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Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts    Volume 8, Issue 1 
http://artivate.org  pp. 3-22 

 

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 
Copyright © 2019, Ben Toscher   

 

ENTREPRENEURIAL LEARNING IN ARTS ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION: 

A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK 

Ben Toscher 
Norwegian University of Science and Technology 

 

 
Abstract 

 
Increasingly, higher education has called upon arts entrepreneurship to prepare artists 

for sustainable careers, and to provide a platform for research on artist professional 
development.  In response, teaching in entrepreneurship and arts entrepreneurship education 
has grown significantly over the past few decades (Fayolle et al., 2016), with an estimated 168 
institutions with 372 offerings arts entrepreneurship courses in the US alone (Essig & Guevara, 
2016). This is especially true in the field of music, where arts entrepreneurship has been readily 
embraced due to the entrepreneurial nature of sustaining a livelihood as a musician (Bennett, 
2016; Breivik et al., 2015).  The amount of research focusing on the teaching of arts 
entrepreneurship has followed closely behind the growth in arts entrepreneurship education – 
but what about research on learning arts entrepreneurship? How do arts students actually learn 
to be entrepreneurial? While research in arts entrepreneurship has been performed to examine 
curricular efforts (e.g., Beckman, 2005), the similarities and synergies of entrepreneurs and 
artists (e.g., Gangi, 2015), and arts entrepreneurship education as a comprehensive phenomenon 
of interest and study (Chang & Wyszomirski, 2015), no work has been performed to connect 
the field´s body of knowledge to extant theoretical work directly related to experiential and 
entrepreneurial learning (Politis, 2005). Given that most arts entrepreneurship curricula include 
some form of experiential learning (Essig & Guevara, 2016), I propose a framework to advance 
the field´s investigation of entrepreneurial learning in the arts entrepreneurship classroom. 
Since understanding arts entrepreneurship is context-specific (Beckman & Essig, 2012), in this 
article I use the specific case of music performance education in higher music education (HME) 
to connect empirical and theoretical literature on arts entrepreneurship education, 
entrepreneurial learning, entrepreneurial competencies (Bacigalupo et al., 2016), careers in 
music, and social cognitive career theory (Lent et al., 2002) Synthesizing these streams of 
literature, I propose a conceptual framework for integrating context-specific entrepreneurial 
learning activities within arts entrepreneurship education. The framework developed recognizes 
and address the importance of context, personal agency, student-centered learning, explorative 
behavior and definitions in arts entrepreneurship educational activities. The framework also 
provides the means to analyze both mini-cases and examples of entrepreneurial learning 
activities which may develop entrepreneurial competencies. The article concludes with 
promising areas and questions for future research and as well as implications for educators.  
 
Keywords: entrepreneurial learning, arts entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurial 
competencies, social cognitive career theory 
 

Introduction 

 

Entrepreneurship education has grown considerably in recent years, and the number of 
institutions offering academic coursework in entrepreneurship is consistently rising (Winkel, 
2013). Entrepreneurship has transformed from a discipline traditionally housed in business 
schools to a subject which is now being taught across multiple fields, ranging from music 
(Beckman, 2005) to science (Scordato & Støren, 2014), and nearly every discipline in between. 
Within music education, entrepreneurship education has been broadly placed into two main 
categories: the new venture creation approach (Beckman & Essig, 2012) and the transitioning 
approach (Beckman et al., 2014). While the former approach closely resembles the type of 



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entrepreneurship education which began in business schools, the latter approach focused on 
preparing music students for the realities of life as a professional musician which await them 
outside of academia. Irrespective of a student´s path, entrepreneurship education is relevant 
considering that the intended learning outcomes of entrepreneurship education may not be 
limited strictly to new venture creation but also include the development of entrepreneurial 
competencies (Lackeus, 2015).  These competencies can be useful to all types of organizations 
– whether a new venture, a government agency, or a rock music ensemble. While the distinct 
approaches offer a context for teaching arts entrepreneurship, there remains a lack of arts 
context-specific research examining how arts students actually learn entrepreneurship in an 
educational setting. 

Extant research from the economics and business literature may help address this gap. 
Within arts entrepreneurship literature, the influence of works originating from economics and 
business disciplines is significant and apparent -- see, for just two examples, Brandenburg et 
al., 2016 or J. J. Gangi, 2017. Naturally, since arts entrepreneurship as a research field has 
closely followed arts entrepreneurship as an educational field, it is fitting that attention should 
be paid to learning to complement the teaching. Integrating entrepreneurial learning literature 
and continuing in the practice of drawing from entrepreneurship research outside art 
entrepreneurship´s immediate literature stream, this article proposes a conceptual framework 
for integrating context-specific (Beckman & Essig, 2012) entrepreneurial learning activities 
within arts education. To demonstrate the relevance of the framework, this article draws on the 
context of music performance education. 

