What entrepreneurs can teach artists (and vice versa)

The world of the artist and the world of the entrepreneur are often treated as if they were polar opposites, or even natural enemies. 

Artists, we're told, are supposed to suffer and starve (think Vincent van Gogh); entrepreneurs, on the other hand, are supposed make the other guy suffer and starve (think Gordon Gekko).

In this blog, I'd like to challenge both of these stereotypes by exploring two related propositions:

1. Artists can become more successful by learning to think like entrepreneurs.
2. Entrepreneurs can become more successful by learning to think like artists.

Enterprise-minded artists

The first proposition has been gaining traction in arts education, both in theory and in practice. 

For a number of years now, students in some fine arts programs have been able to take classes in entrepreneurship—like the one I'm currently enrolled in at Wayne State University—alongside printmaking, screenwriting, and choreography. 

The idea is that arming fledgling artists with entrepreneurial skills will improve their odds of making a decent living doing what they love—and what they've spent many years and thousands of dollars training to do.

Arts-minded entrepreneurs

The second proposition—that artists have something valuable to teach entrepreneurs—may be less self-evident.  After all, parents don't usually worry that Johnny won't be able to support himself if he gets through an entire MBA program without taking an art class. 

Yet, expectation plays a central role in entrepreneuring.  And expectation, as the economist G. L. S. Shackle insisted,

is imagination, the originative gift, a gift which burns, if with a more dazzling light, in the thoughts of the poet, the symphonist, the mathematician.

Business students routinely take electives in subjects like sociology and communication, because they know people skills will be an important part of their careers.  It's time to show them—and their advisers—that the ability to think creatively on their feet is at least as valuable.

And who better to do that than the fine arts departments?