Entrepreneur the Arts » Creativity + Emotional Intelligence

Failing your way to BLOOMIN’ success or the little engine that could

Lisa Canning — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:00:29 +0000

Failing your way to success. Yup. That’s how it’s done. It takes a LOT of support and a pretty great attitude too. That’s hard to do on your own. Kind of like weight loss I think. Best done with a herding mentality. That’s why Weight Watchers has been so successful. They understood the power of a “herd” early on.

But since I began 6 years ago- reinventing myself from my spare bedroom blogging to an audience of none- to where I am now? I have to say it has been littered with set backs and disappointments that I could have allowed to loom larger than life and stop me cold in my tracks. AFTER ALL THIS TIME I really never thought that the IAE WOULD STILL NOT HAVE the funding resources we need to achieve the grand plan. Love is blind! Thank God for my clarinet customers who are supporting me. Every customer who buys an instrument from me is donating $50.00 bucks to my school. Last year Lisa’s Clarinet Shop donated $27,500 to the IAE and my husband and I and a few others donated again 2 times that sum.

Lisa’s Clarinet Shop is the little engine that could. My husband has been out of work- downsized from one of those big corporate jobs- for over a year and my clarinet customers just keep coming and coming to support IAE. It’s like a miracle. Really.

This is the power of small business. Of passionate purpose driven living. ANYTHING IS possible. ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN if you know who you are and what you simply MUST express with your time on this earth. ANYTHING is possible but you have to have the ability and DESIRE to sustain your effort and to never EVER give up.

And I believe the future is bright. Not just because I am an optimistic person, but because so many people around me are increasingly excited to see what is happening with our students at the IAE.

Every rose began hidden under the mud before it revealed itself and BLOOMED. My dream to realize the IAE does not get to skip any of the steps to Bloomin’ Success. We are walking the walk just like our students and I am searching for another little steam engine to help me over the hill…

THE LITTLE ENGINE THAT COULD
(Watty Piper)

A little steam engine had a long train of cars to pull.

She went along very well till she came to a steep hill. But then, no matter how hard she tried, she could not move the long train of cars.

She pulled and she pulled. She puffed and she puffed. She backed and started off again. Choo! Choo!

But no! the cars would not go up the hill.

At last she left the train and started up the track alone. Do you think she had stopped working? No, indeed! She was going for help.

“Surely I can find someone to help me,” she thought.

Over the hill and up the track went the little steam engine. Choo, choo! Choo, choo! Choo, choo! Choo!

Pretty soon she saw a big steam engine standing on a side track. He looked very big and strong. Running alongside, she looked up and said:

“Will you help me over the hill with my train of cars? It is so long and heavy I can’t get it over.”

The big steam engine looked down at the little steam engine. The he said:

“Don’t you see that I am through my day’s work? I have been rubbed and scoured ready for my next run. No, I cannot help you,”

The little steam engine was sorry, but she went on, Choo, choo! Choo, choo! Choo, choo! Choo, choo!

Soon she came to a second big steam engine standing on a side track. He was puffing and puffing, as if he were tired.

“That big steam engine may help me,” thought the little steam engine. She ran alongside and asked:

“Will you help me bring my train of cars over the hill? It is so long and so heavy that I can’t get it over.”

The second big steam engine answered:

“I have just come in from a long, long run. Don’t you see how tired I am? Can’t you get some other engine to help you this time?

“I’ll try,” said the little steam engine, and off she went. Choo, choo! Choo, choo! Choo, choo!

After a while she came to a little steam engine just like herself. She ran alongside and said:

“Will you help me over the hill with my train of cars? It is so long and so heavy that I can’t get it over.”

“Yes, indeed!” said this little steam engine. “I’ll be glad to help you, if I can.”

So the little steam engines started back to where the train of cars had been standing. Both little steam engines went to the head of the train, one behind the other.

Puff, puff! Chug, choo! Off they started!

Slowly the cars began to move. Slowly they climbed the steep hill. As they climbed, each little steam engine began to sing:

“I-think-I-can! I-think-I-can! I-think-I-can! I-think-I-can! I-think-I-can! I-think-I-can! I think I can – I think I can – I think I can I think I can–”

And they did! Very soon they were over the hill and going down the other side.

