Essays on arts entrepreneurship : exploring creative entrepreneurial processes

Entrepreneurship is fundamental to both the success of artistic careers and economic development and growth. However, scholars have paid little attention, thus far, to the entrepreneurial efforts involved in the creation of artistic work and aesthetic value. In an attempt to call scholarly attention to arts entrepreneurship, this three-paper dissertation (1) challenges the dominant perspective in organizational entrepreneurship that entrepreneurs' primary goal is to maximize economic profit, (2) suggests that three major dimensions -- embodied imagination, contemplation, and consensus -- are involved in the process by which entrepreneurs and customers collaborate in the co-creation of unique ideas, and (3) proposes that entrepreneurs may go through five elements -- experiencing, early creating, reaching an impasse and gestating, (re)creating and evaluating imagined futures, and choosing and enterprising -- as they imagine, create, and act on unique ideas. Overall, this dissertation provides insight into processes that are essential to entrepreneurship while calling scholars' attention to the notion that individuals may become entrepreneurial in the pursuit of entrepreneurial dreams, creative freedom, artistic passion, and social change.