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VOL. 11, NO. 2 
FALL 2022 

 

From Gung Ho Heroes and Their Tragic 
Counterparts to Catalyst Characters 
Figures of the Cultural Entrepreneur in the Scholarly Literature 

Sara Malou Strandvad 
University of Groningen 

 
 

 

 

 

ABSTRACT: The term cultural entrepreneurship is increasingly used in academic re-
search to address the intersection of business developments and creative work. How-
ever, the concept itself is disputed. Unpacking varying definitions of the term, this 
article revisits literature on the topic, searching for the figures of the cultural entre-
preneur that scholars create. The article suggests that the literature is dominated by 
hero figures, who are based on retrospective analyses of successful individuals, and 
tragic hero figures, who summarize the situation for most self-employed creatives, 
establishing a bleak outlook. As an alternative, the article suggests seeing cultural 
entrepreneurs as catalyst figures. KEYWORDS: Cultural entrepreneurship, creative 
work, figures, gig economy, precarity. DOI: doi.org/10.34053/artivate.11.2.178 

Introduction 
Cultural entrepreneurship constitutes a phenomenon that has attracted increasing scholarly at-
tention in recent years, with publications on this topic on the rise since the early s, partic-
ularly from  onwards (Bürger and Volkmann, ; Dobreva and Ivanov, ). During 
the same period, practitioners in the cultural field have experienced the parallel expansion and 
predominance of entrepreneurship. While artists have a long history of being self-employed and 
working in a gig economy, this situation has multiplied and intensified with the growth of the 
category of creative work, deinstitutionalization processes in the cultural sector, and the transi-
tion to online work, where artists are particularly impacted by the growing need of having a 



ARTIVATE 11.2 

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presence on social media platforms to generate income (Bishop, ; Duffy, ; Nieborg et 
al., ). In response to these changes, a turn in cultural and economic policies can be identi-
fied as a growing number of business support programs that targeted creative workers have been 
set up internationally, promoting cultural entrepreneurship in courses during art study pro-
grams or in publicly supported courses offered to self-employed people working in the arts and 
the creative industries, for example, in the Netherlands, Scotland, Norway and the United States 
(Kuhlke et al., ; Munro, ; Haugsevje et al., ; Robinson and Novak-Leonard, ).  

While these developments demonstrate a growing interest in cultural entrepreneurship, 
the phenomenon itself remains contested. Evaluations of the fusion of creative work with en-
trepreneurship turn out vastly different in both public discourse as well as in academic literature 
on the topic. Business studies scholars portray cultural entrepreneurship as a productive strat-
egy of unfolding potentials and creating “dynamic growth” (Albinsson, , p. ), whereas 
critical cultural theorists suggest that this neo-liberal entrepreneurial ethos establishes an un-
tenable situation where creative workers “now normatively self-exploit themselves” (McRobbie, 
, p. ). In these assessments, the figure of the cultural entrepreneur is defined either as a 
dedicated and enterprising heroic individual or as a struggling protagonist who ends in tragic 
circumstances despite being highly capable and committed. Oftentimes used simply as a syno-
nym for self-employment in the arts and the creative industries, which is what critical cultural 
theorists emphasize when using the notion of entrepreneurship, the term cultural entrepreneur-
ship holds additional meanings pointing to the cultural value of creative work beyond its mon-
etary worth, the innovativeness of creative work, and new venture developments¾which is 
what business studies scholars aim to highlight. Depending on which meanings are activated, 
the cultural entrepreneur becomes quite a different figure, paving the way for different narra-
tives about culture, entrepreneurship, and work.  

Against this backdrop, the purpose of this article is to scrutinize definitions of cultural en-
trepreneurship in the scholarly literature on the topic, aiming to identify different figures of the 
cultural entrepreneur that researchers create, identifying the components of these figures. By 
turning attention to how researchers conceptualize and portray the cultural entrepreneur, this 
article adds to studies that analyze the discourse of cultural entrepreneurship amongst practi-
tioners. Previous research has focused on practitioners’ use of the term entrepreneurship by 
demonstrating how the term cultural entrepreneurship has been employed as a new discourse 
in cultural policies (Ellmeier, ; Haynes and Marshall, ; Kolsteeg, ), how artists’ 
own occupational myths play a role in career decisions (Bain, ), and how cultural entrepre-
neurs themselves find that an artistic identity aligns with or (as is more often the case) collides 
with the identity of entrepreneur (Ball et al., ; Bass et al., ; Beaven, ; Coulson, ; 
Haynes and Marshall, ; Loacker, ; Loots and Witteloostuijn, ; Naudin, a; 
b; Schediwy et al., ; Taylor and Littleton, ; ). Adding to this body of literature, 
this article shifts attention from how practitioners have been defining cultural entrepreneurship 
to how scholars have done so.   

