Summaries articles Entrepreneurship and Innovation in CI
Contents
Week 1: cultural markets and creative competitors ............................................................................. 3
Remembering Chet: theorizing the mythology of the self-destructive bohemian artist as self-
producer and self-consumer in the market of romanticism, Bradshaw & Holbrook (2007) .............. 3
Recognition and renown, the structure of cultural markets: evidence from French poetry, Dubois
(2012) .................................................................................................................................................. 5
Art and appropriability in Renaissance Italy and the Netherlands of the Golden Age: the role of the
academy, Wijnberg (1997) .................................................................................................................. 7
Symbolic meaning of prices: constructing the value of contemporary art in Amsterdam and New
York galleries, Velthuis (2003) ........................................................................................................... 10
Week 2: entrepreneurship, risk and innovation.................................................................................. 13
A Hubris theory of entrepreneurship, Hayward Shepherd Griffin (2006)......................................... 13
Artistic labor markets and careers, Menger (1999) .......................................................................... 16
Love me tender: new entry in popular music, Mol Chiu Wijnberg (2012) ........................................ 19
Nascent ventures competing for startup capital: matching reputations and investors, Ebbers
Wijnberg (2011)................................................................................................................................. 22
Week 3: creative production and management of creatives .............................................................. 25
Why I don’t believe in the cost-disease (comment on Baumol), Cowen (1996) ............................... 25
There is no business like show business: leadership lessons from the theatre, Dunham Freeman
(2000) ................................................................................................................................................ 27
Performance measurement in the arts sector: the case of the performing arts, Turbide Laurin
(2009) ................................................................................................................................................ 31
Performance effects of cognitive heterogeneity in dual leadership structures in the arts: the role of
selection system orientation, Bhansing Leenders Wijnberg (2012) ................................................. 33
Week 4: critics and publics ................................................................................................................... 36
Film critics: influencers or predictors? Eliashberg Shugan (1997) .................................................... 36
Critics and publics: cultural mediation in highbrow and popular performing arts, Shrum (1991) ... 38
The impact of film reviews on the box office performance of arthouse vs. mainstream motion
pictures, Gemser Oostorm Leenders (2007) ..................................................................................... 41
Managing uncertainties in the creative industries: lessons from Jerry Springer the opera, Dempster
(2006) ................................................................................................................................................ 43
Week 5: big data and big art ................................................................................................................ 46
Quantifying reputation and success in art, Fraiberger et. al. (2018) ................................................ 46
And now for something completely different: visual novelty in an online network of designers,
Wachs et. al. (2018) ........................................................................................................................... 48
Validity concerns in research using organic data, Xu Zhang Zhou (2019) ......................................... 51
The machine as author, Gervais (2019)............................................................................................. 54
,Week 6: art and policy .......................................................................................................................... 58
Public support, Frey (2003) ............................................................................................................... 58
Arts policy research for the next 25 years: a trajectory after patrons despite themselves, O’Hare
(2008) ................................................................................................................................................ 61
Conflicting pressures in museums and the display of art, Alexander (1996) .................................... 64
New technologies in cultural institutions: theory, evidence, and policy implications, Bakhshi
Throsby, (2012) ................................................................................................................................. 68
,Week 1: cultural markets and creative competitors
Remembering Chet: theorizing the mythology of the self-destructive bohemian artist
as self-producer and self-consumer in the market of romanticism, Bradshaw &
Holbrook (2007)
This one is about the self-destruction aesthetics of certain artists and how that can be a
marketing/strategy mechanism. They look at the case of Chet Baker: he fell of the second floor of a
hotel room in Amsterdam because he was drunk. This confirms the assumption that artists are not
good at being businessmen.
However, self-destructing can be a viable way to generate attention and distinct yourself in the
oversupply of creative labor. It usually results from competing career orientations arising from
contradictory demands for high-brow lovers while also facing the need to earn cash through mass-
markets. Self-destructive behavior is “proof” that you are not in it for the money: it is difficult for the
general audience to imagine that the artist is committing self-destructive acts as means to receive
attention and increase revenues.
