Defining the new entrepreneurship: how it’s different from the current one

A gap between entrepreneurship and art has arisen over past industrial revolutions. New entrepreneurship aims to close the gap. It is imbued with entrepreneurialism, transplanting into the socio-economic sphere Brunelleschi’s Renaissance perspective in the art world.

Current entrepreneurship is in the STEM field, following the Fordist production environment, characterised by the bureaucracy of the 20th century. Know How To Do now has to be Knowing How To Think, Imagine and Understand. This requires familiarity with the Arts. STEM changes to STEAM. In the new entrepreneurship mode, innovationists take over from incrementalists.

Digitisation joins science and engineering with design and arts, enabling creativity in human-centred uses of technology. The arts are catalysts in converting technological knowledge into new processes, products, and services. Techno-humanist entrepreneurship means encouraging the generation of ideas and ones that feed start-ups generating new values –requiring continuous learning and willingness to explore the unknown.

…and why it’s necessary today

By combining the “4 Knowings”, new entrepreneurship provides opportunity to aspire to more enriching work. Students of today need to become multi-faceted hunters of ideas. A combination between varied stories, artistic creations, and constructions of things configures the path of work. This shows a different horizon from occupations that exhaust people.

Managers should take courage

New entrepreneurship brings turbulence to management because it shows many facets of work, as Peter Drucker (1909-2005) observed. No longer the operator following unambiguous messages. For current entrepreneurship, managers are increasingly expecting automation to be the key to success. As a result, tomorrow’s work would not differ from today. Whereas new entrepreneurship urges managers to take on the role of Renaissance man, appreciating experiences that move towards an unpredictable future.

Entrepreneurialism: a cultural movement

Exorcising unemployment has been a prime driver of economic success. However, transition to the knowledge-based society has brought creators who ignore that push but embrace the pull of Entrepreneurialism. That is what will describe progressing communities and those in retreat.

Research is exploration escaping the knowledge map of past discoveries. Entrepreneurialism is the territory, not the map, it is Innovation after Research. It is leadership; not management. Also Innovation is not confined by rationality.

Entrepreneurialism – the mind and creative faculty for entrepreneurial actions, and underlying Entrepreneurship, the process of designing and starting a business – has the purpose of changing resources to create new wealth. Entrepreneurialism is not synonymous with Business. Unlike Business, Entrepreneurialism is not just about material prosperity. Entrepreneurialism and Entrepreneurship are ways of perceiving the world that contribute to the broader design of society, feeding a social movement that challenges the model of Business that sees the creation of value for shareholders as a fixed point, around which the company revolves.

Entrepreneurialism is not built to defined standards. That is a managerial function. Instead, it is an art form that, opening doors to the future, imagines its transformation into an entity called ‘Company’. It flourishes when experimenters meet and interact in informal groups, amateurs and pragmatists, not just academics.

Historical parallels

There have always been social innovators, like the Lunar Society of Birmingham, who met between 1765 and 1813. Curious about the natural world, the Lunar men created many Innovation and Entrepreneurialism results, such as the discovery of oxygen (Joseph Priestley, 1733-1804), the steam engine (James Watt, 1736-1819) and the commercialization of pottery (Josiah Wedgwood, 1730-1795). Their achievements extended to fossil classification, telescope manufacture, and the creation of electricity. They lived art in its broadest meaning, encompassing the natural world. As Jenny Uglow (2002) brilliantly recounts, <<In the time of the Lunar Men science and art were not separated: you could be an inventor and designer, an experimenter and a poet, a dreamer and an entrepreneur all at once without anyone raising an eyebrow…….when people spoke of the ‘arts’, they did not mean only the fine arts but also the ‘mechanic arts’, the skills and techniques in agriculture, say, or printing>>.

The imagination of Entrepreneurialism is unlimited, while Business moves within the confines of known knowledge. Entrepreneurialism has an organic basis, which often is at odds with that of Business, predicated on efficiencies at scale.

Entrepreneurialism as social utility

Entrepreneurialism has principles that are both utilitarian and pleasurable – pursuing one’s dreams and developing one’s potential. It also embraces utilitarianism preached by British philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). That is, the pursuit of personal happiness is not at the expense of social happiness. Entrepreneurialism is less individualistic than is commonly believed. Depending on its culture and the way in which social and economic life is conducted, a country, a region or a community can act as an entrepreneur. That is how Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) expressed it.