Arts entrepreneurship education which is context-specific supports learning outcomes. 
For example, a workshop teaching a broad audience of arts students how to build a website 
(visual artists, theatre artists, musicians, etc.) would have a different scope of content and 
relevance than one tailored for context. In such a workshop, a music student would be interested 
in platforms such as Bandcamp or Soundcloud, whereas a theatre student would be more 
interested in IMDB.   Rather than use the example of arts entrepreneurship offerings in which 
students learn more generic professional skills such as building a website or accounting, this 
article proposes and identifies existing practices within music education to support the 
observation that “..many, if not most, programs seem to employ some mode of experiential 
learning in their teaching.” (Essig & Guevara, 2016). Since experiential learning is widely used 
in practice, the introduction and exploration of entrepreneurial learning (Politis, 2005) which is 
itself rooted in experiential learning theory (D. Kolb, 1984), is promising. 

The article is structured as follows. First, research exploring the careers of musicians is 
investigated to demonstrate why musicians need entrepreneurial competencies and why 
entrepreneurship education may be relevant to them. Building on that foundation, the article 
examines artistic and entrepreneurial career identities, social cognitive career theory, and arts 
entrepreneurship education to suggest some of the contextual and cognitive barriers music 
students may face when learning entrepreneurially through a pedagogical intervention. Third, 
the article introduces the concepts of entrepreneurial competencies and entrepreneurial learning 
to provide a basic framework for the types of learning outcomes possible through 
entrepreneurial learning activities. Finally, I propose a conceptual framework to understand 
how arts entrepreneurship education might be used to facilitate the entrepreneurial learning of 
students. Drawing on the framework, I use the specific context of music performance in HME 
to provide examples of learning activities. The article concludes with implications and 
promising areas of future research. 
 

 



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Careers of Musicians 

 

Students in the performing arts face uncertain career patterns, creating a recognized 
need for the development of entrepreneurial competencies (Blenker, 2017), like marketing, 
opportunity and resource skills. These employment patterns are unlike traditional career 
patterns, which may often feature a linear career trajectory and a long-term employer-employee 
relationship. Instead, the careers of performing artists are likely to be undertaken on a 
“portfolio” basis consisting of a never-ending, self-managed series of simultaneous and 
overlapping employment engagements (Cawsey, 1995). These employment engagements vary 
not only according to the spectrum and diversity of employers, but also to the type of work 
undertaken which includes teaching, performing, and other “embedded” positions (Coulson, 
2012). Musicians, as students in the performing arts, often maintain portfolio careers through a 
combination of professional roles as music teachers, freelancers, and performers, in which they 
depend on a set of entrepreneurial competencies and thinking to maintain a livelihood (Bennett, 
2016; Breivik et al., 2015).  
 

The value of such competencies is evident in empirical research which has demonstrated 
that after performance skills, the next most important skills and competencies working 
musicians require to sustain their careers are entrepreneurial (Bennett, 2007, 2009). These skills 
include marketing, self-promotion, small business, and opportunity recognition.  
 

Globally, research which has studied the careers of musicians confirms the above 
finding and is rather illustrative: over 42 percent of surveyed musicians in Germany claim their 
career is made possible only through self-employment (Dangel & Piorkowsky, 2006); 
musicians in Australia on average held more than one music industry role and they often “don´t 
know any musicians who do only one thing” (Bennett, 2007); in the UK over 90 percent of 
studied musicians hold a secondary occupation; and in Denmark only 6 percent of music 
graduates worked solely in performance, with half of them working in both performance and 
teaching (Traasdahl, 1996). Being self-employed and managing several professional roles 
requires individuals to use various entrepreneurial competencies in the maintenance and 
advancement of their careers. 
 

Research on careers in music can have a positive impact on the delivery of HME. As 
Smith, a music educator and researcher, (2013) writes: 
 

The challenge for those of us working in music education is to recognise and incorporate 

contemporary understandings of the work patterns of successful music professionals, 

and, where necessary, to alter discourses accordingly. As teachers, the personal 

narratives that we offer our students about life as musicians are thus essential – 

reflecting success for the majority of musicians in our culture and supportively guiding 

students towards realistic expectations of how they will likely work. (Smith, 2013, p. 

34)  

Both professional musicians and students testify to the value of entrepreneurial 
competencies for pursuing careers in music (Bennett, 2009; Brandenburg et al., 2016; Miller et 
al., 2015, 2017). Thus, the need for the development of entrepreneurial competencies in HME 
is clear. Unsurprisingly, calls have been made for institutes of HME to adequately train and 
prepare their students for their post-academic career realities and some efforts have been 
directed towards the integration of entrepreneurship education in HME by researchers, teachers, 
and policymakers (Beckman, 2005; Essig, 2013; Roberts, 2013), with considerable blame cast 
towards such institutions who fail to implement curricula addressing such concerns (Beckman, 
2005; Eros, 2013; Hausmann, 2010).  