By focusing on definitions of the cultural entrepreneur in the literature on the topic, this 
article argues that the figures mentioned above, which are created in the scholarly literature, 



ARTIVATE 11.2 

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enable researchers to see certain things while overlooking others, and, moreover, that these por-
trayals made in research may have consequences for how practitioners see themselves in the 
cultural field when framed as cultural entrepreneurs. As research on organizational metaphors 
shows, these conceptual instruments enable both scholars and practitioners to interpret and 
make sense of situations (Morgan, ; ). In the case of cultural entrepreneurship, it is not 
so much organizing practices per se that are conceptualized metaphorically as it is the individual 
cultural entrepreneur who takes the center stage in various personifications constituting the 
phenomenon. For that reason, the notion of figure serves as a better means to sorting through 
the ways in which the phenomenon is approached in the literature and how this literature not 
only draws from but also constructs different options (for a comparable example in youth stud-
ies, see Treadgold, ). As suggested by ecofeminist and technoscience philosopher Donna 
Haraway, who has written extensively about figures such as cyborgs, laboratory mice, dogs, apes, 
pigeons, and spiders: “Figures help me grapple inside the flesh of mortal world-making […] 
Figures collect the people through their invitation to inhabit the corporeal story told in their 
lineaments” (, p. ). In other words, figures are not only abstract illustrations but also char-
acters with material semiotic existence in their own stories and beyond.  

Based on a review of the existing figures in the scholarly literature, this article suggests that 
new conceptualizations are needed. While gung ho heroes and tragic characters have dominated 
the literature, cultural entrepreneurs may in practice constitute a different type of figures, which 
the article describes as catalyst heroes who sustain themselves while bringing about change in 
others. Building on literature in art management emphasizing the role of community-engaged 
artists in generating social change, the article then turns to ways in which cultural entrepreneurs 
sustain their practices and contribute to society. It draws on findings from existing empirical 
studies on cultural entrepreneurship, outlining the catalyst figure as an entrepreneur made out 
of necessity, conducting care work alongside artistic work, and operating largely in an informal 
economy while maintaining their artistic practice through these circumstances. By describing 
all three figures of the cultural entrepreneur as heroes, a common ground is established, calling 
attention to struggles and achievements throughout cases. At the same time, the various hero 
figures also allow for clear distinctions between different types of narratives that scholars create 
when portraying cultural entrepreneurship. Of course, these figures constitute theoretical ab-
stractions that may be combined in various ways in practice by both scholars and practitioners. 

Definitions of the Cultural Entrepreneur 
Since the literature on cultural entrepreneurship started growing, a number of review articles 
have been published aiming to pin down this emerging field of research (Albinsson, ; Bür-
ger and Volkmann, ; Chang and Wyszomirski, ; Doberva and Ivanov, ; Haus-
mann and Heinze, ; Mazzoni and Lazzeretti, ; Rivetti and Migiaccio, ). Based on 
literature searches sometimes conducted in very systematic ways, these review articles present 
overviews of publications on the topic of cultural entrepreneurship as well as on the related 



ARTIVATE 11.2 

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terms of arts entrepreneurship and creative entrepreneurship, which are frequently used inter-
changeably but also to call attention to the arts sector specifically or the field of creative indus-
tries research. Besides discussing terminological confusion (Hausmann and Heinze, ) and 
the lacking consolidation of the field of research on cultural entrepreneurship (Bürger and 
Volkmann, ), these reviews map thematically what has been covered in the research on 
cultural entrepreneurship. Methodological characteristics of the existing research have also 
been identified, showing that conceptual and qualitative research dominate the field. Early on, 
conceptual papers were the most common, but since the early s the majority of papers have 
been empirical studies, mostly case studies, often conducted by means of qualitative research 
methods (Dobreva and Ivanov, ; Hausmann and Heinze, ).  

In terms of content, all of the review articles identify core themes in the literature. Espe-
cially, the themes that have been identified are classified as either research focusing on identity 
and motivations of cultural entrepreneurs; research about entrepreneurship training for artists 
and creative workers; or research calling attention to business practices, success factors, the role 
of new information and communication technologies, and the impact of business environ-
ments, especially urban developments and creative city policies. While these mappings of 
themes are useful to get an impression of what has been done, the core issue of what constitutes 
cultural entrepreneurship remains an open question. As one review article concludes: “[I]t is 
noteworthy that even in recent years a growing number of articles address some of the core 
questions not yet sufficiently answered concerning the theoretical foundation of cultural entre-
preneurship and related concepts” (Bürger and Volkmann, , p. f). Taking up this chal-
lenge of addressing the core questions of the theoretical foundation of cultural entrepreneur-
ship, this article adds to the existing literature reviews by identifying and discussing the 
underlying conceptual frameworks that are detectable in the literature, sketching the figures of 
the cultural entrepreneur that researchers operate with, which is something that has not been 
attempted previously. Hence, this article constitutes a theoretical contribution aiming to pro-
vide an exploratory conceptual overview of approaches in research on cultural entrepreneur-
ship, mapping the ways in which scholars have presented the character of the cultural entrepre-
neur.  