Shareholder value and conflict with entrepreneurialism

As Lao Tzu (601 BC- 531 BC) might say, Entrepreneurialism is the clay that shapes the vase of Business, filled with the idol of profit, and tyrannous shareholders. Consequently, it is not Business performance that is the master; instead, accounting profits and the share price, both subject to manipulation, are, as Martin Wolf writes (2018). This is a second form of dissonance from any entrepreneurial ambition; firstly the move towards replicable systems, followed by subservience to shareholder value.

The entrepreneurial function is regenerated by always creating new combinations. This churn sets the pace for creation of entrepreneurial enterprises, generating sustainable productivity and wealth for the common good. When it takes over Entrepreneurialism, the managerial culture – as Peter Drucker regretted –makes it difficult for people to work.

When Business increases the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of top management it sets a moral compass, reproducing the Golden Age of capitalism – an era of major social problems, satirised by the American sociologist Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). This is self-destruction on a grand scale. Dinosaurs of business marching towards the abyss as business models and mores of acceptable behaviour change around them.

Should large enterprises think small?

Across the big business spectrum are exemplars like Paul Polman of Unilever, apparently as a paragon of purpose for the company and its employees. Yet, he defends the advertisement for Unilever’s skin lightening cream in India because if Unilever didn’t do it, somebody else would. Whatever his individual views, as the CEO of a global company, he is still bound by shareholder value. Is there is more honesty in the small business sector, and a more effective social conscience? Perhaps so, but they are populated by the same Homo Sapiens. We can all be grasping, self-centered and downright bad. But small business owners and team are more likely to be confronted by their customers and suppliers. There are fewer layers of management and making it difficult to separate self-interest from the implications on people you know. In this sense their entrepreneurial activities may have a more social impact on their environment.

Effective speaks to Agile

Effective entrepreneurial activity still exists in large corporations, though. The market capitalizations of Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Google are now over $2trillion. All have adopted a small business mindset, otherwise called Agile, described by Steve Denning (2018). Close to customer, no internal markets, fast to innovate – all entrepreneurial activities and all have, with exceptions, provided value to the world at scale, whilst generating exceptional shareholder returns.

Humanism begets opportunities

By placing the person at the centre and affirming their dignity and autonomy, Entrepreneurialism embodies a new Renaissance humanism. By investing primarily in the value of man’s creative autonomy, the entrepreneurial enterprise focuses on the dynamism of co-creators and entrepreneurs rather than on the static nature of jobs. Knowledge professionals abandon incremental innovations to explore uncertainties to discover non-consumption opportunities. Coexistence and cognitive conflicts between different talents make the enterprise a place where opposing opinions creates opportunities.

Independence leads to community

Freed from bureaucracy, Entrepreneurialism acquires the independence necessary for innovation, creating economic growth together with well-being. Hence, Entrepreneurialism is a cultural movement. It is the community that is entrepreneurial, and the goal of Entrepreneurialism is the fulfilment of community needs.

This article is inspired by the Manifesto “ECONAISSANCE:
Economic knowledge in progress (and looking ahead)”, now being drawn up by a group of scholars from different countries coedited by Piero Formica and Nick Hixson

About the authors:

Piero Formica is Professor, Senior Research Fellow, Innovation Value Institute, Maynooth University, Ireland and Winner of the Innovation Luminary Award 2017

Nick Hixson is an entrepreneur, business enabler based in the South of England, and Drucker Associate

READINGS

Denning, S. (2018), The Age of Agile: How Smart Companies Are Transforming the Way Work Gets Done, American Management Association

Drucker, P. F. (1993), Post-capitalist Society, Peter F. Drucker

Hurst, D. K. (2018) unpublished Thesis and (2014) The New Ecology Of Leadership, Columbia University Press

Skidelski, R. (1992), John Maynard Keynes, II: The Economist as Saviour, 1920-1937, Macmillan London

Uglow J (2002) The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World. Faber and Faber, London


