The business of becoming
Any new business, project, program, or partnership is an open question in search of an answer.
“There is nothing more innocent
than the still-unformed creature I find beneath soil,
neither of us knowing what it will become
in the abundance of the planet.”
–Linda Hogan, from “Innocence”
Entrepreneur, educator, and author Steve Blank has many elegant definitions of business practice and process. Among my favorites is his definition of a startup: “A startup,” says he, “is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model” (Ready 2012).
While established businesses optimize a built or borrowed theory of the firm, a startup is a rolling question seeking out an answer. Like Walt Whitman’s noiseless patient spider, a startup launches “filament, filament, filament, out of itself… / Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold, / Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere…”
This view of a startup resonates with artistic practice, which also experiments with the world. As Polanyi and Prosch (1975) describe it:
“…all the arts work in this way. They search for means of solving a problem – a problem which was conceived for this very purpose, i.e., its solution; and they pursue this question while continuing to shape the problem so that it will better fit the means for solving it.... Art is the deliberate creative growth of man’s existence.”
The comparison between startups and artistic practice isn’t intended to conflate the two (although arts entrepreneurship is certainly a thing, I edit an academic journal on the subject). Rather, the comparison is to invite an open, iterative, and imaginative approach to new ventures and new projects in the business of art.
Anytime you start something new – arts organization, project, program, partnership – consider it an open question. Delay the assumptions that might slot it into a well-worn path. And, instead, consider safe-to-fail experiments that test your guesses, and reveal the initiative’s most rich and resilient relationship with the world.
Keep guessing, guessing, guessing “Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold.” Then, and only then, build upon that discovered bridge.
From the ArtsManaged Field Guide
Function of the Week: Marketing
Marketing involves creating, communicating, and reinforcing expected or experienced value.
Framework of the Week: Calibrating Uncertainty
Calibrating Uncertainty is a framework for decision-making that involves assessing the chance and cost of being wrong. It helps prioritize actions by determining whether to invest in thorough information gathering or to proceed with small, experimental steps based on the potential risks and consequences.
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
Sources
Polanyi, Michael, and Harry Prosch. Meaning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.
Ready, Kevin. “A Startup Conversation with Steve Blank.” Forbes, August 28, 2012.
This is such a timely read for me! I'm right in the thick of designing an artist residency, and I've been deep-diving into these exact themes. The idea that we need to manage the process of growth as much as the space itself is so vital. Taylor really nails the nuances of the creative journey here.