ELICITING VISIONS OF THE PERFORMINGARTS

The most recent approaches have defined entrepreneurship as a process of opportunity creation and exploitation based on knowledge and opinions. The focus of the research has shifted from parameters and performances to people and perceptions, while the qualitative approach has entered economics to investigate how the participants interact in the market, spotting missing information and actively creating new sources of value. The present research combines these theoretical and methodological insights in order to investigate entrepreneurship in the performing arts. The thesis discusses the results of ten semi-structured interviews carried out among performing arts practitioners of Rotterdam. The thesis explores how these practitioners put entrepreneurship into practice, combining institutional incentives, market opportunities, organizational strategies, and visions of the future. According to the computer aided analysis of themes and the narratives discussed by the respondents, entrepreneurship in the performing arts results as a set of traditional business procedures that support new forms of social production, designed to stress the role of the performing arts in society. Overall, entrepreneurship consists of a networking process, aimed at providing social accountability for the performing arts. The emerging business models and the implications for the cultural policies are addressed, indicating avenues for further research.