Various characteristics have been highlighted as defining features across literature on cul-
tural entrepreneurship. Whereas some sources concentrate on one criterion, many raise various 
defining criteria in combination (Chang and Wyszomirski, ; Endrissat and Tokarski, ; 
Essig, ; Gehman and Soublière, ; Klamer, ; Kuhlke et al., ). To approach the 
phenomenon, especially three distinct criteria stand out: first, calling attention to the innova-
tions that cultural entrepreneurs bring about; second, emphasizing the field configurations they 
initiate; and third, focusing on how this group can translate their creative activities into financial 
value not only in the sense of growing a business but also in many cases in addressing the core 
issue of how to even sustain a living to begin with. These three criteria can be considered as 
separate arguments that are worth a closer look.  

Building on Schumpeter’s foundational theory of entrepreneurship, a number of scholars 
suggest that cultural entrepreneurs should not be measured on their economic orientation and 



ARTIVATE 11.2 

5 

performance but rather on their abilities to generate innovations in the cultural sector (Essig, 
a; b; ; Haynes and Marchall, ; Hjort and Holt, ; Klamer, ; Preece, 
; Swedberg, ). This contrasts with the common perception of entrepreneurship as a 
matter of risk taking in the hope of profit, stressing instead that entrepreneurs are not simply 
motivated by anticipated financial revenue but are also driven by dreams, the will to conquer, 
and the joy of creating (Schumpeter cited in Swedberg, , p. ). By returning to Schum-
peter’s original approach to entrepreneurship, researchers of cultural entrepreneurship suggest 
seeing the core of the matter as a question of whether new things are invented and activities are 
carried out in innovative ways, underlining that there is a key difference between entrepreneur-
ship and enterprise (Hjort and Holt, ). In making this argument, a parallel can be drawn 
between the artist and the entrepreneur as, according to Schumpeter, “the entrepreneur is like 
a painter; the act of combining things—the essence of entrepreneurship—is a form of art” 
(Swedberg, , p. ). Conversely, the “true artist” is said to resemble the entrepreneur, “and 
just as the economic entrepreneur has his imitators and followers, so does the artist. Both the 
artist and the entrepreneur are dynamic, active, and energetic and show leadership qualities, 
while their followers are passive and static and accept the way things are” (ibid., p. ). Based 
on these similarities, it is proposed that cultural entrepreneurship “may therefore be defined as 
the carrying out of a novel combination that results in something new and appreciated in the 
cultural sphere” (ibid., p. ), thus highlighting that it is a matter of realizing cultural values 
(Klamer, ). Other scholars working in the field of sociology of culture follow a Bourdieusian 
approach to make a similar argument about the necessity of gaining social recognition and ap-
praisal in a cultural scene before aiming to monetize cultural activities, suggesting that cultural 
entrepreneurs first accumulate symbolic capital and then convert it into economic gain (Mears, 
; Scott, ).  

Secondly, the term cultural entrepreneurship has been associated with institutionalization 
processes since it was first introduced by DiMaggio to describe the process whereby Boston’s 
cultural and economic elites managed to define high culture in opposition to popular culture by 
creating distinct elite organizations in the second half of the nineteenth century (). Today, 
this criterion is not only found in the sociology of culture and historical analyses of the arts but 
is also a central parameter in research within business studies that follows an approach from 
neo-institutional organizational sociology. The key point is that cultural entrepreneurs establish 
new institutions and products that are crucial for field formations and, in that way, generate 
cultural change (Endrissat and Tokarski, ). 

