The artist and the entrepreneur create combinations, on different media.
It is my new friend, Joseph Schumpeter, who puts forward in his theories the idea of a creative entrepreneur and takes up, with a very similar vocabulary, the characteristics necessary for creation.
The artist undertakes, in the sense that one begins to do something. Everything starts with the idea, then gradually descends the layers of the conceptual to form a body: the body of art is the work; the “body” of the entrepreneur is the product.
We particularly share the notion of innovation: a fundamental concept in Schumpeter, who sees the entrepreneur (and the economist who theorizes him) as an agent of change and creative destruction.
In creation, it is Jean-Marie Dru (advertising) who speaks of “disruption”, a word used in English rather than in French (where the connotation is a bit negative), and takes up the Schumpeterian idea that creation can only be done by breaking the seal of conventions.
Schumpeter is a fervent admirer of the Renaissance (where the humanist frees himself from dogmas) and creates bridges between the intellectual revolutions of the time and the nature of entrepreneurship: the intellectual and the entrepreneur face uncertainty, must overcome resistance, and take risks to realize their ideas.
The secular intellectual of the Renaissance had to struggle against established dogmas and resist the social and religious pressures of his time, just as the entrepreneur must often face the inertia of markets and institutions.
The creator, whatever his medium, recognizes himself in his capacity to create new combinations which allow him to extract the substance of what will make the world of tomorrow.
“Creation is giving form to one’s destiny.” André Malraux.
