1. Professor David Rae drae@lincoln.ac.uk
CREATIVE ENTREPRENEURSHIP: Methodologies & strategies to support the creative industries sector
Professor David Rae
Creative Entrepreneurship

2. Messages from young creative entrepreneurs
‘Being young is a challenge in itself – not being taken seriously as business people by banks and accountants’
‘Focusing on progress and achievement with supportive peer review really helps’
‘Collaborative action and networking builds confidence’
‘Enterprise bursaries help reduce risk and fund start-up costs’
Creative Entrepreneurship

3. Creative Entrepreneurship
Questions to address:
Why is there a need for creative entrepreneurship by young people?
Why the creative industries sector?
What do we aim to achieve?
What do young entrepreneurs want and need?
How can we achieve our goals?
What approaches do we know that work?
Who needs to work together?
What resources and initiatives are required?
Creative Entrepreneurship

4. Creative Entrepreneurship
Our challenge
As enterprise educators we face the biggest challenge and opportunity of our generation in the post 2008 era:
How to provide the confidence, skills and tools which will inspire and enable young people to start their working lives and to achieve economic and social regeneration through enterprise.
Creative Entrepreneurship

5. Why is there a need for creative entrepreneurship by young people?
Worklessness is a major social & economic problem for the next decade
Corporate & public sectors cannot provide the jobs required
Creative thinking is required to create the new jobs
Investing in young people & creativity will show economic & social returns
Creative Entrepreneurship

6. Creativity & creative industries
Are the ‘creative industries’ too narrow or an artificial definition?
Creativity is required in all organisations:
Creative problem-solving
Creating opportunities
Designing & innovating new products, services, experiences
Creative communications & marketing channels
Creative uses of new technology
Creative social enterprises & social spaces
Creative Entrepreneurship

7. What do we aim to achieve?
Increase entrepreneurial potential & aspirations of young people?
Enhance creativity in society?
Increase in ventures created?
Provide socially & economically useful services for communities?
Provide useful jobs?
All of these? Choices affect the actions we take.
Creative Entrepreneurship

8. What do young entrepreneurs want & need?
Many have:
Ideas & imagination
Energy & passion
New technology know-how
Perceive opportunities we do not
Do not know what cannot be done
Many require:
€ Resources
Experience
Self belief
Business skills & knowledge
Access to business & social networks
Ability to convince the bank manager
Creative Entrepreneurship

9. How? Entrepreneurial learning – a vital capability for the new era
Learning to work as an entrepreneur by acting opportunistically & creatively
Experiential discovery-led learning by doing from primary to Higher Education
Applied creativity
Engage business people and communities in the learning process – outside the classroom
Creative Entrepreneurship

10. Every one of us is a creative person!
We can have ideas and do things with them!
Creative Entrepreneurship

11. Turning winning ideas > opportunities
3. Innovations
& solutions
2. Who is it for?
1. Problems
& needs
4. How to make
it happen
Creative Entrepreneurship

12. What can students gain from enterprising learning?
Purposeful, stimulating & engaging learning
Relevant to their lives & careers
Investigating ‘real’ problems and exploring opportunities
Personal growth & social confidence, energises them to succeed
Experiential, practical, work and community situated learning
Provides supporting business skills & know-how
Alumni, practitioners and entrepreneurs contribute to learning
Risk, uncertainty and ambiguity to develop students’ judgement
‘Feel the enterprise experience’ – emotional engagement
Creative Entrepreneurship

13. Opportunity centred entrepreneurship
What do I want?
Personal goals
Skills & strengths
Confidence & self efficacy
Values & motivations
Networking
Creating & using contacts
Communicating effectively
Self marketing
Learning from experience
Planning:
Goals
What is success?
How-to?
Who with?
Resources
Creative thinking
Exploring ideas
Seeing needs as
opportunities
Taking initiative
Creative Entrepreneurship

14. A new paradigm for entrepreneurship?
Old e-ship (US/UK?)
Individualist
Neo-liberal capitalism
Opportunity pursuit regardless of consequences
Business driven: short term profitability & growth
Value creation solely financial
Exploits & wastes resources
Exclusive role models
Masculine attributes: aggression, power, conflict
New e-ship (European?)
Individual-team leadership
Networked & collectivist
Socially connected & inclusive
Ethically responsible
Sensitive to resource conservation & re-use
Multiple forms of value creation
Economically & environmentally sustainable
Feminine values: relational, collaborative, intuitive
Grassroots enterprise
This change can be achieved though education, practice & leadership
Creative Entrepreneurship

15. New connections for creative entrepreneurship
Educators
Students
Communities
Entrepreneurs
& business
networks
Connect People
Government agencies
Purpose & commitment
Problems
& opportunities
Generate
Confidence to act
Ideas
Resources
Ventures
Support
Teams
Results
Creative Entrepreneurship

16. Latent resource entrepreneurship
Find new uses for resources being wasted - e.g. by big organisations in recession:
Resources (people, property, IP, technology, capacity, finance, knowledge) +
Opportunities (creative problem-solving)
Facilitation support (people learning in teams) =
Venture projects (create value, jobs & solve problems)
Creative Entrepreneurship

17. Creative Entrepreneurship
Examples of what works
Enterprising learning:
Enterprise in the curriculum
Junior Achievement/Young Enterprise
in schools
Prince’s Trust supporting disadvantaged young entrepreneurs (18-30)
Creative Entrepreneurship

18. Student business start-up
SPEED: 750 students started businesses
Enterprise Inc. student & graduate start-ups (ERDF)
Based on bursaries + support
Student enterprise clubs & societies – NACUE
National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship
Creative Entrepreneurship

19. Creative Entrepreneurship

20. Creative Entrepreneurship

21. Creative Entrepreneurship

22. Creative Entrepreneurship

23. What is Access Innovation?
The aim:
To assist business improvement through innovation
How:
Company-specific development projects with students and graduates
Introduce & exploit new opportunities, markets, products, services
Increase productivity & efficient use of resources
Improve competitive edge: survival and growth
Make money
Enhance graduate employability and retention.
Create and safeguard jobs
Creative Entrepreneurship

24. Creative Entrepreneurship
Summary
Our leadership is essential to connect people & organisations
Support young people’s & student enterprise clubs & societies
Applied creativity & learning by doing
Use the new technology
Invest resources & support
Collaborative innovation by young people, education, business, communities & public sector is the way forward.
Creative Entrepreneurship

25. Featured book: Opportunity Centred Entrepreneurship
‘Entrepreneurship: from Opportunity to Action’
© Professor David Rae: Palgrave MacMillan 2007
Chapter 1 & tools downloadable free on website
Lowest price:
Creative Entrepreneurship