Veblen, T. (1899), The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions, Macmillan, New York (1a ed. it.: La teoria della classe agiata: studio economico sulle istituzioni, Einaudi, Torino, 1943)

Wolf, M. (2018), “We must rethink the purpose of the corporation. The idea that businesses only pursue profits leads to dire outcomes”, Financial Times, December 11

There is a painting by the German painter Peter von Cornelius (1784-1867) in which one sees Gunther, King of Burgundy, ordering Hagen, a Burgundian warrior, to sink the treasure of the Nibelung. Siegfried, the visionary innovator, will win the Nibelung treasure. Akin to the mythological lineage of the Nibelung, managers hold the vast treasure that consists of customers and consumers. As with Siegfried, visionary innovators will win it.

But the past is hard to kill, for the visionaries first appear with products and services that initially look like ugly ducklings. In addition to technological failures, the first steamboats were clumsy and even dangerous, while evolutionary technologies made sailing boats increasingly beautiful and more performing. The ‘ugly duckling syndrome’ affects successful enterprises. Their managers persist in making good products better for consumers who want improved versions of those already available in the markets.

The underlying premise of focusing on optimising performance and efficiency is that consumers will be loyal and, therefore, will not abandon the brands they know and love. It is this complacency that blinds managers to the facts. The complacent manager neither sees a need to create a new path nor recognizes threats from outsiders who generate innovative pathways that reveal the ‘next markets.’

For example, in mobile communications, one of the fastest moving industries of current times, a lack of attention to threats, epitomized by the firm belief that ‘the cycle of our device is long and alive’, derailed more than one powerful player. When the iPhone appeared, BlackBerry’s managers reacted more or less as Western Union did when the first telephones showed up: ‘After all, it’s just a toy.’

In 2009, BlackBerry held around 22% of the smartphone market, and Nokia nearly 44% in 2008. By 2013 the latter’s share had fallen to a meagre 3%, when its handset sales dropped to about 120 million in the first half year. Likewise the business models of Ikea and Zara have caused severe injuries to their Italian and foreign competitors.

The transition to trans-managerialism
Placed itself at the centre of the company which revolves around it, management has persuaded itself and others of the truth of three cultural metaphors: the efficiency of the markets, the rationality of individuals and the spontaneous movement of the economy towards an optimal state. But those metaphors are losing their hold with the ongoing Copernican-like revolution. The geocentrism of management gives way to the heliocentrism of the entrepreneur. She emanates imagination, intuition, and inspiration, giving rise to entrepreneurial reactions.

If the management provided jobs led by experts in their silos, the entrepreneur turns ideas into action (‘ideation’) with the guidance of the experimenter who learns by testing her ability to imagine and trace innovative paths. In the course of experimentation, ideas, culturally different from each other, are threads that intertwine in such a way as to form business projects that have a substantial impact on corporate fabric. Such a process accelerates the scale-up of the company’s activity and also promotes spin-offs and start-ups. Free spaces for productive collaborations achieve surprising results. That happened in the Renaissance Florence and, nowadays, in the ecosystems such as IdeaSpace in the UK and Vivid Ideas of Sydney, Australia.

Ideation can succeed if management detaches itself from a rationalist approach and embraces post-rationalist behaviour. Following a shock, management tries to restore the company to equilibrium. But that presupposes that the previous situation did not contribute to the shock. To avoid this, the static nature of the old-style management is replaced by the dynamism of managers incessantly moving along the path of ideation leading to entrepreneurial opportunities. They experience moments of imbalance in stark contrast with the concept of equilibrium.
Ultimately, what is at stake is the willingness and ability of management to sail from the bank of intra-managerialism (staying within their own cognitive silos) to the shore of trans-managerialism, overcoming silos and divisions.

Should this radical change of perspective be achieved with a single leap? Is it possible to do so gradually through the stations of cross-management (observing the silo of another manager from the latter’s view, rather than from her own), of multi-managerialism (managers of different areas of business working together, each one drawing from her well of knowledge) and inter-managerialism (finding a synthesis of knowledge and methods that define the disciplinary silos)? These are questions that remain open.
The concept of a fixed management ethos, always trying to regain the status quo, is a modern construct. It need not be so and may be increasingly ineffective in a modern world.

