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SPRING 2023 

EDITORIAL 

Editorial Perspectives 
A Futurecasting Glossary 

We invited past, present, and future Artivate editors to contribute to a glossary 

collectively, futurecasting the central ideas advancing our field. Their provocations shared 

here help us build forward together.  

The Entrepreneurial We 

Paul Bonin-Rodriguez 

University of Texas-Austin 

How and to what benefit might our growing field focus on arts entrepreneurship not as a 

site of independent excellence but as a result of multiple stakeholders hailed into a 

process of mutuality, collectivity, and support? I speak of a fundamental transition from 

“I” to “we” that signals the generosity of engagement required of artistic production. I 

submit that countering longstanding notions of scarcity first requires a recognition of the 

abundance of stakeholders in any one work. Two books inspire me to think this way. 

In Creative Industries (2000), the economist Richard Caves offers seven “bedrock 

properties for creative activities and show[s] how they drive organizational patterns in 

the many markets with substantive creative elements” (p. 2). Among them is “the motley 

crew property,” a term acknowledging that creative production relies on the “close 

temporal coordination” of the multiple stakeholders who bring any one work to market 

(p. 10). Caves states that he speaks primarily of “the performing arts and creative activities 

involving complex teams,” yet his term seems applicable to all arts fields where 

production meets the public (ibid). 

Taking a different approach in The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World 

(1982, 2007), the historian Lewis Hyde posits “that works of art exist simultaneously in 

two ‘economies,’ a market economy and a gift economy, and only one of these is essential: 

a work of art can survive without the market, but where there is no gift there is no art” (p. 



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xvi). Hyde, of course, is acknowledging that artmaking itself is rooted in gifting, the 

product of a relationship that anticipates engagement and exchange.  

I am equally inspired by my location in a Department of Theatre and Dance, where 

there’s a lot of emphasis on studio and craft. The students focus on themselves. Faculty 

focuses on the students. It’s lovely. It’s heartwarming. Nice to see the students thrive. Yet, 

in the transition from apprenticeship to professional life the students would be well 

advised to turn the focus around and get to know stakeholders/gatekeepers who maintain 

the sites where they will work. Those stakeholders may include those who operate spaces, 

a community, or a public. In the process, they will undoubtedly see that there is an 

abundance of support not only available but requiring cultivation with the same focus they 

have applied to their craft.  

After having co-edited this journal since the Winter 2019 issue and followed its 

contents and progress and the scholarship of the arts entrepreneurship field, I have 

become convinced that the artist entrepreneurship we (re)present is fundamentally team-

based. Our emerging arts entrepreneurs will benefit from thinking how they can 

participate rather than thinking in terms of what the field can offer them. 

References 

Caves, R.E. (2000). Creative Industries: contracts 
between art and commerce.  Cambridge, MA: 
Harvard University Press. 

Hyde, L. (2007). The Gift: creativity and the artist 
in the modern world, 25th Anniversary Ed. New 
York: Vintage Books.

Plural Sector 

E. Andrew Taylor  

American University 

Entrepreneurship in most contexts is tied explicitly to business, financial resource, 

financial risk, and profit. While artistic expression and experience certainly occupy many 

domains where all four are salient concerns, financial and economic logic cannot begin to 

encompass the theory and practice of arts entrepreneurship. We can carve out a bit more 

territory by exploring both for-profit and not-for-profit entity types. But even then, the 

focus is on “profit” or its absence, not on the alternate logics in play.  

Management scholar Henry Mintzberg suggests the “plural sector” as an inclusive 

label to capture the domain of collective action organized by social logic. “The plural 

sector,” he writes, “is not some middle position between left and right, but as different 

from the other two sectors as they are from each other. Its particular focus is on 

communities, whereas the other two sectors focus on governments and businesses” 

(Mintzberg 2015). 

Exploring arts entrepreneurship within a plural sector frame (rather than not-for-



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profit, volunteer, independent, or third sector) can open discovery to a full array of 

practices, including not only not-for-profit corporations but also unincorporated, 

cooperative, mutual aid, indigenous, informal, and other forms of collective effort—even 

social movements (Matlon et al 2014). This is a rising and compelling area of innovation 

and action in the arts. It deserves an inclusive and useful frame. 