Whereas these two defining criteria overlap to the extent that both point to the formation 
of innovations that change the cultural landscape—with the first approach emphasizing the mo-
tivation and efforts of individual entrepreneurs and the second underlining collective processes 
that  relate to questions about class and power distribution in DiMaggio’s study—the third cri-
terion used to define what constitutes cultural entrepreneurship is quite different and yet the 
most commonly used parameter. This last measure suggests that cultural entrepreneurship de-
scribes self-employment of artists and other creative workers. This means that it is not so much 
a matter of generating innovations and changing fields as it is a basic question about survival in 



ARTIVATE 11.2 

6 

these fields. Multiple studies have employed this definition of cultural entrepreneurship, sug-
gesting that it describes self-employment in an oversaturated winner-takes-all market, which 
raises the critical question about how to establish and maintain a portfolio career in this situa-
tion (Chang and Wyszomirski, ; Coulson, ; Duffy, ; Harvie, ; Haynes and 
Marshall, ; McRobbie, ; Scott, ). Defining cultural entrepreneurship as freelance 
employment corresponds to the basic characteristics of artistic labor in capitalist economies 
(Menger, ; ), which have become relevant to a much wider group of people with the 
explosion of the category of creative work. However, this way of approaching cultural entrepre-
neurship says very little about the business aspect of this type of entrepreneurship and rarely 
addresses business practices that extend beyond one-person companies.  

In parallel with these three defining criteria, another way of distinguishing between differ-
ent definitions of cultural entrepreneurship can be established by looking at how the term is 
used in the various bodies of literature where it features. In a broad sense, research about cul-
tural entrepreneurs can be said to be conducted within three distinct bodies of literature: busi-
ness studies, art management, and creative work studies—each of which addresses the topic 
differently. Though these different strands of research all deal with the topic of cultural entre-
preneurship, their normative evaluations vary fundamentally, and each of these three bodies of 
literature prioritizes one of the criteria described above over the others. 

In business studies, cultural entrepreneurship represents innovative practices in art and 
creative industries that successfully intertwine artistic and financial interests and, by doing so, 
changes these fields. Particularly the notion of the institutional entrepreneur, a maverick who 
challenges isomorphic practices within the field, has been used as an analytical framework to 
conceptualize the role of cultural entrepreneurs (Alvarez et al., ; Jones et al., ; Sveje-
nova et al., ). Retrospective analyses of the career developments of visual artists Damien 
Hirst (Enhuber, ) and Ai WeiWei (Hjorth and Holt, ); film directors Lars von Trier, 
Pedro Almodóvar, and Nanni Moretti (Alvarez and Svejenova, ; Alvarez et al., ); jazz 
musician Chet Baker (Bradshaw and Holbrook, ); and Michelin cook Ferran Adrià (Sveje-
nova et al., ) have been used as case studies to demonstrate how cultural entrepreneurs 
create field-configuring novelties that fruitfully integrate art with commerce. A different con-
ceptualization of the term cultural entrepreneurship, which prevails within business studies, 
calls attention to how culture can be used as a resource by entrepreneurs regardless of their 
business field, such as when entrepreneurs use storytelling to communicate their ideas (Louns-
bury and Glynn, ; ). This approach contributes to entrepreneurship research in general 
and sees culture and artistic forms as communication tools and strategies. 

While studies of cultural entrepreneurs as institutional entrepreneurs demonstrate Schum-
peter’s and DiMaggio’s defining criteria about being driven by dreams in generating novelties 
and establishing practices that change the existing field, these studies also happen to focus on 
cases of unquestionable triumph. By examining the careers of world-famous men who have 
made important contributions to well-established fields of art and culture, the figure of the cul-
tural entrepreneur in these studies is a hero who succeeds. This heroic figure may have struggled 



ARTIVATE 11.2 

7 

in their early days, but they have managed to create outstanding innovations, have become ar-
tistically renown for them, and their artistic accomplishments have ultimately generated eco-
nomic prosperity, which indicates that success on both registers of worth are intertwined and 
not oppositional. In that way, this narrative affirms both the storyline of the heroic entrepreneur 
who pushes through and succeeds due to their exceptional abilities and the romantic myth of 
the artistic genius who creates ex nihilo (Negus and Pickering, ).  

Turning this ideal upside-down, focusing on its dark side, the interdisciplinary and rapidly 
growing field of creative work studies shows not only how difficult it is for the majority of cul-
tural entrepreneurs to succeed but also how the iconic figure of the conquering hero becomes a 
myth that legitimizes hardship and precarious working conditions (Banks et al., ; Gill, ; 
; Gill and Pratt, ; Hesmondhalgh and Baker, ; ; McRobbie, ; ; ). 
Particularly the figure of the autonomous avant-garde artist who is self-motivated, creates freely, 
breaks conventions, and establishes new paradigms has been recuperated and has become a 
paradigmatic neo-liberal role model worker (de Peuter, ), a figure that has travelled from a 
tiny art world to society at large with the rise of the creative class, the creative industries, and 
the creative dispositif that pertains to everyone today (Boltanski and Chiapello, ; Lazzarato, 
; Reckwick, ). Supported by rich empirical material from research on real-time career 
making, creative work studies present the cultural entrepreneur as a tragic hero who acts mor-
ally, who is competent and passionate but ends up in an unhealthy situation of self-exploitation 
when attempting to live out the legend of the heroic cultural entrepreneur, thus presenting a 
contemporary version of the romantic myth of the bohemian, starving artist. 