Now they were on the plain again; and the little steam engine could pull her train herself. So she thanked the little engine who had come to help her, and said good-by.

And she went merrily on her way, singing:

“I-thought-I-could! I-thought-I-could! I-thought-I-could! I-thought-I-could! I thought i could – I thought I could – I thought I could – I thought I could – I thought I could – I thought I could I thought I could –”

Our ‘divided brain’ and how it has profoundly altered human behavior

Lisa Canning — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:38:57 +0000

In this new RSAnimate, renowned psychiatrist and writer Iain McGilchrist explains how our ‘divided brain’ has profoundly altered human behaviour, culture and society. To view the full lecture, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbUHxC4wiWk

The Art and Design Legacy of the Apple CEO

Guest Blogger — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:08:25 +0000

Written by John M. Eger appeared on Huffington Post, January 18th, 2012

The book by Walter Isaacson about Steve Jobs, former CEO and founder of Apple Computer, has now sold over one million copies.

After talking with many of Steve’s colleagues, Issacson discovered that to Steve, “You were either [a shithead or a hero], one or the other, sometimes on the same day.” Clearly he was not a guy everybody loved. Yet he did “revolutionize six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing. You might even add a seventh: retail stores, which Jobs did not quite revolutionize, but he did re-imagine.”

Isaacson also discovered that in all Apple’s products “technology would be married to great design, elegance, human touches, and even romance.” On a personal note, Isaacson added, “The creativity that can occur when a feel for both the humanities and the sciences combine in one strong personality was the topic that most interested me in my biographies of Franklin and Einstein, and I believe … will be a key to creating innovative economies in the twenty-first century.”

Maybe it takes the tragic death of an icon or another earth-shattering event to get our attention. Leonard Shlain, author of Art and Physics: Parallel Visions of Space, Time and Light (1993), early on noted the symbiotic relationship only now becoming commonplace. Maybe Jobs even read Shlain’s book.

There is now more talk, more awareness of the importance of art and design. And there is a greater recognition that our schools, our communities, our attitudes must change.

This new awareness, new recognition is vital. One might say understanding the challenge of the new global economy is even critical. It demands that we renew and reinvent ourselves to better understand and appreciate the arts (and of course the sciences) and importantly, the esthetic makeup of the places where we live and work. There is no alternative short of letting our cities and our communities atrophy and die, and with it, the great experiment in freedom and free enterprise we so highly value.

We created the pen-based computer, the silicon chip and the Internet itself, now the vehicle for every nation, every city, and every community worldwide to compete with every other. We can be proud of what we have accomplished, but we must be mindful that a new — truly global –economy has been unleashed.

This intersection of art and technology is the future for America. Creativity and innovation will be the hallmark of our greatest corporations, our workplace, and our most enterprising communities.

Does all creativity come from the arts and so-called creative communities? Of course not, but the chances of nurturing creativity through arts based training is a no brainier.

Today, as Sandra Rupert, President of Art Education Partnership observed,

Arts learning experiences play a vital role in developing students’ capacities for critical thinking, creativity, imagination, and innovation. These capacities are increasingly recognized as core skills and competencies all students need as part of a high-quality and complete 21st-century education.

This of course is why STEAM — the idea that the arts are as important as science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) — is so important. It is also why cities and regions must have creative people by nurturing its young people and, reinventing a system of education that engenders the new thinking skills to meet the challenges of the new economy.

Government has a vital role too. Promoting accessible broadband and encouraging land use policies that encourage development of creative economic clusters including art districts, public art and art and cultural institutions such as museums. Governments can also embrace green initiatives, which encourage private sector initiatives and foster the concept of sustainability. And they can use technology to improve productivity, foster new, more efficient delivery of government services and encourage business and the non-profit sector to use technology as well.

Involvement by the whole community will be needed to make meaningful changes and civic collaboration or engagement is critical. New and existing organizations responsible for planning and development and for weaving the fabric of the new community demand that all institutions and individuals become owners of the new agenda which must include: public art, art integration, graffiti parks, art districts, museums, regional collaboration, civic engagement and robust information infrastructures. All are important to the region of the future, to development of a creative community.

