Many of today’s worldwide economic, technological and applied research engines revolve around unleashing and supporting the vision, inspiration, creativity and resourcefulness of the entrepreneur. By definition, an entrepreneur is someone who organizes, operates and assumes the risk and reward (however reward is defined) for ideas, products, services or ventures produced. Sadly, in the last several decades, the corporate culture hijacked the term such that it has become more associated with unbridled profiteering.

Even as the corporate culture invokes entrepreneurial as a way to justify virtually anything they choose to do, some other sectors have taken up and embraced the true spirit of entrepreneurship, while not necessarily owning the term. Social entrepreneurs, media entrepreneurs and arts entrepreneurs are all addressing challenges and creating value in ways very much aligned with the responsive and responsible practices of true entrepreneurship. Arts organizations are entrepreneurial by their nature, and the artist (or artists) is the entrepreneur of each venture. The vision, inspiration, creativity and resourcefulness that advance the arts always come from the artists. Yet the same respect, even reverence, showered upon business, technology, and social entrepreneurs – always capitalized, never subsidized – is somehow not extended to arts leadership.

Artists and arts professionals are at their most entrepreneurial – inventive and innovative – when aligning their work, organizations and producing abilities with shared interests, arts-based and not. This does not simply mean finding new ways to support old processes. Rather, it means finding virtually any way to support what the work requires; and what is required and what is possible has expanded considerably.

Even when arts professionals lack resources, they find ways to cobble together the necessities. When they can find no one else to help, they find each other. While many in the field continue to try to make traditional models and approaches work for them, there are those finding their own approaches, with their own voices, and synthesizing new and more appropriate producing and operating responses. When encouraged and supported, aided and abetted, arts professionals’ innate entrepreneurial natures come to the fore.