Clearly, this body of literature centers around the defining criterion of cultural entrepre-
neurship as an issue of self-employment in creative industries. By raising the question of how 
to make it with one’s creative work, these studies point out the illusory character of the heroic 
cultural entrepreneur. Documenting how far best practice examples are from most cultural en-
trepreneurs’ lived realities, such as the career of multimillionaire visual artist Damian Hirst, this 
body of literature suggests that the iconic hero figure does nothing other than proving the rule 
that these are winner-takes-all markets where the majority do not triumph but tragically fail.  

Lastly, the field of arts management can be said to sit between organizational studies that 
point to ideal scenarios of cultural entrepreneurship and critical creative work studies that 
demonstrate precarious situations and persistent inequalities, outlining a path for focusing on 
how to teach entrepreneurship in arts education (Clarke and Stewart, ; Kuhlke et al., ). 
In this field, cultural entrepreneurship typifies a shift away from stable careers within estab-
lished organizations to self-invented jobs that demand a new set of skills. This is also a point 
that scholars in creative work studies have emphasized—that entrepreneurialism constitutes a 
central part of deinstitutionalization processes in cultural fields, which change from being reg-
ulated and subsidized to operating in new, more flexible, market-driven ways as a result of neo-
liberal cultural policies in tandem with digitalization processes. Analyses of these changes tell 
stories about reconfiguration, if not decline and crisis (Comunian and England, ; Ellmeier, 
; Harvie, ; Haynes and Marshall, ; Rosenkranz, ).  

Practice-oriented, art management research about cultural entrepreneurship deals with 



ARTIVATE 11.2 

8 

how to develop and balance various skills that this new type of self-managed career requires. 
That means combining a critical stance towards the precariousness of entrepreneurial employ-
ment with attention to vocational activities that artists can employ to add an enterprise orien-
tation to their artistic activities (Dworkin, ; Essig, b; ; Kuhlke et al., ; Naudin, 
b; White, ). Activities around marketing become increasingly important when artists 
become entrepreneurs, and, in general, multi-skilling becomes an issue when artists start to op-
erate businesses with everything that entails—such as customer relations, bookkeeping, negoti-
ations with collaborators as well as self-promotion and product marketing—alongside the 
maintenance of specialized skills particular to their artistic or creative discipline. In this way, 
like creative work studies, this literature focuses on self-employment as the defining criterion of 
cultural entrepreneurship; and overlapping with creative work studies, this research focuses on 
lived real-time experiences either from teaching or practicing cultural entrepreneurship.  

As this summary of various approaches to cultural entrepreneurship in different bodies of 
literature demonstrates, there has been a tendency to focus on best practice cases, developing 
hero stories that illustrate how novelties are brought into the world, how fields change, and how 
they bring about artistic innovation and recognition as well as financial success. Alternatively, 
other studies have focused on the precarious careers of self-employed creatives. These stories 
tend to focus solely on the struggles involved in establishing careers in the cultural and creative 
industries, highlighting questions about how to generate an income from cultural entrepreneur-
ship, constructing a tragic hero figure as the counterpart to the ideal of the triumphant gung ho 
hero. Methodologically, there is also a noteworthy difference between these approaches: Hero 
figures are identified retrospectively, which makes it possible to single out the individual and 
create a storyline that progresses because of the actions of this committed protagonist. On the 
other hand, struggling cultural entrepreneurs are found in real-time studies of samples of crea-
tive workers, carried out with surveys, interviews and fieldwork as ways of documenting expe-
riences. None of these studies have located the existence of the heroic figure who, by means of 
will and passion, singlehandedly manages to create artistic novelties, which change a field by 
virtue of being appraised by consecrating art insiders and achieving financial success. Instead, 
this research seems to suggest that practitioners are falsely led by the illusion that they can bring 
this heroic figure into being if they try hard enough, blindly following a neo-liberal ethos of 
exploiting themselves with governmentalizing self-technologies developed to pursue the crea-
tive dispositif.  