A truly creative community can nurture, attract and retain the talent we need to succeed let alone survive in the new economy.

About John M. Eger
John M. Eger, Van Deerlin Endowed Professor of Communications and Public Policy and Director of the Creative Economy Initiative at San Diego State University teaches in the School of Journalism and Media Studies, and the SDSU Honors Program.

He is an author and lecturer on the subjects of creativity and innovation, education and economic development, and also serves as President of The World Foundation for Smart Communities, a research and educational organization dedicated to helping local communities connect to the global economy. http://www.smartcommunities.org/

A former Adviser to two Presidents and Director of the White House Office of Telecommunications Policy he helped spearhead the restructuring of America’s telecom Industry and was Senior Vice President of CBS responsible for worldwide enterprises, which opened China to commercial television.

210 Social Innovation Funding Sources

Lisa Canning — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 13:15:37 +0000

Social Entrepreneur, Social Enterprise and Social Innovation Sources of Funding

Here is a list of 210 social entrepreneur, social enterprise and social innovation funding sources (#socent) that a group member in Impact Entrepreneur posted on Linkedin. This is the most comprehensive list anywhere as far as I know. If you see something missing, you can go to ned.com, join, and then be able to edit the page.

Venture philanthropy, seed stage investing for social entrepreneurs, early stage investing for social innovation

Crowdsourced Funding, Crowdfunding, and Peer-to-Peer Microfinance

Social Entrepreneur & Innovation Friendly Foundations

Top SE College Programs

Social Entrepreneur & Innovation Prize/Awards

Search Tools for Grant Funding

Crowdsourced Funding for Musicians & Bands

How the Unconscious Mind Boosts Creative Output

Guest Blogger — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 14:20:54 +0000

New research finds we’re better able to identify genuinely creative ideas when they’ve emerged from the unconscious mind.

Written By Tom Jacobs

(Hemera/iStockphoto)

Truly creative ideas are both highly prized and, for most of us, maddeningly elusive. If our best efforts produce nothing brilliant, we’re often advised to put aside the issue at hand and give our unconscious minds a chance to work.

Newly published research suggests that is indeed a good idea — but not for the reason you might think.

A study from the Netherlands finds allowing ideas to incubate in the back of the mind is, in a narrow sense, overrated. People who let their unconscious minds take a crack at a problem were no more adept at coming up with innovative solutions than those who consciously deliberated over the dilemma.

But they did perform better on the vital second step of this process: determining which of their ideas was the most creative. That realization provides essential information; without it, how do you decide which solution you should actually try to implement?

Given the value of discerning truly fresh ideas, “we can conclude that the unconscious mind plays a vital role in creative performance,” a research team led by Simone Ritter of the Radboud University Behavioral Science Institute writes in the journal Thinking Skills and Creativity.

In the first of two experiments, 112 university students were given two minutes to come up with creative ideas to an everyday problem: how to make the time spent waiting in line at a cash register more bearable. Half the participants went at it immediately, while the others first spent two minutes performing a distracting task — clicking on circles that appeared on a computer screen. This allowed time for ideas to percolate outside their conscious awareness.

After writing down as many ideas as they could think of, they were asked to choose which of their notions was the most creative. Participants were scored by the number of ideas they came up with, the creativity level of those ideas (as measured by trained raters), and whether their perception of their most innovative idea coincided with that of the raters.

The two groups scored evenly on both the number of ideas generated and the average creativity of those ideas. But those who had been distracted, and thus had ideas spring from their unconscious minds, were better at selecting their most creative concept.

The second experiment, which featured 68 students, was similarly structured. Participants were given a different assignment (“Come up with as many ideas as possible on how students can earn some extra money”); at the end, they were asked to identify both their most and least creative ideas.

The results replicated those of the first experiment. Those who had employed their unconscious minds were better at selecting both their most and least-innovative ideas.

The researchers aren’t sure how to explain their results; they suggest a “spontaneous tagging process” takes place when an idea is generated unconsciously, alerting us to its level of creativity. While admitting this theory is speculative, they note that — whatever its cause — this sort of discernment is “vitally important for everyday creativity.”