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Entrepreneur or Artist? An Identity Conflict 

 

The above-mentioned failure and challenges to integrate entrepreneurship education 
into the music curriculum could be because practitioners in HME face challenges that are 
deeper, more complex, and more psychological than simply the economic characteristics of life 
as a musician: there is a demonstrated conflict between musicians´ natural tendency to identify 
as artists and their environmentally imposed need to identify and act as an entrepreneur (Bonin-
Rodriguez, 2012; Eikhof & Haunschild, 2006).  
 

While the professional reality of a career in music is one that is competitive and can 
require an entrepreneurial attitude to sustain over a long period, artists may be reluctant to self-
identify as “entrepreneurial” or partake in education labeled as such. This cognitive resistance 
occurs both within the individual artists and the individuals responsible for teaching such artists. 
In addition to Bonin-Rodriguez´s (2012) comprehensive review and persuasive analysis as to 
why artists have historically resisted the entrepreneur identity, musicologist Andrea Moore´s 
(2016) critical essay demonstrates why music educators may be justifiably skeptical and 
resistant to the “institutionalized push for musical entrepreneurship… rooted in the discourse 
and ideals of neoliberalism.” This resistance creates more difficulty in the implementation of 
curricular change desired by administrators and policymakers, a process which already faces 
challenges by academic faculty who do not wish to see their courses and subjects pushed aside 
for entrepreneurship curricula. 
 

There are perceptual barriers to the integration of entrepreneurship education into the 
arts curriculum (White, 2013). These barriers span from students to the highest administrative 
offices. Samuel Hope, the former executive director of the United States´ National Office for 
Arts Accreditation, writes: 
 

And, we dare not let entrepreneurship become a substitute for the music itself. 
Entrepreneurial action needs to serve music and music study, not the reverse. 
Entrepreneurial action is means, not end. (Hope, 2010) 

 

While Hope does present a good point that art should not serve entrepreneurship in an 
arts education program, his concern points to an underlying set of perceptual barriers about 
what entrepreneurship education is and how it is framed. This may be because people 
commonly associate entrepreneurship with a profit motive and an overwhelming commercial 
narrative, which artists may glean from limited exposure to business literature (Bridgstock, 
2013). Thus, they worry that entrepreneurship means art is subservient to business profit and 
artistic vision will be sacrificed. This apprehension might prevent artists from even being 
willing to learn about techniques and tools (Pigneur, 2009; Sarasvathy, 2001) that can help them 
sustain their careers. Thus, it is clear that arts educators may be wise in carefully framing or 
reframing entrepreneurship given their context.  
 

Regardless, both artists and entrepreneurs act similarly (J. Gangi, 2015) and there is a 
demonstrated need for such artists to reconcile and bridge these two identities in order to sustain 
music careers (Bridgstock, 2013). But how can students integrate these often-conflicting 
identities while learning entrepreneurially? And what makes learning entrepreneurial? 
 

 

 

 



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Entrepreneurial Learning, Social Cognitive Career Theory, and Career Identity 

 

There are two key aspects of entrepreneurial learning which are directly related and 
activated through entrepreneurship education. First, entrepreneurial learning processes are 
experiential (Politis, 2005), especially if students learn “through” entrepreneurship as opposed 
to “about” or “for” entrepreneurship (Hannon, 2005). Experiential learning is a learning process 
where knowledge is acquired through a transformation of experience (Kolb, 1984). This 
contrasts to other forms of learning where abstract conceptualization is formed through 
comprehension of text and information. This latter type of learning is more common in 
classrooms focused on the accumulation and memorization of declarative knowledge. The 
utility and value of declarative knowledge for arts entrepreneurship students should not be 
ignored or abandoned. Indeed, the introduction of business concepts and management tools can 
be a useful approach for arts entrepreneurship educators (Roberts, 2013). However, an 
exclusive focus on knowledge dissemination risks doing a disservice to students. As Dempster 
(2011) writes: 

 
What makes little sense is expecting that we can drive students through four or five or 
six years of a highly regimented curriculum that affords few choices and asks for little 
individual initiative, and then expect them to flourish in a world that rewards creativity, 
opportunism, experimentation, and distinctiveness more than anything else—in short, 
an entrepreneurial world. (Dempster, 2011)  

 
Further, curriculum which focuses on the development of professional development 

materials such as business cards, websites, portfolios, or social media accounts comes at the 
cost of precluding experiential learning content in a full curriculum. As Beckman argues (p. 
180), “should the creation of professional communication materials and the teaching of 
professional behaviors be considered an outcome of an arts entrepreneurial effort? I would 
argue no.” (Beckman, 2011). A preliminary introduction of entrepreneurial learning may help 
illustrate why professional development type learning activities may be limiting the potential 
of learning outcomes in arts entrepreneurship education. 
 