Harvard professor Howard Stevenson defined entrepreneurship as the pursuit of 

opportunity beyond resources controlled (Sinoway and Meadow 2012). In arts 

entrepreneurship, that pursuit can require mastery in multiple domains—economic logic 

and financial risk (private sector), political logic and public process (public sector), and 

social logic and community action (plural sector). Among the many challenges of arts 

entrepreneurship is to identify the best terrain(s) to reach the intended destination and 

to assemble the appropriate people and practices for a successful expedition. 

The plural sector can and should be among the useful names we give the landscape. 

References

Matlon, Mina Para, Ingrid Van Haastrecht, and 
Kaitlyn Wittig Mengu ç. 2014. “Figuring the 
Plural: Needs and Supports of Canadian and 
US Ethnocultural Arts Organizations.” Plural. 

Mintzberg, Henry. 2015. “Time for the Plural 

Sector.” Stanford Social Innovation Review 13 
(3): 28–33. 

Sinoway, Eric, and Merrill Meadow. 2012. 
Howard’s Gift: Uncommon Wisdom to Inspire 
Your Life’s Work. Macmillan. 

Collaborative Organizational Culture 

Neville Vakharia 

Drexel University 

Organizational culture is a complex construct serving as both a consequence of and an 

antecedent to how an organization achieves its goals. Commonly accepted definitions of 

organizational culture describe shared assumptions, values, beliefs, and perceptions that 

are embodied and socialized within an organization. Despite this somewhat opaque 

definition, a large body of research demonstrates how organizational culture drives 

multiple dimensions of organizational performance. 

In my own research, I’ve explored how a collaborative organizational culture in 

creative and cultural organizations can support efforts towards innovation and 

institutional entrepreneurship. In fact, I found that organizations that more strongly 

exhibited this type of culture were more likely to engage in innovative practices and 

programmatic approaches. Conversely, a lack of a collaborative culture led to silos, 

mistrust, and high staff turnover. 

Central to creating a collaborative organizational culture is the role of leadership. It 

is the leadership of an organization that sets the tone for how an organization’s culture is 

established. In creative and cultural organizations, I found that leaders who actively and 



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deliberatively fostered collaboration created a culture in which all staff members felt 

empowered to collaborate within and outside of their respective roles. They were given 

the agency to explore new ideas, act entrepreneurially, and learn from failure. However, I 

found that it was not enough for leaders to simply encourage collaboration for it to 

become imbued within their organization’s culture. These leaders had to act with 

intention to create the processes and practices that fostered collaboration—leaders who 

did not ultimately expressed frustration at their organization’s inability to be innovative 

and entrepreneurial. 

Ultimately, an organizational culture of collaboration provides an environment to 

foster new ways of doing things. It can motivate teams and help organizations achieve 

their goals. Like all types of organizational culture, a culture of collaboration is only 

possible if leaders take an active role in building it. As the director of a small science 

museum told me in a research interview, “The work we’re doing to be collaborative will 

push us towards innovation.” 

Worldmaking 

Diane Ragsdale 

Minneapolis College of Art & Design 

Building on a decade of research on effectuation, in 2012 Saras Sarasvathy posited 

worldmaking as a primary affordance of the entrepreneurial method as distinct from 

understanding afforded by the scientific method (p. 2). Elaborating on this distinction, she 

writes: 

The moment we embrace the notion of worldmaking, we cede the notion of inevitability. 

We are no longer satisfied with the pursuit of understanding the world as it is or even 

arguing about the world as it should be. Instead, we also have to grapple with plurality, 

contingency, and possibility of the worlds that could be, the worlds we can make as well as 

the world we find ourselves in. Since we no longer seek to understand what will happen, 

we have to be ready to explore all the different things that can happen. And all the things 

that could have happened but did not. Moreover, everything we take as given and 

granted—assumptions, constraints, and objective functions—all become subject to choice 

and contingency. (p. 11) 

While the scientific method takes for granted a causal direction between 

predictability and control, Sarasvathy’s entrepreneurial method is a tool for times of 

uncertainty—when prediction is not possible, but leveraging what is within one’s control 

(however modest) and learning (i.e., gaining insights and capacity for prediction) through 

making/taking action (i.e., effectuation) is possible (Sarasvathy et al. 2008 as cited in 

Sarasvathy 2012, p. 9).  



