Author: Han van der Meer, lector knowledge & innovation entrepreneurship at Saxion Applied Universities

 At the Dutch SKIO centre (Saxion knowledge centre on Innovation and Entrepreneurship), research takes place on the phenomenon of entrepreneurship. The centre is looking for answers to the following questions: What are the qualities of an entrepreneur? Is it possible to give someone the qualities of an entrepreneur? Is it even possible to stimulate entrepreneurship? How do you recognize a true entrepreneur and what does he need to be innovative in his practice? 

For years I have been fascinated by the correlation between innovative entrepreneurs and their appreciation for art. There has been a connection between prosperous rulers and artists for a very long time. It is no coincidence that the Dutch word for artists’ favourers is “mecenas”, an ancient word that sprung from the name of the Roman knight Gaius Cilnius Maecenas (65 to 8 BC). So favouring artists has been around for ages, but is still very topical today. Once you start noticing, it seems to be an inescapable phenomenon. Innovative entrepreneurs love art.

One day I tried to falsify the correlation by thoroughly questioning an entrepreneur, who I met in my consulting practice. I regard him as an innovative but very harsh manager / owner. To my amusement, he confided in me that after high school he had to make an all-determining choice between becoming a successor of his father in the family business or going to art school. Since his father was very ill, he chose to fill his father’s shoes, but his love for art had never faded. However, he could never find the time to paint. Flabbergasted as I was, I decided to perform some research on the relationship between entrepreneurs and art in literature. As you can imagine, there has not been written much on the topic. I found five possible motives for loving art:

• Investment;
• Flaunting;
• Good Shapes;
• Coherent Process;
• Window to the Future.

Using these motives, we developed an open interview protocol for a survey among entrepreneurs. We performed in-depth interviews with ten owners of innovative Dutch companies, in which we explored their motives. The interviews lasted for one and a half to four hours and were fully transcripted. The transcripts have been analysed, which resulted in the following conclusions:

• The motive of Investment entails investing in art to achieve profits. Two owners indicated this as their motive for buying art.

“Mr. Van der Meer, I used to sell underwear and now I sell art!”

• The motive of Flaunting entails that art has a positive influence on the entrepreneur or his organisation. Three owners indicated this motive as the dominant reason for their interest in art.

“The power of a person can be judged by the size and decoration of his home”.

• The motive of Good Shapes entails how an entrepreneur hires an artist to improve the design of his product to increase its market potential. Two owners indicated this motive as influential in involving art in their business.

“Every year we invite an artist to make a piece of art on the theme of sleeping (the company produces pillows). The art makes our office look good and provides for an excellent business gift to our dealers. It is a nice change”.

• The motive of Coherent Process entails that the process of innovation of the entrepreneur is similar to the creation process of an artist. For three artists this appeared to be a way to extend their thinking to the art world. The earlier mentioned harsh manager is a good example. “there is no big difference between the process of painting or modelling your company. A sketch, an idea followed by a lot of sweat and tears. You will never finish, nothing will ever turn out as you had intended. Sometimes you succeed and sometimes you have to start all over again, losing years of hard work”.
• The motive of Window to the Future entails the perception of an artist as someone who works on the edge between everything that already exists and everything that can still be formed. The artist envisions the Zeitgeist and is usually a long way ahead. Looking at art can help giving meaning to the Zeitgeist and can inspire to give shape to the company’s vision. Only one owner indicated that this was an important contribution to his active love of art.

“Every time I visit a museum, my idea-notebook is filled up. Last time I visited the museum of Groningen, I added 12 ideas”.

Concluding, some of the motives as described in literature appear to influence entrepreneurs in practice, although the results are not convincing or decisive. However, a sixth motive appeared from the interviews, which was valid for almost all entrepreneurs (9 out of 10) in their love of art. This motive was “Art as Energy Source”. For many, art is a shape or source of energy, which leads to new developments. This seems to be one of the most important reasons for the strong correlation between entrepreneurship and art. A Pakistani Cricket coach once expressed it as follows: “We have the same phenomenon in sports. We call it "being in the zone".

With this kind of research, do we maybe enter the following domain of Plato: “He (the tiran of Sicily) forces me to talk about something that should and cannot be talked about” (Plato, 7th letter)? My opinion is that this is not the case. We are not talking about a supernatural or unnatural phenomenon (by the way, Plato is not talking about this either), but we are consciously trying to find inspiration in a conscious state of admiration. This state of admiration arises if we become aware of the fact that there are things we do know and there are things we do not know. In the words of Laozi: “Considering knowing as not knowing is the highest state reachable” (Roughly translated, Ransdorp, 2007). This state of admiration seems to be the key for innovative entrepreneurs to find a form for things that does not exist yet. Art has the ability to immerse us in this state of admiration. Or, as the interviewed owners called it, “the unlimited state of energy”.

Thus, what is the use of all of this? Can we use it in any way? I think we can. By consciously handling the correlation between entrepreneurship and art, we can look for the right time and place where the connection can be made. This can move beyond visiting a museum or a theatre, reading a book, listening to music or seeing a movie. There are international initiatives to prove this statement (Artists in Residence, Styre & Eriksson, 2007) and local initiatives such as LAUNCH in Enschede, The Netherlands.