CultureLabel

Access to and application of information is critical to the success of a cultural entrepreneur. In Rifkin’s ‘weightless economy’, the creative industries prize “intangible forms of power bound up in bundles of information and intellectual assets.” ‘Intellectual capital’ enhances competitiveness and strategic success.

Gupta’s words apply as much to culture institutions as they do to business:

“The importance of knowledge to the complex, competitive and global business environments which exist in the 21st century cannot be overemphasised, and those businesses that know how to effectively acquire, capture, share, and manage this information will be the leaders in their respective industries.” Consequently, “being all-knowing is the godlike goal.”

This knowledge is the dynamic, comprehensive use of information and data, coupled with the potential of people’s skills, competencies, ideas, intuitions, commitments and motivations. Using analytical, creative and practical types of intelligence.

Generally, for entrepreneurs, information is a useful element of the decision-making process. In small enterprises, risk management lies within the domain of individuals. Whilst this means decisions can be quickly implemented, the lack of market power leads to increasingly uncertain outcomes. The entrepreneur must make multiple decisions each day; any of which, Storey and Sykes argue, could lead to the demise of the business. The entrepreneur must therefore act as a specialist decision-maker in order to efficiently co-ordinate scarce resources, utilising information in this process.

For the cultural entrepreneur, meanwhile, this level of risk is especially high. According to Bilton, this is due to the combination of the role of subjectivity in production and consumption, as well as a delay between the development of products and realisation of profits. The difficulties inherent in quantifying intangibles, upon which the creative industries are based, make commercial judgements potentially far more subjective and risky. Furthermore, smaller institutions cannot afford to adopt traditional approaches to risk management. The cultural entrepreneur must therefore use information in conjunction with other assets to aid decision-making and manage risk.

Technical knowledge

Technical knowledge in the creative industries applies to both academic and vocational learning, although the vocational skills for many is often self-taught, or learnt from previous work experience in the traditional labour pool. Leadbeater and Oakley suggest that a major role of university for cultural entrepreneurs is in providing space and time to experiment, an audience for their work, and a chance to meet their future creative partners and collaborators.

Which is more important for cultural entrepreneurs, expertise or experience? This question is tackled in more detail in this post.

When initially moving into entrepreneurship, previous employment is similarly often responsible for developing the other three information ‘power tools’: data, political intelligence and expertise.

Data

In culture institutions, data mainly originates from the market intelligence provided by current users. Van de Ven argued that direct personal confrontations with problem sources are needed to reach the threshold of concern and appreciation required for motivating people to act. The close proximity of the cultural entrepreneur within an institution to the ‘client’ and their needs, and the corresponding flow of information, often provides the creative ideas and critical feedback, as well as the support and resources, necessary for motivating an entrepreneur to implement their idea.

Incoming data from a lot of clients [or users] talking to institutions on a regular basis provides useful market intelligence for making strategic decisions. Open communication channels mean that revenue streams can be confirmed before going ahead and implementing ideas.

Geographical intelligence

Cultural entrepreneurs usually gain political intelligence through geographical location, which often plays a key role in their decision to implement a new idea. Provincial cities with strong local or regional identities are particularly fertile ground for this. This supports Leadbeater and Oakley, who suggested that skills and talents emerging from a creative community, and sustained by a shared milieu, lead to congregations in cities.

In addition to organisational benefits, however, there are socio-psychological benefits: shared heritage and ‘home’ cities help to define an entrepreneur’s self-identity: “owing something to my home town” or “local heritage under threat”.

I hope that this post serves as a starting point for considering the importance of information flows for successful cultural entrepreneurship. In future posts, I will be looking at:

• the sources of information and intelligence for culture institutions
• the role of expertise versus experience for entrepreneurs
• political considerations concerning information and collaboration
• the legacy of information assets

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