ARTIVATE 11.3 

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In an effort to address a related issue—the need to move towards “uncertainty, 

discomfort and knowledge gaps” when undertaking scenario planning—Vervoort et al. 

(2015) likewise identify worldmaking as a valuable framework. In addition to supporting 

the need to take decisions in the face of the unknown, along with Sarasvathy the 

researchers assert that a worldmaking framework can support plurality or the “connected 

need to capture and make productive” fundamental differences in people’s 

understandings and goals for the future (p. 62).  

Vervoort et al. ground their work in the seminal (1978) contribution, Ways of 

Worldmaking, by analytic and aesthetics philosopher Nelson Goodman, who analyzes the 

types and functions of symbols and their systems to explore the ways in which it is 

valuable to talk about multiple, coexisting, true versions of the world (or a pluriverse) 

rather than a single fixed world and multiple perspectives on it (pp. 2-5). Goodman 

conceptualizes a pluriverse “constructed through creative processes instead of given, and 

always in the process of becoming” (Vervoort et al. 2015, p. 62). Importantly, the making 

of new worlds, in Goodman’s view, always draws upon existing worlds: we “divide and 

combine, emphasize, order, delete, fill in and fill out, and even distort” (p. 17). Individually 

and collectively, we make worlds that are meaningful and that reflect what is most 

important to us (Vervoort et al. 2015, p. 64). In Goodman’s approach, art is fundamental 

to this process (1978) as, to count as art, an object must have “symbolic functions”; and 

these hold the capacity, through certain methods of pointing, to “contribute to a vision 

of—and to the making of—a world” (pp. 69-70). 

Sarasvathy conceptualizes worldmaking as an affordance of the entrepreneurial 

method; however, within artistic realms, worldmaking is often the method itself—and one 

that directly draws upon the re-combinatory—“taking apart and putting together”—

processes already discussed (Goodman, 1978, p. 7). The imaginative making inherent to 

artmaking is essential to radical innovation and the emergence of new ways or worlds 

(Kerr & Frasca 2021). The arts are used to “model new worlds so that we can see how we 

might feel about them” (Eno 2022, p. 6) and to “create alternate worlds that may serve as 

a proposition or a map for substantial change” (Bogart 2022). Designers and their designs 

embody and point to the possibilities of new worlds, including those that are more just 

and eco-conscious; and in doing so they also become a mechanism to catalyze and support 

the transition to future worlds (Escobar 2018, pp. 8-9). In this sense, the arts and design 

enable “rehearsal for action in real life” (Boal 2006, p. 6), including the enactment of 

democracy by modelling sound, responsible, and healthy ways of being with each other 

and engaging in community life (East 2016, p. 174). In the realm of social justice, artists 

engage in a process of “sensing, questioning, intervening in, and reimagining [of] existing 

arrangements” that holds the potential to reshape our material world and ideas about it 

(DS4SI, 2020). In sum, the arts hold the potential to point to injurious worlds and (ways) 

to remake them. 

Building on a decade of research into the dynamics of effectuation, Sarasvathy asserts 



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that worldmaking can be “made accessible to all” (p. 8) to the extent that everyone is 

taught to embrace the entrepreneurial method as part of daily living. I propose that (a) it 

would be equally valuable for everyone to be taught to embrace artistic methods as part 

of daily living and (b) that there is a potentially significant contribution to our 

understanding of worldmaking from artist-entrepreneurs and from scholars of arts 

entrepreneurship in particular. Nelson Goodman (1978) writes, “comprehension and 

creation go on together” (p. 22). As both artists and entrepreneurs evidence time and 

again, it is through making that we come to understand and move ourselves beyond 

current frames/logics/paradigms/worlds (Kerr and Frasca, 2021). If translated to a form 

capable of being applied in non-arts contexts, the creation/worldmaking methods, 

practices, and processes inherent to artmaking and art-firm-making could contribute 

greatly to an understanding of how to collectively imagine/make new ways of relating to 

ourselves, each other, our built and natural worlds, history, the present, and the future.   

References 

Boal, A, (2006). The aesthetics of the oppressed. 
Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.  
Bogart, A. (2022, November 15). World-making. 