True enough. Knowing which ideas belong in the trash bin, and which deserve to be fleshed out further, is a real gift—one that, according to this research, your unconscious mind is poised to provide.

What are the aims of direct subsidies to artists?

Guest Blogger — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:29:13 +0000

Appeared on Jumper on January 8, 2012. Written By Diane Ragsdale

Polly Carl has posted a new piece on HowlRound, A Virtual Theater Movement, in which she remarks on a recent trend in arts philanthropy: increased direct support for artists. This philanthropic trend prompts me to ask, “What are funders hoping to achieve by providing direct subsidies to individual artists?” and to raise the ideas of a colleague from Erasmus, artist/economist Hans Abbing, who wrote a book in 2002 called Why Are Artists Poor? The Exceptional Economy of the Arts, an excellent summary of the chapters therein you can read here.

Abbing crafts a well structured rationale to which I cannot do justice in this post; however, I will mention a few key points. Abbing suggests that the poverty of artists is structural and relates this to a number of factors, including:

The social construction of ‘art’as something holy, a notion which is contradictory to the notion of commerce and monetary exchange. He writes: “Although the arts earn approximately half of their income in the market, the arts can only maintain their sacred status when people associate the arts with the values of the gift sphere rather than the market sphere.”
While artists do care about money, they tend to care more (than other professionals) about rewards such as personal satisfaction, recognition, and status. He says that most artists have been socialized to this preference and that it is ‘hardly a virtue’. As a manifestation of these preferences, he says that (for example) most artists will work their day jobs only long enough to earn sufficient income to go back to creating artistic work.
Given that artists tend to exchange money for rewards such as personal satisfaction, direct subsidies do not lead to higher incomes for artists. Instead, they may simply provide incentives to more people to become artists, thereby increasing competition, and making it more difficult for any to make a living. As Abbing writes, “Subsidization increases the number of poor artists per hundred thousand inhabitants and thus increases poverty.”

So, what is achieved through subsidies to artists? Here are my own reflections:

Direct grants to artists may make it possible for an artist, at a particular point in his or her career, to make (better or more ambitious) work (by removing the necessity to maintain a day job). Funds may be used to help an artist acquire a critical resource or asset that has longer term returns (a marketable artistic output, knowledge and skills, marketing and promotion, staff, representation, a piece of equipment, a studio, a car, etc.). And often direct grants (particularly if competitve or associated with awards) send a signal to other gatekeepers (funders, donors, producers, press, intermediaries, curators, etc.) that a particular artist is worthy of time and support and may result in more resources and attention flowing to that artist. (It may be worth noting, however, that this ‘signaling’ effect can contribute to the ‘winner-take-all’ phenomenon that sometimes exists in the arts and make it even more difficult for new entrants to emerge and find resources.)

However, it seems to me that direct grants to artists are unlikely to (1) solve the longer-term systemic issue (which Polly also points out in her post) that funding to arts organizations in the US seems to increase flows not to artists but rather to buildings and administrations; and (2) (if we agree with Abbing’s point about subsidies providing incentives more more people to become artists) improve the structural poverty of artists.

It seems that these two issues will require a re-thinking of some of the bedrock ideas of the arts and culture sector in the US, among them: (1) to be legitimate you need grants and to get grants you need nonprofit status and administrators; and (2) aesthetic value and market value are at odds. There are others …

And it perhaps goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) subsidies (grants, gifts, or other forms of support) may not only lead to an increase in the number of people who want to be artists but also the number people who want to form arts organizations. We have incentivized the exponential growth of the arts and culture sector in the US and, despite significant resources (government and private) flowing into the sector on an annual basis, we now find that both artists and the large majority of organizations are poor. There’s a lesson there.

About Diane Ragsdale

Diane is currently attending Erasmus University in Rotterdam (in the Netherlands), where she is researching the impact of economic forces on US nonprofit regional theaters since the 80′s and working towards a PhD in cultural economics. [Read More …]

CHICAGO: Join the IAE and WBEZ @ Catalyst Ranch to Celebrate Self Employment

Lisa Canning — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 07:20:00 +0000

On Thursday January 26th The Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship (IAE) will be teaming up with WBEZ’s new project Front & Center to host a resource fair for the self employed, small businesses, start-ups, and freelancers.

