Everyone seems to have their own meaning for the word ‘entrepreneurship’, so what do we mean by it?
“In the public sector,” one of our contacts observed, “the title ‘entrepreneur’ seems to refer to anyone who takes any initiative.”
They are not alone in this view. Emerging from our initial interviews for the MLA West Midland’s Entrepreneurial Museum research is a consensus that entrepreneurship relates to “better ways of working”, being “more resourceful” in using existing finance and sourcing new finance, and generally developing a plurality of income streams.
This definition broadly remains within the comfort zone of the museums sector, tapping in to the rich vein of existing employee development initiatives, ‘new public management’ concepts, funding models, and continuous improvement mechanisms. There is still room for exploration, for example in assessing how different structures and collaborations could leverage larger sums of public money, or through better management of volunteers.
For many interviewees, however, this ‘smart working’ is not enough. Despite the apprehension and sense of overwhelming barriers and challenges, they accept that entrepreneurship concerns identifying and responding to business opportunities explicitly in order to generate new income and returns on investment. These “go-getters”, as one interviewee labelled them, proactively seek opportunities, and use assets such as content, location and engagement to make a greater impact and generate income.
This second definition of entrepreneurship derives from an economic perspective, where wealth is created in return for risk-taking, and profit serves as the reward. Entrepreneurs act as catalysts for change and economic development. Applying this economic theory into cultural entrepreneurship, David Rae’s definition comes close to joining the two seemingly alien worlds of culture and commerce:
“Creating or identifying opportunities to provide a cultural product, service or experience, and bringing together the resources which enable this to be exploited as an enterprise”
If we accept this as a general definition for entrepreneurship within the cultural sector, two areas for further discussion emerge:
1. Opportunities
In an ideal world, the quest for new sources of revenue should be viewed as an opportunity for museums. In particular, it should be viewed as an opportunity to reconnect with the market, with consumers.
Why is the market so important? Well, consumers are currently living and breathing it; it is where they are to be found. A recent Sunday Times article labelled today’s consumers as “cheerfully commercial”; completely at ease with advanced market capitalism, and consequently possessing high and discerning expectations. This trend appears to be exacerbating.
Finding ways to engage with and respond to the pressures and opportunities of the market economy is the most fundamental need at present for museums. To do this, museums must fully evolve their understanding of consumer expectations, seek to deliver against them as standard, and fully capitalise on the opportunities that this mindset presents.
Consumer expectations of museums are multi-faceted. On one hand, the intrinsic worth of museums is generally understood and appreciated. The role of museums in conservation, education and inter-generational equity is generally deemed important and worthwhile. Added to this, however, is a relatively new set of expectations emerging from the growth of the ‘experience economy’.
Although this will be explored further, it is currently suffice to make clear that this must not be equated with lowest-common-denominator entertainment, the ‘dumbing down’ of museums. Consumers are too discerning to accept such stereotyped developments; opportunities for museum enterprise emerge from an intelligent and nuanced understanding of consumer needs.
2. Exploitation
As long as public taxes come via a local authority or national government agency, and increasingly from the ‘faceless’ private sector, there is an understanding that the cultural product is in existence for the wider public good. Generally speaking, if we cut out the funding middleman, and ask a cultural institution to demonstrate its value directly to the general public in return for money, countless difficulties often begin to emerge.
We appreciate that this is a really difficult and sensitive area. Our suggestion is that the research adopts the following view for the purpose of this research:
at the heart of entrepreneurship is the close connection between the entrepreneur and the market. Entrepreneurs are highly successful at converting this understanding into products, services and experiences for a financial return. It is up to the management of individual museums as to how far down this path they are willing to go. However, by closely aligning the museum and the market, the steps taken on this road to entrepreneurship are of immense value in themselves. Furthermore, they open up the road to financial income from the general public if and when the museum desires.