However, practitioners may be well aware of the reality of their own situation and chose to 
act with a complicit attitude defined by capitalist realism (Fisher, ). This self-reflexivity is 
not something that the figure of the tragic hero covers. Also, stories about tragic heroes focus 
on revealing structural conditions that make it impossible for the protagonist to succeed, 
thereby leaving little room for acknowledging the coping strategies that creatives develop, and, 
additionally, oftentimes overlooking what is actually produced by cultural entrepreneurs. Yet, 
practitioners get by and come up with artistic and creative content, organizing their careers as 
cultural entrepreneurs as best they can, striving to make ends meet in a sector where self-em-



ARTIVATE 11.2 

9 

ployment dominates, organizing private lives intertwined with work, and collaborating profes-
sionally through informal networks. To describe that situation, a number of scholars have been 
calling for the invention of different figures of the cultural entrepreneur to capture what is ac-
tually done in practice, highlighting necessity, reproductive work, and informality (Alacovska 
and Bille, ; Alacovska and Gill, ; Beaven, ; Essig, a; ; Luckman, ; 
McRobbie, ; Naudin, a; b). Aiming to add to this development of a new figure, 
the next section will discuss how cultural entrepreneurship may constitute in practice a phe-
nomenon that overflows the categories developed to describe it. 

From Gung Ho Heroes and Their Tragic Counterparts to Cat-
alyst Figures  
Of course, the careers of struggling, self-employed creative workers can simply be said to not 
qualify as cultural entrepreneurship. Or such cases can be said to constitute, at the most, failed 
attempts, examples of incompetent cultural entrepreneurship. Returning to the three criteria 
for what is considered to constitute cultural entrepreneurship, struggling, self-employed crea-
tives may not perform well under any of these criteria: They may not manage to create novelties 
that are recognized as such by consecrating field insiders, they may not be establishing config-
urations that successfully change the cultural field, and they may not be able to generate a sus-
tainable income solely from their art. This raises the question of whether analyses of cases that 
deviate from the ideal scenario of the triumphant gung ho hero should be considered as cases 
of failure. This would mean that the majority of self-employed creative workers represent un-
qualified cultural entrepreneurs— that they constitute tragic heroes who cannot make it and 
whose stories end with suffering or defeat. While this is certainly a powerful story that resonates 
with the predominant narrative about precarious creative careers (Comunian and England, 
; de Peuter, ; Gill and Pratt, ), it also establishes a bleak outlook with little 
acknowledgement of what is accomplished, that is, if there might be more to the story of real-
life cultural entrepreneurship than just failure, precarity and tragedy. 

Aiming to add to the stories of struggling cultural entrepreneurs, this article suggests revis-
iting how self-employed creative workers manage to get by, maintain their creative practice and 
sustain a living while taking care of others and contributing to society. The idea is to see cultural 
entrepreneurs as catalyst heroes whose main achievements are not directed towards themselves 
or limited to their own self-realization but are made from bringing about change in others. This 
suggestion builds on literature in art management that has highlighted the role of artists as lead-
ers of community-based social changes (Markusen, ; Markusen and Gadwa, ; Miller 
et al., ; Novak-Leonard and Skaggs, ; Preece, ; Robinson and Novak-Leonard, 
). To develop this suggestion, three arguments from studies in cultural entrepreneurship 
that have drawn inspiration from general entrepreneurship research will be adduced: that cul-
tural entrepreneurs oftentimes can be described as ‘necessity entrepreneurs’, that they some-
times act as ‘mumpreneurs’, and that ‘informal’ cultural entrepreneurship may be central to 
understanding how novelties are created by cultural entrepreneurs. 



ARTIVATE 11.2 

10 

First of all, cultural entrepreneurs generally do not become entrepreneurs because they aim 
to have a business but in order to be able to sell their work and thus maintain their artistic 
practice. This is supported by findings from empirical studies, which consistently have shown 
that artists and other creative workers do not set up their businesses with the intention to run a 
business and become entrepreneurs but simply because self-employment is the only employ-
ment option available for them. To capture this phenomenon, cultural entrepreneurs are de-
scribed as “accidental” (Coulson, ), “reluctant” (Haynes and Marshall, ), “unintended” 
(Essig, b), and “forced” (Oakley, ) entrepreneurs. Yet, the most commonly used ex-
pression is “necessity entrepreneurship” (e.g., McRobbie, ), which is a term taken from en-
trepreneurship research beyond the cultural and creative industries. More specifically, this term 
stems from studies of entrepreneurship in developing countries with few other employment 
options, where businesses are started not because those who start them “take advantage of a 
perceived opportunity”—which is what entrepreneurs conventionally are said to do—but 
simply because starting a business constitutes “the only option that these individuals perceive is 
left for them” (Serviere, , p. ). In this way, necessity entrepreneurship contrasts with op-
portunity entrepreneurship, and it highlights that personal motivation does not constitute the 
only factor in entrepreneurship practices but is conditioned by socio-economic factors. Trans-
ferred to studies of cultural entrepreneurship, the notion of necessity entrepreneurship empha-
sizes the structure of the labor market for creative work. 