Mini seminars and presentations will run through out the evening at the fabulous Catalyst Ranch located at 656 W Randolph St # 3W in the Polka Room.

Mini Seminar Topics Include:

Entrepreneurship 101
Presented by Institute For Arts Entrepreneurship

Receiving small loans as an independent worker
Presented Accion Micro Lending

Doing your taxes as a freelancer, small business owner, or independent
Presented by Center for Economic Progress

Create. Innovate. Repeat: featuring 4 fabulous presenters, 7 slides and just 5 minutes each to pitch their most innovative business idea to you.
Presented by Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship.

Partial List of Participants Include:

Co-Lab Evanston providers of shared office spaces.

Northside Freelancers Network who can help you connect to the growing Chicago self-employed community. Make sure to ask them about their weekly “freelancers soup” lunch.

Accion will be on hand to discuss how to get a micro-loans to jump start your own business.

Northside Community Bank can help you find funding for your small, local project.

IndieMade is itself a small business. They create websites for independents, artist, small businesses, and start-up projects.

Rockstar CPA offers CPA services specifically geared towards the self-employed, with a specialty in creative projects.

The Law Project offer affordable legal resources for freelancers, independents, and small businesses, such as creating contracts, negotiating pay, etc.

Chicago! Come on out and celebrate self-employment with us! We hope to see you on January 26th.

Fair begins at 6pm @ Catalyst Ranch 656 W Randolph St # 3W, in the Polka Room

Why 2012 will be year of the artist-entrepreneur

Guest Blogger — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 13:31:27 +0000

By Michael Wolf Dec. 29, 2011, Appeared on GigaOM

While 2011 was a big year for political unrest, another uprising was afoot in the world of content creators and artists. Everywhere you look, artists are taking more control over their own economic well being, in large part because the Internet has enabled them to do so. You see it in all forms of content, from books, to video to music.

A few examples from this year:

e-books: Probably the most active area in large part because there is huge shifts taking place in digital publishing. From former mid-list writers like Barry Eisler to superstars like JK Rowling, writers are increasingly making waves in digital publishing.

Video: The story of the year for artists-as-entrepreneur came at the tail-end, with Louis CK saying no thank you to corporate middlemen and putting his new concert video online for $5 a pop.

Radio/Music: All sorts of independent entrepreneurs are putting audio entertainment online, from the rise of podcast kings like Leo Laporte to a huge number of independents like Adam Carolla and Marc Maron. Music artists are being given freedom too, through new platforms to create and share their music like Soundcloud.

So what is driving this movement towards the artist-entrepreneur that will give it huge momentum in 2012? Here are a few underlying trends:

The distribution chain is collapsing across content verticals

The middleman is under attack on all fronts, whether its in video, music/audio and e-books. As devices like TVs become connected, as books become e-readers and tablets, and music is now digital, the storefront is fast-becoming the entire distribution chain. With e-books it’s Amazon or Apple, with radio it’s iTunes, with video it’s Google/YouTube, Netflix and other upstarts who are investing in original content, or simply direct-to-consumer efforts using web-payment platforms like Paypal.

Louis CK, who created his own site, paid for bandwidth, and used Paypal for payment, captured how many artists are beginning to think when he said in an interview with Bill Simmons that he “didn’t want to cut out the middleman, I just didn’t need one. There wasn’t any reason to have someone there. I just thought make this thing and put it up.”

Content production, distribution and monetization tools are becoming democratized through the web

In e-books, distribution and storefronts have already collapsed into one, but managing distribution across multiple channels is difficult since storefronts are still siloed (Amazon is separate from Apple iBooks, which is walled off from Barnes&Noble, etc). However, companies like Smashwords enable creation and distribution across multiple storefronts, while Vook, post-pivot, is working on SaaS tools to create e-books and manage their distribution, complete with reporting and management dashboards.

In music, artists are starting to embrace sites like Soundcloud to create music and share it, while others direct-to-fan sites like Topspin Media are enabling artists to create commerce sites to sell music in turnkey fashion. And it’s not just music sales, but actual concert tickets. The Pixies used Topspin to sell tickets for a recent concert, utilizing email campaigns and to notify fans and processed the tickets using an iOS app at the door.