About the author:

Professor Piero Formica is a Senior Research Fellow of the Innovational Value Institute at the Maynooth University in Ireland, and founder of the International Entrepreneurship Academy Network. He received the Innovation Luminary Award 2017 from the European Union Open Innovation Strategy and Policy Group for his work on modern innovation policy.

piero.formica@gmail.com

This article is one in a series related to the 10th Global Peter Drucker Forum, with the theme management. the human dimension, taking place on November 29 & 30, 2018 in Vienna, Austria #GPDF18

This article first appeared  in the Drucker Forum Series on Linkedin Pulse.

#Cloud computing, e-commerce, the mobile internet, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the Internet of Things trigger changes in business models and blur the boundaries of industries. Genomics, nanotechnology and robotics question what is ideally described as the scientific method. The human being is subjected to upheavals of such magnitude in his double profile of man who makes and man who thinks. The first, the Homo laborans, questions the ‘how’ the mutations happen; the second, the Homo faber, the ‘why’. Are the two personalities compatible? Do the ‘how’ of making new things efficiently and the ‘why’ of ‘making thinking’ to transform the reality coexist in the same person?

Two diametrically opposed scenarios are posed by such questions. Their description evokes Richard Sennett’s essay ‘The Craftsman’ (2008), which takes up and critically comments on ‘The Human Condition’ (1958) by Hannah Arendt (1906-1975). One scenario is similar to that of the two seas that never mix. Homo laborans sails in the sea of ‘making things’ where work is an end in itself, and is dictated by the needs imposed by technology. Subjected to technology or pleasantly attracted by it, we are ‘Animal laborans’, as Arendt would say, being enslaved to the tasks we are immersed in by the will of technology. Our doing is comparable to the manual work of past industrial revolutions. Think, for example, of the smartest machines, which can alert their human handlers when they need maintenance, or the cyborg, bionics and computer prosthesis, which give the human body the characteristics of the machine. With the help of technology, Homo faber navigates in the sea of ‘making thinking’, whose mind always finds inspiration that leads to make discoveries. Here, among the various characters, stand out the figures of poets, philosophers, sculptors, painters, dancers, playwrights, filmmakers, video artists, documentarians, artists of sound and performance, and historians. In this scenario technology and humanism do not meet. Technology guides the hand of those who have to do concrete, material things. Humanism shifts attention from the hand to the head from which innovative thoughts arise.

In the alternative scenario, the digital revolution celebrates the figure of the craftsman whose ‘hand-working’ and ‘thinking head’ are intimately connected, as argued by Sennett. Thus, the Renaissance workshop is re-evaluated. Here, experiments in making physical things provided information then processed by the mind and translated into innovations. The technique used by the craftsman to make things well is material culture that develops the ability to create mental images without the use of the senses, and vice versa. According to this vision, the digital factory is the place of return to the craft prior to the age of mechanization inaugurated with the first industrial revolution, which generated a bottleneck between making and thinking – a mental impairment, in Sennett’s words, that takes the learning away.

The worker is once again the master of a craft in which the interaction between fingers and mind combines technological education with the liberal arts. Pending, according to some visionaries, improved eyeball-tracking technology and the digital evolution of cranium implants, which configure a head – ‘headcraft’ – that replaces the hands.

In a broad range of new technologies, the craftsman is an artist. Going back to the time of Leonardo da Vinci, being ‘painter and engineer’ is what distinguishes the craftsman. It’s like saying technology, which has its root in the Greek word tékhne (that is, ‘art, craft’), is married to the liberal arts. Painting, drawing, graphics, architecture, sculpture and other plastic arts, music, literature, psychology, and history allow us to get an idea about the human nature of technology. These are the sources of design that gives a technological product that touch of creativity and empathy that is indispensable for its success.

In the interweaving of hand and head, engineering and the humanities, the words advanced by Steve Jobs as he presented the iPad2 resonate:

‘It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough — it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing, and nowhere is that more true than in these post-PC devices’.