Second, much of entrepreneurship education represents a shift in the classroom where 
the center of learning moves from the educator (through activities like knowledge dissemination 
lectures) to the student (involving self-direction, action learning, and reflection). Here, the role 
of the educator changes from lecturer to facilitator. Some scholars argue that this represents a 
transition from pedagogical towards heutagogical (auto-didactic) or andragogical (andragogy 
referring to the teaching of adults, pedagogy the teaching of children) approaches in education 
(Neck & Corbett, 2018). This shift is intuitively consistent with the demographics of students 
in the classroom: they are no longer young children whom should be lectured to, but adults 
responsible for their learning and are capable of self-direction and personal agency. However, 
the more important takeaway is that it places the locus of choice with the student and 
emphasizes the personal agency of the student. Thus, it is important to understand how students 
might make entrepreneurial choices (whether exploitative or explorative), for which Politis 
(2005) provides a useful conceptual framework. 
 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 



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Figure 1 – Politis’s (2005) Conceptual Framework of Entrepreneurial Learning as an 
Experiential Process 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Politis argues that entrepreneurial learning is an experiential learning process and shows 
how entrepreneurs may experientially transform experience into entrepreneurial knowledge. 
Interestingly, some experiential learning theorists claim that arts students´ divergent thinking 
styles may be particularly appropriate for this type of experiential learning (Honig & Hopp, 
2019; A. Y. Kolb & Kolb, 2009).  
 

Figure 1 presents Politis´s framework, which is later argued to be relevant for educating 
musicians. The framework is comprised of four subcomponents, and the subcomponent of the 
transformation process of experience into knowledge situates the locus of individual choice 
amidst the whole process of entrepreneurial learning. Readers should note that this article, and 
the conceptual framework (see figure 2), are predominantly focused on Politis´s components 
which deal with the antecedents of and the actual transformation process in which a student 
either makes an exploitive or explorative choice. This is because the proposed conceptual 
framework is more focused on how learning activities are relevant for the learning processes 
(explorative/exploitive choices) than the learning outcomes of entrepreneurial knowledge 
generation (more effective in dealing with liabilities of newness and opportunity recognition).  
Here, in the “transformation process,” individuals can either choose an exploration or 
exploitation type of behavior through the exercise of their personal agency. In entrepreneurial 
learning, exploitation choices of behavior occur when individuals learn from experience by 
exploiting known certainties (Politis, 2005, p. 408), whereas in exploration individuals learn by 
exploring new possibilities. The implications of this key differentiation in the way individuals 
choose to act are critical for envisioning how arts entrepreneurship educators can help their 
students to learn entrepreneurially. It means that entrepreneurship educators should encourage 
their students to embrace uncertainty and make choices which are varied, innovative, 
experimental, and result in discovery. Whereas procedural knowledge such as how to write a 
business plan is also useful and widely used in entrepreneurship education (N. F. Krueger et 
al., 2000), this type of learning activity probably results in a student performing exploitive 
behavior like doing Google searches and compiling information. Students know how to perform 



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research on Google, and the process of compiling and analyzing information is a process that 
students are well familiar with by the time they reach the University. Instead of assigning this 
type of task, an arts entrepreneurship educator could have students choose between writing a 
business plan or identifying three critical assumptions which the success of their entrepreneurial 
idea depends upon and go out in the world and test whether those assumptions are true or not. 
Such a pedagogical choice ultimately depends upon the educators´ objectives. 
 

For example, suppose a student believes that a late-night cookie delivery service will 
solve the problem that students don’t have enough time to make cookies for themselves because 
they are studying too much. Such a student could either spend several months writing and 
researching a business plan covering all aspects from the target market segment to cookie 
recipes to expansion plans and then go out and try to raise money. Or, they could spend one-
hour baking a few dozen cookies and then another hour knocking on a hundred doors in a 
student dormitory and see how many students want to buy fresh cookies. The former is likely 
a form of exploitive behavior familiar to students; the latter is rather explorative. Each of these 
sets of behaviors will result in a different type of learning for the student, with the latter being 
arguably more entrepreneurial. 
 

An individual´s career experiences and career orientation also play a role in Politis’s 
framework of entrepreneurial learning. In particular, industry-specific experiences influence 
the transformation process of experience into knowledge. Interestingly, research into the career 
patterns of musicians has led to the conclusion that students in HME should be exposed to a 
career preview early on in their education so that they can form a realistic idea of what a music 
career entails and what types of competencies they will need to develop (Bennett, 2007; Bennett 
& Bridgstock, 2015). This orientation should include, to various levels of specificity, an 
individual´s understanding of what types of competencies, activities, processes, roles, and 
responsibilities a specific career entails. This type of pedagogical intervention, in turn, 
influences outcome expectations for a given course of choices – like studying to become a 
professional artist – which in theory can help students make informed choices for themselves 
and help them set their goals.  
 

