by considering the following: authors, year, journal, the expressions we found, the central theme under investigation, and the level of analysis. This allowed us to appreciate the evolution of the scientific production on the topic and to identify its main issues. The publications, so grouped, have been the object of study, with the objective to get a picture of the specific issues investigated by scholars.