About the Author:

Professor Piero Formica is a Senior Research Fellow of the Innovational Value Institute at the Maynooth University in Ireland, and founder of the International Entrepreneurship Academy Network. He received the Innovation Luminary Award 2017 from the European Union Open Innovation Strategy and Policy Group for his work on modern innovation policy. piero.formica@gmail.com

This article is one in a series related to the 10th Global Peter Drucker Forum, with the theme management. the human dimension, taking place on November 29 & 30, 2018 in Vienna, Austria #GPDF18

This article was first on Linkedin.

Photo by: Jakub Jirsák/fotolia.com

Practices akin to Bible scriptures, which require an exercise in logic to understand their meaning, are the distinctive feature of management as it has evolved during successive industrial revolutions. Humanism – a way of life centered on human values and a critical spirit – is forced within a “sacred” enclosure, and the human dimension of management is shrinking even more with the growing performance of a wide range of technologies that replace human beings in the adoption and implementation of managerial practices.

Staunch supporters of the claim that existing knowledge is the source from which most innovation stems lead the managerial enterprise. They are managers in the shoes of Ptolemaic “knowledgists” who search paths within the boundaries of the received knowledge map, limiting processes of discovery or fact finding by existing experience. As experts aiming at perfection, they are accustomed to draw extremely detailed knowledge maps, comparable to the cartographic maps described by Jorge Luis Borges in his essay “On exactitude in science”: “In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province.”

A sense of security matters to them both as an ideal of life and as an asset. They combine innovation with words such as continuity, incrementalism, and viability. Nicholas Nassim Taleb has invented the word “fragilista” to describe a person who loves “order and predictability”, and who suffers as a result of “random events, unpredictable shocks, stressors, and volatility”.

If the human dimension is so relegated to the periphery of entrepreneurial activity, it is no wonder to find Peter Drucker, one of the founding fathers of the modern business corporation, regretting that “So much of management consists of making it difficult for people to work”.

The manager’s mission to entrust his staff with specific and rigid tasks to prevent disrupting the proper functioning of the organisation only exists in a narrow frame. A frame that bears no relation to today’s reality. The knowledge age in which we are now living reflects the Age of Unreason heralded by Charles Handy: “….we are entering an Age of Unreason, when the future, in so many areas, is there to be shaped by us and for us; a time when the only prediction that will hold true is that no predictions will hold true; a time, therefore, for bold imaginings in private life as well as public, for thinking the unlikely and doing the unreasonable.”

Humanism is the protagonist of this new scenario – a world made of thoughts, sensations and emotions, which are living and incandescent matter compared to the cold practices of the managerial company.

With the onset of humanism, the entrepreneurial enterprise made up of “unreasonable” people comes to the fore. The entrepreneurial enterprise is comparable to the Renaissance “bottega” (workshop), a co-working place where talents were nurtured, new techniques and new artistic forms came to light; artists competing but also ready to work together. Rather than the mere performers of tasks assigned in a top-down mode, the entrepreneurial enterprise highlights co-creators and intrapreneurs. They abandon today’s opportunities, which conform to prevailing habits, and sail into the “sea of absurdity”, seeking business ideas which may appear ridiculous and dangerous – believing, like Aristotle, that “A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility”.

The human dimension of the entrepreneurial enterprise is reflected in the profiles of co-creators and intrapreneurs, who communicate with each other consistently and fluidly, facilitating mutual understanding. The coexistence of and collision among these diverse talents make the enterprise a lively place where dialogue allows constructive conflicts to flourish. The clash and confrontation of opposing views remove cognitive boundaries, mitigate errors, and help people question existing truths.

Gen Y will be taking the majority of leadership positions in the coming years, and Gen Z, which is starting to enter the workforce, must take an increasing role in shaping the future of humanism. For the new generation in school age it is imperative to reinvent education. This means recreating in a new spirit what the great thinkers of the past have handed down to us. The Dutch Renaissance humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam considered that the development of understanding through students’ conversations with each other and with their teachers was far more important than the process of memorizing required at many religious schools of the Middle Ages. In the wake of Erasmus, the Moravian educator John Amos Comenius suggested that teachers should exploit the sensitivity, and therefore the feeling, of students rather than merely accepting their ability to memorize. Equally, learning through conversation, according to the English philosopher and physician John Locke, had to be at the centre of the school curriculum.