With video, big middlemen still dominate, but that is changing as video creation and distribution costs come down in a world of connected devices. As Ryan Lawler wrote in a piece for GigaOM Pro:

“independent content creators stand to gain the most through massive reductions in the cost of recording equipment and editing software, as well as the greater availability of streaming video service on connected devices. They gain new distribution opportunities for their content and greater possibility for monetization. Consider any of the top YouTube video channels, which probably wouldn’t be able to survive in the pay-TV universe but have created thriving businesses due to the cost structure online.”

Generational shifts towards technology savvy-artists

As Matt Mullenweg put in in his New Year’s resolution on GigaOM:

“For a year now, I’ve said scripting is the new literacy. That’s something I strongly believe. In Douglas Rushkoff’s latest book, he talks about “program or be programmed.” That is, if you’re not in control of your inputs, you’re not really in control of your outputs either. You’re just a reactionary force.”

Matt is right, in that scripting is the new literacy, and a growing form of artistic expression. Tech-savvy artists are creating apps and developing sites to put their art into the world. Whether its Matt Inmann creating his work and coding his site at The Oatmeal or young app developers like Robert Nay, artists are becoming coders and vice versa, since, as Mullenweg states, scripting is “new literacy”.

No doubt, the vast majority of economic wealth is still distributed through large corporate media, but as new technologies enable artists to reach consumers directly through push-button creation and distribution, there is a movement afoot. Expect this movement to expand in 2012 as more artists take control of their own economic destinies and become part of the artist-entrepreneur generation.

Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts

Lisa Canning — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 17:06:11 +0000

Dear Colleagues:

I am writing to let you know about an exciting new initiative and to ask that you forward this information to your professional networks. Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts (ISSN 2164-7747), the first ever peer-reviewed research journal in the field of arts entrepreneurship, will be published twice yearly beginning July 2012 in an online format.

The mission of Artivate is to disseminate new thinking and perspectives on arts entrepreneurship theory, practice, and pedagogy. The editors, Linda Essig, director of Arizona State University’s p.a.v.e program in arts entrepreneurship, and Gary Beckman of North Carolina State University’s program in entrepreneurial studies in the arts, are committed to publishing research-based articles and case studies of interest to scholars, artists, and students in the areas of entrepreneurship theory as applied to the arts; arts entrepreneurship education; arts management; arts and creative industries; public policy and the arts; the arts in community and economic development; nonprofit leadership; social entrepreneurship in or using the arts; evaluation and assessment; and public practice in the arts. Artivate’s diverse international editorial board includes Andrew Taylor (UW-Madison), Margaret Wyszomirski (OSU), Bill Gartner (Clemson), Lynn Book (Wake Forest), Christina Hong (Queensland University of Technology) , Ian David Moss (Fractured Atlas), Diane Ragsdale (Erasmus University), Paul van Zuilenberg (University of the Free State), Gordon Shockley (ASU) and others.

I paste below the call for submissions, due February 15. You may also visit the journal site at http://www.artivate.org Please forward this announcement to your professional networks, as appropriate.

Best wishes,

Professor Linda Essig
director, p.a.v.e program in arts entrepreneurship
Co-editor, Artivate.org
ASU School of Theatre and Film
PO Box 872002
Tempe AZ 85287
http://theatrefilm.asu.edu/initiatives/pave/

Call for Submissions

Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts is accepting submissions of articles for publication in its inaugural issue to be published July 2012. The first journal to focus on the emergent field of arts entrepreneurship, Artivate seeks works of original scholarship in the following areas: entrepreneurship theory as applied to the arts; arts entrepreneurship education; arts management; arts and creative industries; public policy and the arts; the arts in community and economic development; nonprofit leadership; social entrepreneurship in or using the arts; evaluation and assessment in and of the field; public practice in the arts. The editors are particularly interested in articles that actively link theory with practice in ways that will be of interest and impact to the broad cross-section of Artivate’s readership. Self-reflective studies from arts entrepreneurs and empirical research from scholars are equally welcome.