SITI Blog. https://siti.org/world-making/. 
Design Studio for Social Intervention: Lobenstine, 

L., Bailey, K., and Maruyama, A. (2020, July 
13). Ideas arrangements effects: Systems 
design and social justice. NPQ. 
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/ideas-
arrangements-effects-systems-design-and-
social-justice/. 

East, A. (2016). Rehearsing democracy: Enhancing 
community through the interdisciplinary 
performance improvisation series, ‘Shared 
Agendas’. Dance Research Aotearoa, 4, 171-
187. 

Eno, B. (2022). Foreward in Alexander, J. with 
Conrad, A., Citizens: Why the key to fixing 
everything is all of us [Kindle Paperwhite 
version]. Retrieved from amazon.com.  

Escobar (2018). Designs for the pluriverse: Radical 
interdependence, autonomy, and the making of 

worlds [Kindle Paperwhite version]. Retrieved 
from amazon.com.  

Goodman, N. (1978). Ways of worldmaking. 
Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 
Inc.  

Kerr, I. and Frasca, J. (2021) Innovating emergent 
futures: The innovation design approach for 
change and worldmaking. Monee, IL: 
Emergent Futures Lab Press. 

Sarasvathy, S. (2012). WORLDMAKING. In A. 
Corbett and J.A. Katz (Eds.), Entrepreneurial 
Action (Advances in Entrepreneurship, Firm 
Emergence and Growth, Vol. 14, pp. 1-24) 
Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. 
https://doi.org/10.1108/S1074-
7540(2012)0000014013  

Vervoort, J.M., Bendor, R., Kelliher, A., Strik, O., and 
Helfgott, A.E.R. (2015). Scenarios and the art 
of worldmaking. Futures (74), 62-70. 
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2015.08.0
09. 

Entrepreneurial Futures 

Jose  Valentino Ruiz-Resto 

University of Florida 

Entrepreneurial futures embrace the transformative potential of the present moment. 

They enable individuals, organizations, and communities to navigate challenges, seize 

opportunities, and continuously evolve. Three core concepts shape our entrepreneurial 

futures: creative adaptability, post-COVID multimodal creative economy, and migratory 

https://siti.org/world-making/
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/ideas-arrangements-effects-systems-design-and-social-justice/
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/ideas-arrangements-effects-systems-design-and-social-justice/
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/ideas-arrangements-effects-systems-design-and-social-justice/
https://doi.org/10.1108/S1074-7540(2012)0000014013
https://doi.org/10.1108/S1074-7540(2012)0000014013
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2015.08.009
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2015.08.009


ARTIVATE 11.3 

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entrepreneurship. Integrating these concepts into arts entrepreneurship education and 

practice guides innovative approaches for sustainable growth in the ever-evolving arts 

ecosystem. 

Creative Adaptability: Today’s dynamic and interconnected society calls on the ability 

of individuals, organizations, and communities within the arts entrepreneurship field to 

flexibly respond to and navigate through challenges, changes, and uncertainties. Creative 

adaptability encompasses the capacity to embrace ambiguity, adjust strategies, and seize 

opportunities for growth and impact. It goes beyond mere survival; it implies the 

proactive ability to transform adversity into creative energy and to continuously evolve 

to meet the demands of a rapidly changing world with agility, creativity, and a sense of 

purpose. 

Post-COVID Multimodal Creative Economy: The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the 

adoption of digital technologies and virtual platforms for showcasing work, reaching 

wider audiences and generating revenue. This shift not only provided opportunities for 

remote collaboration and global exchange but also demonstrated the importance of 

developing new skills and business models to thrive in a rapidly changing landscape. The 

post-COVID multimodal creative economy represents the transformation and 

diversification of the arts entrepreneurship sector in response to the global pandemic. It 

encompasses the ability of individuals, organizations, and communities to operate and 

thrive through various modes of business delivery, including online, synchronous, and in-

person asynchronous models. Multimodality in the creative economy refers to the 

flexibility and adaptability to engage with audiences and customers across different 

platforms and formats, thereby expanding reach, enhancing accessibility, and ensuring 

sustainability (Ruiz et al., 2021). 