According to Politis, such a career orientation influences choices and links personal 
agency and choice in an entrepreneurial learning activity. But, more importantly, this 
orientation and the subsequent behavioral choices can influence a student´s self-efficacy and 
their further orientation towards new choices outside and inside the classroom which may help 
them achieve their goals (Lent et al., 2002). Ultimately, the generation of entrepreneurial 
knowledge may help allow them to increase their effectiveness in recognizing opportunities 
and dealing with the liabilities of newness (Politis, 2005; Stinchcombe, 1965). 
 

In Politis´ framework, outcomes of previous events and outcome expectations play an 
important role in the choice process and subsequent entrepreneurial learning. Interestingly, 
Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT – Lent et al., 2002), which has its roots in Social 
Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 2001), offers further insight into the role of previous outcomes. 
SCCT theorizes that an individual´s expectations of outcomes are directly related to the choices 
they make and subsequently reinforce their sense of self-efficacy, or an individual’s belief in 
their ability to achieve goals (Bandura, 2001). Primarily, SCCT is concerned with an 
individual´s self-efficacy, their outcome expectations, and their personal goals. SCCT might 
suggest that a student´s choice to study music in HME is a choice which is enabling them to 
achieve their career goal to be a professional musician. Educators should also take note of what 
SCCT implies about how individuals form self-efficacy beliefs and outcome expectations based 
upon prior successes or failures. Learning activities should be carefully created to consider how 
a likely success or failure experience for students will strengthen or diminish self-efficacy (N. 



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F. Krueger, 2007). More importantly, the expectations of outcomes and self-efficacy are 
influenced by an individual´s “work values,” such as the need for autonomy, status, or money, 
under SCCT. The relevance of this aspect to the aforementioned entrepreneurial and artistic 
identity tension is not to be understated.  
 

This tension creates a somewhat conflicted career identity, which is a set of meanings 
uniting one’s motivations, competencies, and interests, which arguably guides and forms one’s 
career orientation (Meijers, 1998). Notably, the formation of career identity and orientation has 
a logical connection to how individuals choose amongst exploitation/exploration choices and 
their subsequent learning (Minniti & Bygrave, 2001; Politis, 2005). This has interesting 
implications for arts entrepreneurship educators: what types of choices should they encourage 
students to make, how they can create learning conditions to promote those choices and can 
these activities frame entrepreneurship in a manner that helps achieve the broader goal of 
education – to help students achieve their own (career) goals. 
 

This above-mentioned tension clashes slightly with the argument that artists and 
entrepreneurs have similarities and synergies (J. Gangi, 2015; Pollard & Wilson, 2014), and 
thus artists should be encouraged to identify themselves as both arts entrepreneurs and creative 
practitioners through an “arts entrepreneurial mindset.” Such a mindset is one which recognizes 
opportunities and can deal with the liabilities of newness. While this “arts entrepreneurial 
mindset” certainly points to a key psychological integration to encourage entrepreneurial 
learning, it also alludes to a more understated, yet important aspect of entrepreneurship and arts 
entrepreneurship education: that it is more than venture creation and can be aimed towards the 
development of entrepreneurial competencies.  
 

Entrepreneurial Learning and Entrepreneurial Competencies 

 

Broadly speaking, entrepreneurship education can be about, for, or through 
entrepreneurship (Hannon, 2005). A conservative view of entrepreneurship education might 
lead one to think that the intended learning outcome of these types of education can only be 
new venture creation. Indeed, while agreeing with a Gartnerian definition of entrepreneurship 
as the creation of new organizations (Gartner, 1989) might constrain entrepreneurship 
education as being for the purposes of new venture creation, more recent definitions (Shane & 
Venkataraman, 2000) could mean that entrepreneurship education should be for the recognition 
and exploitation of opportunities. However, both of these views may be too narrow and 
overlook the other learning outcomes which may be and are intended to occur during a student´s 
studies. This overly focused view of new venture creation or opportunity recognition as a proxy 
for learning outcomes is only bolstered by evidence that not all graduates from entrepreneurship 
education programs and courses go on to create new ventures (Nabi et al., 2016).  
 

If new venture creation is not an appropriate way of addressing the learning outcomes 
of all types of entrepreneurship education, are there others which may be more appropriate? 
Researchers and practitioners have turned their attention to entrepreneurial competencies, 
which may partially address this apparent shortfall (Lackeus, 2015; Bacigalupo et al., 2016). 
Irrespective of whether students go on to start ventures after their program, entrepreneurship 
education can have an impact on the development of such competencies through the 
experiences students have. An emphasis on such learning outcomes broadens the applicability 
of entrepreneurship education from the exclusive domain of students who want to be 
entrepreneurs to students who want to be more entrepreneurial. But more than wanting to be 
entrepreneurial, there are certain categories of students whose careers require them to be more 
entrepreneurial, such as students in the performing arts and music. 