Artivate is a peer-reviewed online publication for an academic and practitioner audience. Editorial board members are affiliated with universities, foundations, and arts services organizations on three continents. The co-editors are Linda Essig, director of the p.a.v.e. program in arts entrepreneurship at Arizona State University, and Gary Beckman, director of entrepreneurial studies in the arts at North Carolina State University.
The editors are interested in supporting the growth of our nascent discipline and are committed to publishing at least one debut article from an emerging scholar in each issue. First-time authors are welcome to seek advice from the editors in advance of submission.

Submissions should be between 4,000 and 10,000 words in length. Articles must be submitted in a word format (doc or docx) with any figures or illustrations submitted either within the word document or as separate jpg files. Articles will be evaluated in a blind process so the articles themselves should include no identifying headers, footers, watermarks, or specific content (e.g. “at Jurassic University where I teach arts entrepreneurship”).

Submissions for consideration must be received via email no later than February 15, 2012. Email submissions simultaneously to linda.essig@asu.edu and gdbeckma@ncsu.edu

Happy 2012!

Lisa Canning — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 02:25:04 +0000

Dear Reader,

This blog has been an incredible labor of love. My labor has come from my deep desire to see the world of the arts evolve and change so that artists have a new voice and can develop and be recognized for their entrepreneurial talents by contribute their gifts in new ways.

As we begin our 7th year, I look back and realize that I have persevered relentlessly over the past 6 years because I believe so much in the power of artistry to change the world as we know it. I have invested a significant amount of my time and money into it, as a result, in hopes that the content here can develop shared language, create new meaning and be a useful resource for you to use in your entrepreneurial and creative development. I hope I am achieving my goal.

I wish you all a wonderful 2012 filled with hope, promise and prosperity.

Lisa Canning

Can creativity occupy the hearts and minds of the majority? or Lord hear my prayer.

Lisa Canning — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 23:49:36 +0000

A friend of mine recently reminded me that there is no need for creative entrepreneurial types like us to apologize for being “egocentric” in saying that creativity and innovation is scarce, while status quo “inside of the box” thinking is the great majority. It is a simple fact.

Unfortunately, “explaining” this to the “majority” is usually not possible or helpful because it requires experiential learning to truly develop ones creative abilities enough for anyone to really understand. What rules the heart can rule the mind but it does not work the other way around. A fundamental shift in the mix of who we highly value learning from, and how we learn, needs to take place for this to occur. It is no wonder societies and humans evolve so slowly despite all the knowledge and tools available to us.

And yet, I believe man was put on this earth to help God make progress on earth. Which, to honor him, requires us to be ethical bound, to morally act and requires tremendous creativity to do. And this single belief has profoundly motivated me through out my life to deepen my intellect, my empathy and my creativity so that I can use my skills to be of service, to the best of my ability, to everyone I know.

As I have grown up, I have increasingly come to recognize that this belief is often isolating and a cause for great misunderstanding. Developing my empathy, intellect and creativity has taught me how to see deeply and profoundly into others- which is not an easy thing, in this broken world, for others to accept as the gift you have to offer. And yet, as an artist, I have come to learn this is our profound gift to share with the world. It is not egocentric at all for me to say it is what artists have to offer and why God graced us all with the gift of life.

And yet, I find myself often in a space where I feel worried that my time on this earth will run out before I have realized this deep vision for the world I have- to occupy the hearts and minds of the majority with more creativity- to reach the tipping point of true change. It is an honest to goodness daily fear of mine. And it has often pushed me to feel the need to try and prove my worth with anyone I encounter in the majority in the hope that they will give me the opportunity to open up a whole new world of meaning to them- one that transcends the empty hunger for power and greed and utilize it for real progress on earth and societal good. And by doing so, for true sustainable prosperity to flow. It is hard not to want this for the world when these principals have profoundly served the development of my own life and my businesses and created so much prosperity and good.

While I have never apologized for my work, in some ways by trying to “prove” to others what deep value as an artist I hold, I think I have. While the majority entertains my beliefs about the ethical values one develops from the flow of heartfelt creativity, like a muse in the moment, it is short lived and not invested into to deepen its impact and to create true sustainable values. Is this really the only role my work can have?