Secondly, a key discovery from the empirical research on creative work is the documenta-
tion of persistent gender inequalities in the arts and creative industries (Burke and McManus, 
; Conor et al., ; Gill, ; ; McRobbie, ; ; ; O’Brien, ; Scharff, 
). As the survey of the existing studies discussed earlier in this article shows, only male 
artists are featured as successful heroes in the literature on cultural entrepreneurship. This con-
firms the gendered character of the triumphant hero figure, cementing the suggestion that the 
artistic genius is a gendered category (Battersby, ). A similar point could be made about 
race (Burke and McManus, ). Moreover, while some studies call attention to the feminized 
character of the invisible emotional labor that cultural entrepreneurs conduct, not least online 
when engaging in relational labor with audiences (Baym, ; Duffy, ; Duffy and Hund, 
; Duffy and Pruchniewska, ; Naudin and Patel, ; Whitson et al., ), another 
gendered aspect of creative work concerns how female cultural entrepreneurs set up their busi-
nesses. Scholars have suggested that some female cultural entrepreneurs choose this flexible 
form of employment because it allows for a merger with mothering, thus acting as ‘mumpre-
neurs’ (Luckman, ; Luckman and Andrews ). The notion of the ‘mumpreneur’ is an 
emic term elaborated in research on female entrepreneurs outside the cultural and creative in-
dustries, describing entrepreneurship practices that are established with the intention to prior-
itize motherhood—“a business practice that attempts to recast the boundaries between produc-
tive and reproductive work” (Ekinsmyth, , p. ). A large-scale study of craft-
entrepreneurialism in Australia shows how cultural entrepreneurs who are also mothers were 
“hoping to balance income-generating work and motherhood” (Luckman, , p. ). 

Lastly, the informality of creative work is a point that scholars emphasize both with regard 



ARTIVATE 11.2 

11 

to informal socializing, which is necessary for maintaining project-based employment, and re-
garding informal ways of organizing production and distribution of cultural goods, as is clearly 
demonstrated in studies of cultural entrepreneurship in the global South (Alacovska and Gill, 
). For example, studies of Nollywood filmmaking in Lagos, Nigeria, show how piracy prac-
tices established an informal economy that substitutes formalized forms of cultural production 
(Larkin, ; Lobato, ; Lobato and Thomas, ; Röschenthaler and Schulz, ). Like 
the previous two findings about necessity entrepreneurship and ‘mumpreneurship’, the im-
portance of informal networks has been linked to findings from entrepreneurship research be-
yond the cultural and creative industries, pointing to the hidden enterprise culture that exists 
around informal entrepreneurship practices, which is often not taken into account in discus-
sions of entrepreneurship as an honorable business practice (Williams and Nadin, ). Yet, 
informal activities—in the form of unpaid work, mutual aid, barter and gift economies, favor-
swapping, and semi-illegal economic activities such as tax evasion and cash-in-hand wages—
feature in cultural entrepreneurship practices beyond the global South (Alacovska and Gill, 
). 

All three characteristics of cultural entrepreneurship in practice underline the collective 
quality of this activity, thus bringing to mind and reaffirming Becker’s foundational argument 
that art is always collective action (; ). For creative work, being pushed to start a busi-
ness due to structural conditions of the labor market means that the question of individual mo-
tivation for starting as an entrepreneur becomes insignificant. Integrating work with care work 
entails that the cultural entrepreneur should not be described as a detached figure but as a figure 
that is establishing themself while enabling the development of others. Operating in a largely 
informal economy adds to the point that the cultural entrepreneur constitutes activities rela-
tionally and exists through the connections made to others by virtue of emotional labor and 
self-organized business practices. Accordingly, this article suggests developing a figure of the 
cultural entrepreneur that captures cultural entrepreneurship as a practice that extends beyond 
the individual. Instead of thinking of the cultural entrepreneur as a mastermind who creates ex 
nihilo, working to establish their own legacy, the idea is to turn this around and suggest that the 
cultural entrepreneur enables the development of others while being constituted by them. In 
order to offer this suggestion, inspiration has been drawn from Haraway, who pursues alterna-
tives to narratives about bounded individualism, stories with “only one real actor, one real 
world-maker, the hero,” who is the leading figure in combative tales of action where all others 
“are props, ground, plot space, or pray” (, p. ). Haraway’s point is that this figure is 
“worthless without a bag, a container, a net,” and she suggests developing richer “stories of be-
coming-with, of reciprocal induction”—stories that are not only about the figure of the self-
making human (ibid., p. ). Transferred to the issue of cultural entrepreneurship, Haraway’s 
point suggests that an individualized focus on the singular cultural entrepreneur ignores the 
multiple strands that enable courses of action, disregarding the fact that everyone depends on 
support networks around them—and that, at the same time, cultural entrepreneurs play a fun-
damental role in making things happen for others. In this way, the cultural entrepreneur may 
be seen as a catalyst for others—for relatives, audiences, collaborators. Emphasizing how the 