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Research on entrepreneurship education has largely been performed to understand the 
effects of entrepreneurship education (e.g., Nabi et al., 2016) and the underlying mechanism of 
entrepreneurial learning (e.g., Löbler, 2006). These research aims seem appropriate. To 
research entrepreneurship education without a discussion of entrepreneurial competencies and 
entrepreneurial learning would be like trying to research medical doctor education by just 
observing practicing medical doctors working with patients long after they finished school; 
professionals in practice reveal only a little about learning processes and competency 
development during an education. Entrepreneurial competencies are what help define and 
distinguish the role of an entrepreneur, and entrepreneurial learning is how individuals develop 
and produce those competencies.  
 

Entrepreneurial competencies are categorized into three main areas: knowledge, skills, 
and attitudes (Lackeus, 2015). Entrepreneurship education can enable students to develop 
competencies in each of these three areas. For example, engaging in customer research for a 
new product or service can help a student gain declarative knowledge. This type of approach 
has already been highlighted and recommended in the arts entrepreneurship literature 
(Beeching, 2016); while reflecting on their experience in interacting with these customers, 
including examining what worked and what didn´t work, can help a student build self-insight. 
Interpersonal skills are developed by working in teams, strategic skills are learned by trying to 
achieve goals, and resource skills are built by marshaling resources for a project. The 
development of entrepreneurial attitudes, such as pro-activeness and perseverance, are not to 
be overlooked as possible consequences of entrepreneurship education. 
 

Rather than new venture creation, these competencies should arguably be the intended 
learning outcomes of arts entrepreneurship education. Institutes of higher education are 
expected to produce graduates with such competencies, which has resulted in the spread of 
entrepreneurship education across various faculties and academic disciplines (Blenker et al., 
2014). Beyond the view that institutes of higher education should produce enterprising 
individuals with these competencies so that they can contribute to economic growth, the 
reasoning for this expectation is sound. First, if learning outcomes are limited to starting a 
business or new venture creation, then the success or failure of educational efforts might be 
confused with the success or failure of ventures. While most start-up businesses fail (Shane, 
2008), entrepreneurs continually try to start new businesses despite previous failures. Second, 
this approach risks confusing the means and ends of entrepreneurship education. New venture 
creation should not be the ends to which entrepreneurship education is the means. Rather, new 
venture creation can be the means for which the development of entrepreneurial competencies 
is the end. Third, such a perspective may prevent entrepreneurship education from being 
considered applicable or relevant in non-business disciplines such as music.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



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Table 1 – Entrepreneurial Competencies (Lackeus, 2015) 
 

Main Competency Area Competency Primary Source 

Knowledge 

Mental models (Kraiger et al., 1993) 

Declarative knowledge Ibid. 
Self-insight Ibid. 

Skills 

Marketing skills (Fisher et al., 2008) 
Resource skills Ibid. 
Opportunity skills Ibid. 
Interpersonal skills Ibid. 
Learning skills Ibid. 
Strategic skills Ibid. 

Attitudes 

Entrepreneurial passion Ibid. 
Self-efficacy Ibid. 
Entrepreneurial identity (N. Krueger, 2005; N. F. 

Krueger, 2007) 
Proactiveness (Murnieks, 2007; Sánchez, 

2011) 
Uncertainty/ambiguity 
tolerance 

(Murnieks, 2007; Sánchez, 
2011) 

Innovativeness (N. Krueger, 2005; 
Murnieks, 2007) 

Perseverance (Cotton, 1991; Markman et 
al., 2005) 

 

The connection between various tasks in the entrepreneurship education classroom and 
competency development may seem obvious, but what differentiates student learning in this 
classroom setting from learning arts education settings? Based on what we know, what would 
a conceptual framework for entrepreneurial learning in arts entrepreneurship education look 
like?  
 

A Conceptual Framework to Facilitate the Entrepreneurial Learning in Arts 

Entrepreneurship Education 

 

I have so far reviewed entrepreneurial competencies, entrepreneurial learning, the career 
patterns of music students, the artistic and entrepreneurial identity conflict, and social cognitive 
aspects of student learning. But how can existing knowledge and theory about entrepreneurial 
learning help create a conceptualization of how arts entrepreneurship educators can probe, 
understand, and create context-specific educational interventions? 
 

Previous research has looked at existing efforts to integrate entrepreneurship into the 
music curriculum and can be a helpful guide. Ghazali and Bennett (2017) found that curriculum 
should contain both hard technical skills and soft skills like management, the latter of which 
can arguably be learned through context-specific projects like creating and promoting a concert 
tour. Other research which has looked at arts entrepreneurship education (Thom, 2017) shares 
this context-specific focus, and is arguably more appropriate for music students as opposed to 
entrepreneurship courses imported directly from business schools (Beckman, 2005). One 
salient example of a context-specific orientation of entrepreneurship education is encouraging 
music students to understand their audience. Beeching (2016) describes several examples of 
entrepreneurial learning activities used by music educators, one of which is the inclusion of 
design-thinking techniques used to interview audience members during an intermission of a 
concert in order to build an “empathy map” of just who a musician´s audience is. Rather than 