In the wake of those great thinkers, the Global Happiness Council promotes positive education. By this is meant a range of educational programmes that train primary and secondary school children to engage in a range of activities. The interventions include “remembering what went well today; writing letters of gratitude; learning how to respond constructively; identifying and developing character strengths; and training in meditation, mindfulness, empathy, coping with emotions, decision-making, problem solving, and critical thinking”. Investing today in “positive” schools and teachers will strengthen the human dimension of management in the years to come.

About the author:

Professor Piero Formica is a Senior Research Fellow of the Innovational Value Institute at the Maynooth University in Ireland, and founder of the International Entrepreneurship Academy Network. He received the Innovation Luminary Award 2017 from the European Union Open Innovation Strategy and Policy Group for his work on modern innovation policy.

This article is one in a series related to the 10th Global Peter Drucker Forum, with the theme management. the human dimension, taking place on November 29 & 30, 2018 in Vienna, Austria #GPDF18

Stating that altruism is serving OI is tantamount to saying that altruism is a practical social innovation. Inward-looking, selfish organizations minimize cooperation and so stifle open innovation. Altruism opens up a promising prospect for an outward-looking approach to innovation by seeking to maximize co-operation even among competing firms – the so called ‘co-opetition’ model, a competitive and at the same time cooperative approach to collaboration. Through being unselfish, the worker is seen as a team member, rather as a factor of production whose abilities to do critical thinking, communicate, collaborate, and chase new opportunities are essential components of OI processes.

In the innovation field, there are complex configurations of distinctive, differentiated ideas and principles with many  connections. Some ideas and principles are an expression of individualism, from a moderate to extreme, which relegate human relationships within their family circle. Other ideas and principles flow from spontaneous collaboration among free people favourably disposed towards altruistic practices.

In a closed environment, innovation takes shape by “the astounding belief – in words attributed to John Maynard Keynes – that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone”. In contrast, in an open environment, people and organizations whose nature is altruistic, are biased towards cooperation, and are more likely to sharing, and shape innovation. According to David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionary biologist, in the communities in which selflessness is strongly rooted in the social fabric, the altruistic groups do better than selfish groups over time.

Locked in individualistic behaviour, the selfish managerial hand grabs the stick. In an open environment, the entrepreneurial hand of altruism holds a carrot cultivated in the community garden, tended by the entrepreneur-gardener. The stick symbolizes competition – ‘I win, you lose’. The carrot brings opportunities that creates benefits for all. The carrot is the inclusive victory.

In the new Theatre of Economics at the second decade of the 21st century, Homo Oeconomicus, the selfish individualist aiming at maximizing her utility, is no longer the protagonist. Homo Socialis appears, whose propensity to altruism and spontaneous socialization is a crucial added value for common good. The heart of today’s economic and social life is the co-evolution of entrepreneurship, science and technology, and behavioural patterns. From this perspective if we examine start-ups in the evolutionary phase we note that, motivated by imagination, intuition and enthusiasm, they widen the field of opportunities. The more the field is extended, the more the room for the creation of novelty and continuous adaptation, producing a collective advantage. The selfish efficient agent who makes use of all available resources to improve her performance gives way to the altruism of the effective agent who shares with others her own funds in order to be able to do more and differently.

The debate continues between economists. Is it the unbridled individualism that characterizes individuals, all centred on their personal interests? Or are individuals selfless, while solipsists are organized groups of special interests which are fragmented by what we call “community”? This dilemma does not have an unequivocal answer. In the course of events the pendulum swings, between the two hypotheses. To move in the direction of altruism, individuals and their collective representatives should learn how to start and operate at full potential, multiplying social progress and economic development. Practicing altruism on a reciprocal basis, resorting to open exchange of information and mutual learning, is a useful exercise in order to become aware of what value can be created.

Will the pendulum swing towards balance? It depends on demographics as well as the pressure exercised by Millennials, who have shown the highest propensity to collaborate, and the counter-thrust that comes from Generation Z, those born between 1996 and 2011. These are young people forged by the Great Recession. Confronted with growing uncertainties on the education and work fronts, and the intensification of inequalities on both sides of income and opportunities, the cohort following the Millennials walks a tightrope between competitive and co-operative behaviours.

