Is experience more important for an entrepreneur than classic expertise? Experience often teaches the entrepreneur basic lessons about the sector and how to meet the various critical success factors.
Experience teaches, for example, the importance of allowing an idea to have ‘bedding down’ time before implementing the next idea. It bolsters confidence in decision making, lessening the perceived risks. D. Wilson argues that
“decision-making – and the development of alternative courses of action – are fashioned in their doing. Therefore, factors such as previous experience or whether things ‘feel’ right are likely to have as much influence over strategic choices…as analysis and planning.”
A familiar strategy makes the future implementation of similar ideas less risky. A cycle of self-perpetuation develops. A person’s level of self-efficacy is affected by previous experience, with success breeding success. Moreover, there are numerous examples of interviewees learning through failed ventures or ideas, and in turn, gaining confidence to implement modified versions in the future.
Niche specialisation from experience
Acquiring experience often leads cultural entrepreneurs and insitutions to become ‘known’ for a particular skill or service. This can either encourage or limit the implementation of ideas. On one hand, experience serves as a powerful sales tool in an industry where people judge you on what you’ve done in the past, where they try and buy relevance. Experience means that you can talk in confidence that you’ve done it before.
Due to niche strategy, it is rare for small businesses to compete directly against large competitors; they tend to occupy interstices of the economy. Consequently, Bjorkegren suggests, “Small organisations can thrive in an oligopolistic market by adopting a specialised niche strategy.” An important realisation for commerically-savvy culture institutions.
Despite its benefits, the danger of being typecast by the market into one particular niche is a common concern. Chris Bilton points out the existence of multiple specialists, filling several niches at once, and projecting themselves as clusters of interconnecting brands appealing to different niche markets. This acts as one useful strategy for managing risk, by avoiding reliance on a single area of work. It also allows them to be highly adaptive to customer needs.
For an entrepreneurial institution, for example, four interconnected ‘brands’ could be offered for various niches (by age/gender/interest/lifestyle): see the Science Museum’s Dana Centre for adults only as one example.
Yet there are difficulties in getting acceptance for this. The market typically prefers to label cultural entrepreneurs and institutions as single-track experts, conforming to traditional labour roles, rather than perceiving them as ‘conceptually’ creative, multi-skilled ‘hubs’. This labelling by the market creates obvious challenges for cultural entrepreneurs and institutions that are comfortable with balancing multiple niche interests simultaneously. Whilst perhaps easing the implementation of similar ideas, niche strategies may create barriers if you wish to deviate into other areas.
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