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teach music students about market research using a business school textbook, students are 
encouraged to understand their professional context. Another notable example is that which 
takes place at the Juilliard School in New York. Early on in the semester students are challenged 
and given two hours to immediately book a performance gig in New York City (Beeching, 
2016). According to Beeching: 

The assignment is a shock, but the grassroots experience is essentially about making 
contact with others and communicating what you have to offer: it is an exercise in 
networking, negotiation, resourcefulness, and communication skills that ultimately 
leads to finding an audience. (Beeching, 2016)  

This type of learning activity probably has students engaging in a new, explorative type 
of behavior. They have arguably learned something about pitching their art and how to sell 
themselves after they have booked their gig, irrespective of whether they were rejected two or 
twelve times in the process. Table 2 features this learning activity, and others, to synthesize the 
previous work in articulating entrepreneurial competencies (Lackeus, 2015) and the proposed 
conceptual framework to provide examples and illustrate how the proposed entrepreneurial 
learning activities in music education can potentially touch upon each of these five components. 
In this two-hour book a gig challenge, we can see how entrepreneurial mental models may be 
updated through this learning activity. Lackeus operationalizes such mental models as 
“…knowledge about how to get things done without resources; risk and probability models.” 
(Kraiger et al., 1993; Lackeus, 2015). As Beeching describes it, this learning activity places 
time resource constraints on students and challenges them to risk their comfort to book a 
performance gig. Whether they fail or succeed, this immersive experience is likely to result in 
the student updating their mental model through conceptual change (Chi, 2008). If a student 
has never performed this type of activity before, then there is a clearly an opportunity for them 
to contrast their existing mental model of how “booking a gig” works with what they discover 
to be the actual process of booking a gig; it is this “holistic confrontation” (Chi, 2008; Gadgil, 
2008) that forces a student to compare their understanding of how a system works with the 
conceptual presentation from an expert, which they are exposed to  either via lecture, text, or 
means.  
 

Another example which illustrates the importance of context in arts entrepreneurial 
learning activities is the Center for Entrepreneurship in Liberal Education at Benoit (CELEB) 
(Gustafson, 2011). CELEB is an incubator for student businesses from all liberal arts and arts 
disciplines, and yet the “motivations and needs” of the visual artists versus music students are 
different (p. 76, Gustafson, 2011). As Gustafson writes: 

 
One of our surprises was to discover the vastly different student needs that follow from 
different industry structures across the arts. The structure of the music industry may be 
currently in chaos, but it is safe to say about it that it bears little relation to the nature of 
the visual arts industry. An advantage of heavy dependence upon learning by doing is 
that it avoids the tedium felt by many in the classroom when a teacher is necessarily 
preoccupied with matters of concern only to a few. (p. 76, Gustafson, 2011) 

 
The case of CELEB is not only representative of how specific learning activities within 

any arts discipline may differ from another, but also may lead to entrepreneurial competency 
development. At CELEB, which was comprised of 6,000 square feet of retail space at the time 
of Gustafson´s writing (2011), a popular approach for music students in the program was to 
start a record label. The classroom exercise involved students navigating a myriad of 
explorative decisions such as whether to resource functions (such as marketing, promotion, 
sound engineering, etc.) in-house or contract it out. Forming a record label provides context 



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14 

Entrepreneurial 
Knowledge 
Generation

Context-specificity

Student is the 
center of learning

Enabling student 
agency  and 
encouraging  
explorative 

behavior

Career relevance

Reframing of 
Entrepreneurship

specificity through musical genre, community, and broader industrial structure. Further, the 
students themselves are the center of their learning – are they not incentivized to focus on 
themselves and have their record label be a success? As Gustafson puts it, “students can develop 
further on their own, as they must eventually. Recognizing opportunities, setting goals, 
gathering requisite resources can become a way of life for students. Once accomplished, this 
increased their self-confidence and self-efficacy, which are the heart of entrepreneurship.” 
 

These examples demonstrate what should be the core components of an entrepreneurial 
learning activity for music students, and also illustrate what other research has found: that 
context-specificity is important in engaging music students and making entrepreneurship 
relevant (Chang & Wyszomirski, 2015; Ghazali & Bennett, 2017; Thom, 2017). Further, we 
also know that it is important to emphasize the personal agency of the student, which could be 
accomplished through a more andragogical orientation towards teaching (Neck & Corbett, 
2018). By placing the center of learning on the student, there is arguably an increased chance 
for the student to form a more holistic set of artistic and entrepreneurial identities which 
integrates realistic ideas of working as an artist. This andragogical orientation should enable 
students to make an explorative choice and enable their personal agency in order to facilitate 
entrepreneurial learning (Politis, 2005). While similar to context-specificity, it is also important 
to make learning activities explicitly relevant to students´ careers (Bennett & Bridgstock, 2015). 
By understanding what a career in music looks like, students will see the relevance of 
“entrepreneurial” learning activities. Finally, the perceptual barriers and identity conflict within 
arts entrepreneurship should be addressed through a deliberate reframing of what 
entrepreneurship means, away from neoliberal associations of profit-seeking to an empowering 
philosophy and method of both decision logic (Sarasvathy & Venkataraman, 2011), education 
(Neck & Corbett, 2018), and value creation (Lackeus, 2015). But, even more importantly, as 
something that is empowering students to achieve their goals. This reframing, whose 
importance was recognized and called for over 10 years ago (Beckman, 2007; Bonin-
Rodriguez, 2012), is even more important considering that there is a history of active debate 
and a lack of definitional consensus within the broader field of entrepreneurship about what 
entrepreneurship actually is (Landström et al., 2012). Thus, entrepreneurial learning activities 
should: be context-specific, place the center of learning with the student, enable student agency 
and encourage explorative behavior, be of career relevance, and reframe entrepreneurship. 
 
