In this presentation I will argue that museums cannot easily break from a strong historic tradition that looks into the past, partly because of consumer expectation. However, there are an increasing number of museums that take advantage of digital technology to innovate, though mostly behind the scenes. They are Invisible Entrepreneurs. My argument will be built in two parts. First, I discuss literature on entrepreneurship, considering the risk of rent seeking and the question of positive and unproductive entrepreneurship (Baumol, 1990). I shall demonstrate how many entrepreneurs take content from museums benefiting from high quality content while avoiding the costs related to building centenary collections. Second, I examine the role of entrepreneurs as enablers. I shall present current innovations on digital publication of collections and highlight the role of museums, where the greatest innovations from museums can be found in the infrastructural projects that enable many others to innovate. In that sense, museums are not entrepreneurs to discover and exploit revenue potentialities but they position their collections for others to do so. Digital technologies facilitate museums to become, in a way, infrastructural entrepreneurs that seek to discover and exploit dissemination of information.

1. Museums as Invisible
Entrepreneurs
Dr. Trilce Navarrete
6th Creative Industries Research Seminar
25 January 2019 – Nieuwe Instituut

2. Summary
• Entrepreneurs are expected to think ahead.
• Museums are expected to think… ahead about the past, while
holding rich reservoirs for CI entrepreneurs (rent seeking?).
• Innovation in museums is ongoing, though not always visible. Digital
technology enables new wave of museum entrepreneurship:
• Museums are Invisible Entrepreneurs who enable our information
infrastructure.

3. Entrepreneurs
• Individual, distinct from capitalist or manager – innovative risk taker
• Subtle changes in concept across times… (Blaug).
• Cantillon (1730s) merchant who engaged in market exchange for the
sake of profit, with own / borrowed capital, with(/out) labour.
Enabler of competition.
• Thunen (1850) inventor and explorer, who’s unpredictable reward
derives from the risk –nobody else is whiling to take.
• Mangoldt (1855) identifies marketing as innovative activity.
• Knight (1921) risk from unprecedented situations.

4. Entrepreneurs
• Schumpeter (1911) distinguishes invention (discovery) and innovation
(application into the market). Entrepreneur serves to disturb market.
• Kirzner (1979) gives attention to disequilibrium, where entrepreneur
serves to restore market equilibrium.
• Baumol (1993) identifies grey line between value-added profit-
seeking (=productive, greater returns) and socially costly rent-seeking
(=unproductive, lower returns).
• Cassons (1995) classified entrepreneurial activity into arbitrage,
speculation, and innovation. The entrepreneur takes judgemental
decisions about the co-ordination of scare resources and receives
compensation (earned income).

5. Entrepreneurs
Global Center for Cultural Entrepreneurship (Creative Startups)
• Cultural entrepreneurs as change agents and resourceful visionaries
who generate revenue from a cultural activity.
• Their innovative solutions result in economically sustainable cultural
enterprises…
• That enhance livelihoods and create cultural value for both creative
producers and consumers of cultural services and products.

6. Museums
• The ICOM definition points to:
Collecting, preserving, researching, exhibiting and communicating
evidence of cultural, natural and scientific heritage…
• Increasingly becoming meaningful meeting places.
• Aware of privileged expert role, respecting different views,
acknowledging legacies of asymmetries.
• Expected to act accountable and transparent, responsive to
environmental needs.
• About objects? Or intragenerational knowledge transfer?
• Museums compete for funds, donors, visitors.

7. Innovation
• Generally referred to technical changes leading to
• New product
• New methods and process
• New source of resources
• New forms of organisation
• Can be incremental / marginal or radical

8. Innovation
In museums:
• Generate information
• Perpetuate information
• Organise information
• Disseminate information

12. Invisible entrepreneurs
• Museums may have an individual who:
• Risk taker to collect ‘heritage’
• Authority to establish taste from new art forms
• Invest in long-term accessibility of heritage information
• Own / ‘borrowed’ capital to disturb / restore market
• Value-added profit-seeking
• Increase rich quality available information for future innovation
• Profit from increased social welfare
• Innovate in the use of resources (digital New Renaissance)
• Generate, perpetuate, organise and disseminate information

13. Thank you
TrilceNavarrete.com