 
About the author:

Professor Piero Formica is the founder of the International Entrepreneurship Academy and a Senior Research Fellow at the Innovation Value Institute. His latest book is Entrepreneurial Renaissance: Cities Striving Towards an Era of Rebirth and Revival to which blog moderator Nick Hixson has contributed a chapter.

Do manufacturing and culture live in two separate and irreconcilable worlds—manufacturing in the world of things and culture in the world of ideas? Is manufacturing called upon to solve production problems, with culture pronouncing on ‘chief systems’ as in Galileo’s ‘Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems’? This is a shared vision of those who identify manufacturing with making and culture with thinking: the manual labour of artisans and technicians as opposed to the intellectual work of professors and scientists. As a result, this fault line fails to recognize that the factory is a culture that can and should go hand in hand with academia and research centres: you will otherwise have two half-cultures that do not make a single, whole culture.

One need only look in detail at the staging of an opera —a seemingly extreme example of a cultural embrace— to see how much that vision is little more than a stereotype.

By setting aside their respective knowledge maps, manufacturers and lyricists prepare themselves for this ‘Grand Unification’ between manufacturing and culture, revealing interesting approaches for future growth influenced by path creators. Opera houses are a component of culture whose intangible assets—imagination, relational, reputational and entrepreneurial capital—are, invisible eye. These are assets that remain after the performance, when the theatre closes. These four assets have unique characteristics. They defy traditional accounting. Their value is realized when they are intertwined in complex relationships, such as with manufacturing. Unification between manufacturing expertise and the aesthetic demands of opera can lead to lyric opera productions enhanced by the application of complex digital technologies that connect people, processes, data and things. Equally, those in the audience could enrich their vision with augmented reality and communicate their emotions in real time. There is a digital innovation (MySmark, ‘Make your Smart mark’) developed by an Irish start-up company at the junction of psychology–marketing–computer science, which creates an ‘emotional tagging’. As such, customized profiles of members of the audience could allow theatres to investigate the personalities and subjectivities of those in the audience, assess their feelings and understand their priorities.

For the design and physical production of an opera, theatres could make use of 3-D printers. These and other new manufacturing technologies would offer experienced craftsmen, who create costumes, scenery, and lighting, opportunities to take their work further. Strong interaction with the world of manufacturing would enlarge the community of donors and investors in crowdfunding platforms. The eccentric profiles of ‘nerds’, who show a marked predisposition for science and technology, and ‘geeks’, who develop and enhance digital technologies using passion and experience, could complement the classic image of the opera connoisseur. Money of the many could give financial oxygen to theatres and shape an international community of opera lovers.

The opera, therefore, could become a non-elitist art form, with a very promising future. Current estimates by Bocconi, a private university in Milan, suggest that one Euro invested in La Scala Opera House generates two Euros in its supply chains and related industries. In the case of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, a survey by Deloitte showed that for each Euro the Comunale receives in grants the community of Bologna gains benefits estimated to be around ten Euros, benefits to entrepreneurship and employment.

The long chain of activities required to stage an opera is full of opportunities that could be exploited by innovative start-ups that combine technology with the intangibles. That is why it would be necessary to promote and facilitate the role of the artist-entrepreneur and the technology-based artist who first explores the frontier that separates humans from machines and then creates interactions between entertainment and manufacturing. Beethoven was an artist entrepreneur; and in our lifetime there are technology-artists like Heather Knight, who works on theatrical robot performances. Here is a task for music conservatories and music academies which, as already happens in conservatories in the United States, should launch entrepreneurship courses for their students. As exemplified by the French programme Dix mois d’école et d’Opera, opera traces educational paths thanks to its connections with history, philosophy, literature, graphic arts, music, drama, and dance. Crossing cultural and national borders, opera houses multiply the economic impact of their performances. The ‘Grand Unification’ would increase its value.

About the author:

Piero Formica is the founder of the International Entrepreneurship Academy and a Senior Research Fellow at the Innovation Value Institute. He is author of The Role of Creative Ignorance: Portraits of Path Finders and Path Creators and Grand Transformation Towards an Entrepreneurial Economy: Exploring the Void.

A growing number of academics, practitioners and business people are aiming to broaden and as well as deepen their knowledge of how business and economies function. The generalist or polymath, so apparent in the Renaissance, is becoming more prevalent.