→ This makes you not lose the high-brow lovers while still having the possibility to be popular in
mass markets (again about art vs. commerce).
→ These concerns, when framed together are theorized to give rise to the so-called: ‘bohemian
ideal’, resulting in musician balance these conflicting demands by becoming both self-producer and
self-consumer of their own music (because the musicians see the audience as uninformed and
unenlightened) = conflict of production and consumption.
Theory
Bohemia refers to artists who perform primarily for themselves as expert self-consumers seeking to
maximize their own profound aesthetic experience as an audience for the consumption of their own
playing (both the production and consumption of one’s own artistic genius and aesthetic
experience). Ultimately, it would not even matter whether anyone else heard their music, which is
just pure creation valued for its own sake.
→ the antonym for bohemian is alienation (a.k.a. pandering) which refers to music made purely for
the commercial pursuit of monetary reward and aimed at an audience of non-expert consumers who
have no special knowledge of the art form, and who will respond favorably to the art only if it is
dumbed down in ways that make it easily accessible. This is complete subservience (adherence) to
the marketplace.
The possibility of playing commercially for money with oneself as the primary expert audience is
inherently self-defeating (a self-imploding vicious cycle), premised on the impossible prospect of
paying oneself with the rewards that one gets from paying oneself. Many artists escape the extreme
by settling for some sort of scuffling: preserving a degree of artistic integrity while managing to make
ends meet in a way that will avoid starvation.
As an embodiment of the pure Romantic ideal, bohemia carries the potential of a double-edged
sword. It does not always have to come with self-destruction if one just really enjoys playing for
oneself and not earning a living with it. You know, your colleague Jason just chilling with his
overprized guitar in his basement, blissfully by himself because no one understands his music.
, Chet baker rose swiftly to major jazz stardom, however, some jazz cognoscenti (like Miles Davis)
remained distinctly unimpressed and offered cold shoulders in ways that supposedly left Chet
standing alone as an outsider from the in-crowd. He became an addict, and maybe even with the
thought in his mind that this self-destructive trajectory would make him even more famous. But why
does the public eye find this artistic self-destruction so appealing? Probably because it has a
fascinating and inspiring vibe to it. The more our lives move toward an existence in which
individuality becomes mediated through marketplace culture, the more we yearn for non-
commercially constituted existence.
→ in that sense, the self-destructive artist mirrors our own market-grounded cultural anxieties
(agoraphobia = fear of the marketplace). Think about Amy Winehouse, how she resented playing the
Back to Black album at one point because it lost its artistic value through mass adoration and turned
into this cash cow that she had to keep performing for money.
Conclusion and implications
When looking closely at the history of jazz and music history in general, this article was able to trace
back the inheritance of the bohemian ideal, the iconic self-destructing artist as an inheritance from
Romanticism. This paper argues that Romantic market demands for aesthetics in addition to the
competitive landscape of the cultural industries, often requires artists to go through the path of
self-destruction, through engaging in the bohemian ideal, to attract attention, be noticed and make
a living in such an industry. It is precisely the fact that Baker was dark, somber, brooding, relentlessly
sad, that made him this persona, helping him to construct a lasting visual aesthetic within jazz and
enduring popularity.
→ Am I the only one here who finds it extremely demeaning to boil down someone’s addiction and
self-destruction to: “oh yea he just wanted to make money”? Wasn’t Chet Baker just an incredibly
troubled person with some mental issues who spiraled at some point because he just couldn’t handle
all the bs that comes with fame anymore? He was literally bullied by his idols in the jazz world, that
does something to a person.
How can society help mitigate bohemianism? Well, because society gains beyond measure by artists
with integrity, we need to give them more commercial viability through donations, funds, gifts
whatever, to make them less convinced they need to cater to mass markets for viability through
these measures of self-destruction.