ARTIVATE 11.2 

12 

entrepreneur effects change in others and is in turn produced by relations leads to thinking of 
cultural entrepreneurship as allowing the positioning of these figures in the context of collective 
entities such as art institutions, business ecosystems, artistic movements, digital commons, and 
their personal networks. In this way, the figure of the catalyst puts an end to the portrayals of 
the individual artist as the sole starting-point, driving force, and end result of cultural entrepre-
neurship. Instead, the figure of the entrepreneur as a catalyst allows for the possibility of cap-
turing the outcomes of cultural business innovations, pointing beyond the individual to docu-
ment effects on several registers of worth. 

Conclusion 
Starting from the premise that the figures created by scholars out of the phenomena they study 
have consequences, this article has revisited literature on cultural entrepreneurship to discern 
various definitions. After this, the article has discussed the applicability of existing figures and 
suggested a new one. By raising the question of which figures have scholars come up with out 
of the cultural entrepreneur and whether other figures could be further developed to capture 
more adequately the phenomenon as it unfolds in practice, the article has built on the suggestion 
that scholarly conceptualizations not only depict existing versions of phenomena but also gen-
erate their own effects and thus allow for certain constructions of those phenomena to be de-
vised. As Haraway suggests in her quote of anthropologist Marilyn Strathern: “It matters what 
ideas we use to think other ideas.” (Strathern cited in Haraway, , p. ). In other words, 
analytical concepts set up by scholars have consequences—not only for scholarly debates but 
also for the empirical settings they address. This begs the question of which figures might be 
helpful to practitioners. 

In the review of the existing literature, the article has pointed out three defining character-
istics that are used to measure cultural entrepreneurship: that it is about generating novelties, 
establishing field configurations, and sustaining a living as self-employed—all within the cul-
tural and creative industries. While these criteria are sometimes brought together, at other times 
one criterion is prioritized over the rest, and they obviously point in different directions, most 
clearly in the case of the first two vis-à-vis the last criterion. Moving on from distinguishing 
between these three criteria, the article has suggested that three distinct bodies of literature exist 
on the topic of cultural entrepreneurship: in business studies, critical creative work studies, and 
art management. Whereas the first body of literature presents retrospective case studies of suc-
cessful individual male artists as examples of institutional entrepreneurs in the cultural field, the 
second calls attention to poor working conditions and self-exploitation in real-time studies of 
samples of self-employed creative workers. The third body of literature brings these two poles 
together by presenting a pragmatic approach for developing tools that aspiring cultural entre-
preneurs can employ to improve their situation. 

The final section of the paper has developed a preliminary suggestion for a new type of 
figure based on art management research that has called attention to the role of community-
engaged artists. With examples from existing studies in cultural entrepreneurship in practice, 



ARTIVATE 11.2 

13 

the article proposes moving on from hero tales’ portrayals via their flipside and those critiques 
pointing out how this figure is a damaging illusion to formulating a proposal for seeing cultural 
entrepreneurship as an uneven, precarious, and collectively embedded activity for generating 
change in others. This move is inspired by Haraway, who advises turning away from stories of 
bounded individuality to stories of becoming-with. Transferred to the case of cultural entrepre-
neurship, this means addressing the epitome of individualization, the enterprising self in the 
creative economy, and investigating cultural entrepreneurship as a collective matter instead. 
This also entails recognizing the collaborations necessary for entrepreneurial activities to arise 
and investigating how cultural entrepreneurs themselves affect others both professionally and 
in their private lives. To elaborate this suggestion, the article has employed findings from em-
pirical studies of real-life experiences of cultural entrepreneurs that emphasize characteristics 
of this type of entrepreneurship, which are not included in the initial formulations of what con-
stitutes cultural entrepreneurship. The three characteristics that have been highlighted are the 
unavoidability of becoming self-employed when working in the cultural and creative sector, 
integrating flexible work with private lives, and the informality that prevails in these labor mar-
kets. To address these topics theoretically, research on entrepreneurship developed outside the 
cultural sector and creative industries has been employed, introducing a vocabulary of necessity 
entrepreneurship, ‘mumpreneurship’, and informal entrepreneurship. These findings suggest 
that while entrepreneurship research has questioned its own foundational assumptions, moving 
beyond the heroic and honorable image of the individual businessman as entrepreneur (Wil-
liams and Nadin, ), research on cultural entrepreneurship might still benefit from a similar 
development. 

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Cover image: 66, Superheroes Also Use Public 
Transport. Photo by European Environment 
Agency (EEA), https://search.openverse.engi-
neering/image/39c5f168-aeae-44b4-8228-
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