This is the context in which coworking spaces are on the rise, from Google’s “Campus” in London to NextSpace in California. Much has been made of these shared workspaces as a brand-new idea, one that barely existed 10 years ago. But the way they function reminds me of a very old idea: the Renaissance “bottega” (workshop) of 15th-century Florence, in which master artists were committed to teaching new artists, talents were nurtured, new techniques were at work, and new artistic forms came to light with artists competing among themselves but also working together.

The Renaissance put knowledge at the heart of value creation, which took place in the workshops of these artisans, craftsmen, and artists. There they met and worked
with painters, sculptors, and other artists; architects, mathematicians, engineers, anatomists, and other scientists; and rich merchants who were patrons. All of them gave form and life to Renaissance communities, generating aesthetic and expressive as well as social and economic values. The result was entrepreneurship that conceived revolutionary ways of working, of designing and delivering products and services, and even of seeing the world.

Florentine workshops were communities of creativity and innovation where dreams, passions, and projects could intertwine. The apprentices, workers, artisans, engineers, budding artists, and guest artists were interdependent yet independent, their disparate efforts loosely coordinated by a renowned artist at the center — the “Master.” But while he might help spot new talent, broker connections, and mentor younger artists, the Master did not define others’ work.

For example, Andrea del Verrocchio (1435–1488) was a sculptor, painter, and goldsmith, but his pupils weren’t limited to following his preferred pursuits. In his workshop, younger artists might pursue engineering, architecture, or various business or scientific ventures. Verrocchio’s workshop gave free rein to a new generation of entrepreneurial artists — eclectic characters such as Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510), Pietro Perugino (c. 1450–1523), and Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449–1494).

What can those who want to create more innovative and collaborative workplaces today — whether that’s a better office in a traditional organization, a coworking space, a startup incubator, or a fab lab — learn from the workshops of the Renaissance? The bottegas’ three major selling points were turning ideas into action, fostering dialogue, and facilitating the convergence of art and science.

Turning ideas into action. Renaissance workshops were not just a breeding ground for new ideas; they helped ideas become reality. Likewise, today’s innovative workplaces need to be equipped with everything people need to turn their insights, inspirations, and mental representations into new products and ventures. Coming up with new ideas is hard enough, but the real challenge for many organizations is figuring out how to exploit them and turn a profit.

Fostering dialogue. Ferdinando Galiani, a Neapolitan economist of the 18th century, argued that markets are conversations. The quality of the network — that is, the combined intelligence of people and organizations with different skills and abilities — plays a critical role in innovation.

In Renaissance workshops, specialists communicated with each other consistently and fluidly, facilitating mutual understanding. The coexistence of and collision among these diverse talents helped make the workshops lively places where dialogue allowed conflicts to flourish in a constructive way. The clash and confrontation of opposing views removed cognitive boundaries, mitigated errors, and helped artists question truths taken for granted.

Today, we often recognize the need for these kinds of illuminating conversations without really making space for them in our organizations, either because organizations are too afraid of conflict or because people are simply too busy to try to expand their understanding of each other. But Renaissance workshops offer proof of how important it is for collaborative workplaces to draw on sources of opposing ideas and controversial opinions.

Facilitating the convergence of art and science. While often remembered as primarily artistic today, in truth the Renaissance workshop was transdisciplinary. This helped create a holistic approach to creativity, which stands in opposition to our own organizations, in which people in different specialties are often separated into silos.

For example, during the Renaissance nature was seen as a convergence of art and science, as in the famous “Vitruvian Man” drawing by da Vinci. Many of today’s most exciting business opportunities are similar meetings of technological advances and aesthetic beauty. Bringing these disciplines together fosters mutual learning through experiments that lead to business opportunities.

Whether you are running a coworking space or trying to get your own organization to be more creative and collaborative, think about some of the ways you might follow the example of a Renaissance workshop.

About the author:

Piero Formica is the founder of the International Entrepreneurship Academy and a Senior Research Fellow at the Innovation Value Institute. He is author of The Role of Creative Ignorance: Portraits of Path Finders and Path Creators and Grand Transformation Towards an Entrepreneurial Economy: Exploring the Void.