Figure 2 – A Proposed Conceptual Framework for Entrepreneurial Learning Activities in Arts 

Entrepreneurship Education 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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Figure 2 represents a proposed conceptual framework for understanding how entrepreneurial 
learning activities could help educate entrepreneurial musicians.  

Conclusion and Areas of Future Research 

The perspective of students and how they learn in an arts entrepreneurship setting is an 
important complement to how they are educated. This article complements the existing research 
on arts entrepreneurship education through the introduction of arts entrepreneurial learning. It 
has incorporated disparate research from the literature streams of entrepreneurial competencies, 
entrepreneurial learning, career identity, and arts entrepreneurship in order to propose a 
conceptual framework for the entrepreneurial learning of music students, which has guided the 
compilation of example entrepreneurial learning activities listed in table 2.  
 
Table 2: Entrepreneurial Competencies and Learning Activities 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



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A cursory glance at the activities presented in table 2 might be familiar to many readers, 
and many of these activities are already taking place within arts entrepreneurship offerings 
within HME (Beeching, 2016). The research field is still young, and there is ample opportunity 
to assess the effectiveness through a case study of how each of these learning activities supports 
the development of the competencies in focus listed in table 2.  Thus, whether or not educators 
have designed these types of activities with the help of educational theory or social cognitive 
psychology (e.g., theory of self-efficacy), the fact that these types of activities are happening 
presents an interesting opportunity for quantitative research within arts entrepreneurship 
education which is of a similar nature to that which is happening within the broader field of 
entrepreneurship education (see Nabi et al., 2016 for a meta-analysis of entrepreneurship 
education impact studies). While many of these studies measure entrepreneurial self-efficacy 
before and after educational interventions, the creation of an arts entrepreneurial self-efficacy 
or music entrepreneurial self-efficacy measure may be helpful for educators to inform and 
improve practice. The development and validation of such a measure is not a simple or easy 
undertaking (Mcgee et al., 2009), and given the context-specificity of arts entrepreneurship, the 
task may seem daunting. Some may argue such a measure would be too reductionist. 
Regardless, both entrepreneurial learning and social cognitive theories point to the importance 
of experience in developing a student´s sense of self-efficacy, which remains with them long 
after they leave higher education. 

Second, the conflict between the artistic and entrepreneurial identities deserves a closer 
look. The existing literature indicates this tension is present amongst educators, but that the 
students themselves “do not care about these conflicts; they are demanding arts 
entrepreneurship education now” (Roberts, 2013, p. 57).  Do these students see 
entrepreneurship differently than their teachers? If so, how? How does student  “demand” for 
arts entrepreneurship relate to their career goals and desired outcomes from their education? 
While I propose that a re-framing of entrepreneurship is a necessary part of designing arts 
entrepreneurial learning activities, given the lack of definitional consensus of entrepreneurship 
across many disciplines (Landström et al., 2012), studying the student perspective and 
comparing it with the perspectives of teachers and administration could be helpful in achieving 
a win-win-win situation: more students achieving their career goals, which are arguably the 
types of outcomes which make teachers feel good and administration feel proud. 

Finally, these learning activities create interesting opportunities for action researchers 
(Huang, 2010) like teacher-researchers to understand how different types of students respond 
to tasks which either promote exploitive or exploratory behavior. Through either qualitative 
methods or emotional indicators, studies could be performed to understand how students 
respond, over time, to uncertain situations where no clear path is laid before them, a dynamic 
which is quite new and unconventional for traditional academic environments. Further, this 
dynamic of exploitive-explorative behavior and student propensity towards either could be 
interesting to compare across specific arts contexts, such as classical versus jazz music 
education. Classical music and the conservatory environments have clear traditions in how 
students are trained which may directly influence a student´s sense of agency and subsequent 
musical and professional exploration (Orning, 2017). One might infer that the genre and 
pedagogical norm of music in which these students learn and play music (jazz as improvisation 
and exploration; classical as routine and exploitation of classical works) (Orning, 2017) affect 
how they behave off stage. Is there any notable difference? 

 
 

 

 



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