Migratory Entrepreneurship: In our interconnected and globalized world, artistic and 

entrepreneurial initiatives have the power to transcend physical borders and cultural 

barriers. Migratory entrepreneurship represents the idea that innovations, products, and 

services within the arts entrepreneurship field have the potential to influence not only the 

target community and audience but also to create a ripple effect that transcends 

geographical boundaries. It goes beyond localized impact and aims to create a broader 

resonance that reaches new audiences, influences different communities, and stimulates 

creative and economic growth in unexpected places. 

References 

Ruiz-Resto, Jose  Valentino; Lee, Derris; and 
Shelton, Chris (2021) “Entrepreneurial 
Responses to the COVID Era: A Qualitative 
Study of Five Professional Music 
Entrepreneurs,” Journal of Arts 

Entrepreneurship Education: Vol. 3:2, Article 
4. Available at: 
https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/jaee/v
ol3/iss2/4 

 

 

https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/jaee/vol3/iss2/4
https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/jaee/vol3/iss2/4


ARTIVATE 11.3 

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Pace 

Gary Beckman 

North Carolina State University 

When speaking about the field, holding fast to its potential is critical to many—and with 

good reason. For the many of us who see daily the potential in our either wide-eyed or 

suspicious students, envisioning how our field can be made pliable for all is a critical 

aspect of our endeavor. Indeed, this is why many of us teach in the first place; changing a 

life is as much a privilege as it is pouring the intellectual basis of our teachings into many, 

many different molds. 

The accompanying thoughts surrounding the one you are presently reading will likely 

reflect this potential. Yes, scaling, expanding, pushing, and re-envisioning what Arts 

Entrepreneurship may be—both now and—in the future is critical to the growth of the 

field and our students (if not ultimately to their future sense of self-efficacy). What we do 

in the classroom is vital, yet how we interact and sculpt our field is also important. Both 

are the responsibilities we accept as ones who choose to go about this endeavor. 

While other expansive thoughts surrounding this one will likely (and should) inspire 

many, we should note the lesson of basic gardening. A productive plant requires strong 

roots. Keeping in mind that our emerging field will go through trends, phases, etc., we 

should note that our roots must keep pace with the emerging leaves. If we really mean to 

support our students with new growth and new fruit, we have a responsibility to make 

fast the roots of our emerging academic discipline—the scholarship that makes it so. 

If we envision an academic discipline in the truest sense, we must come to terms with 

the fact that waiting for others to intellectually engage with building our body of 

knowledge will only result in a lack of innovation. Many ask students to demonstrate the 

courage to launch a business. We’d likely be more successful educators if we could tell the 

story of our courage to publish a brick in our emerging discipline’s foundation. This is 

keeping pace. 

Uniqueness and Originality1 

Linda Essig 

Baruch College of City University of New York 

Artists create something unique that has aesthetic value. This uniqueness, the originality 

of the artist’s work, is also one source of the work’s value in exchange. It is not necessary 

for an artist to produce multiple copies (i.e., mass production) for there to be arts 

 
1 Adapted from “Novelty, Uniqueness, Originality” in Creative Infrastructures: Artists, Money, and 

Entrepreneurial Action (2022). 



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entrepreneurial activity. The arts entrepreneurial activity can take place when there is 

only one unique product that the artist connects with the audience for that work. It is that 

connection that is at the core of arts entrepreneurial action, whether there is one of 

something (a performance, an object, a recording of some kind) or many.   

There is a tension between what art fundamentally is, a unique work that expresses 

symbolic meaning, and the reproduction of that work. Yet there are artists who harness 

reproducibility as a way to produce an innovation (a creative idea that has impact), enact 

entrepreneurship (connect work with audiences through a mediating structure), and 

work efficiently so that they can make the money they need to feed their art. But 

reproduction of work that was unique in its origin also feeds the capitalist urge to exploit 

the labor of the artist for financial gain, albeit sometimes to the benefit of organizations 

that themselves support artists or are part of the cultural fabric of a community. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Photo by Do  Castle, www.pexels.com/photo/white-clouds-2274729/ 


	The Entrepreneurial We
	Plural Sector
	Collaborative Organizational Culture
	Worldmaking
	Entrepreneurial Futures
	Pace
	Uniqueness and Originality