Two years ago I was offered the opportunity of being mentored by a quickly rising entrepreneurial star in Chicago. He had built an amazing company from nothing, was featured on INC’s fastest growing list of companies for several years and glowed in power and money. He also “appeared” to be “a creative”, like me, too.

As my relationship with this individual developed, what I found underneath the veil was far from what the exterior portrayed. He was in an “open marriage”; his life was spiraling out of control. He was also hiring broken-down-trodden individuals to do the heavy lifting inside his business because he could pay them less and work them to death. And in all he did in life, he placed appearances far higher on his list than true happiness and meaning despite all of his soul searching trips to meet spiritual gurus.

While he thought he was mentoring me, it was I who was mentoring him.

Through my mentorship, this individual came to to emotionally understand that true love and intimacy was more important to him than sex with multiple women. He also came to experience that a creative career and business was far more valuable to him than a past-its-sell-date sweat shop that gushed cash. However, I was never given any credit for my work. The profound changes that I witnessed in him, during our professional relationship, were not rewarded with generosity for his newly found flow of heart centered creativity; which my mentorship reinvigorated the hunger within him to have. It certainly also did not make him donate funds to The IAE, or even thank me. Instead he took it freely from me as if it had no intrinsic value or significant economic worth.

And if I had told him upfront the price tag to help him was a donation of $100,000 to my school, he would have laughed and walked away. Why would he pay when all of us artists continue to give our gifts away for free to those who don’t have the skills, but have the resources to pay for what we have to deliver?

Today this individual is happily, for the first time, married to one woman. And he sold his company too and is now working on something truly meaningful to him and which is helping him to build his creative capacity.

Artists can truly help restore the inner lives of the majority not to mention by doing so stop the Penn State’s, Bernie Madoff’s and Enron’s from ever happening. But it is going to require finding the minority of the majority- those financially able and brave enough to invest and act- to step up and give those of us with these gifts a chance to fully integrate our pure heart centered creativity into their world.

Please Lord hear my prayer. I am sure this is the work you put all of us artists on this earth to do. And, finally, I believe our time has come to do your work on your beloved earth. The world is awakening to the real need for promised words and actions to match. Intellectual understanding is not from where we are compelled to act. This is why I dutifully created The IAE- to help artists help others make progress on earth for you.

Please send me the minority who is willing to invest and act. Lord hear my prayer.

Help Us Build The Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship

Lisa Canning — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 01:28:44 +0000

On behalf of everyone at The Institute For Arts Entrepreneurship – our faculty, our students, our supporters and our families - we would like to wish each of you and your family  a very Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year!

As many of you may already know, 2011 has proven to be an exceedingly eventful and rewarding year for the IAE. After several years of dutiful planning and extremely hard work, we launched our pilot program this past September.

About IAE’s Progress

Our recently concluded Module I coursework focused on student development of emotional intelligence, leadership aptitude and communicative skills. And within only a very few months, we have witnessed a blossoming of growth and excitement from 15 artists – from fashion, music, theater, visual arts, food, skin care and design- in our inaugural class ranging in age from 24 to 63! For those of us on the IAE staff, bearing witness to our student’s desire to learn, develop and flourish has served as a profoundly breathtaking experience.

And many new faces are sprouting up to support our work. This past fall over 12 individuals donated their time to mentor our students. We also have received immeasurable help with our curriculum design and development from Joyce Thomas, Deana McDonagh and Director Nan Goggin- all from The School of Art + Design at the University of Illinois.

And the interest has not stopped there. In January the IAE was selected to deliver our first paper about our innovative learning model at the U.S. Small Business and Entrepreneurship Conference in New Orleans. Founder Lisa Canning was also invited to attend The U.S. Dept of State and The Aspen Institute’s 2nd Entrepreneurship conference in Marrakech Morocco in January. Additionally, 2 schools in Amman Jordan and someone who serves on the Fulbright commission in Sweden have all reached out to us to inquire how we can bring the IAE to their communities.

The IAE Needs Your Help to Bloom

During the past twelve months, we have been working hard to ramp up our fund raising efforts designed to firmly establish the IAE as a long-term, going concern with the ability to make a real difference – not only in assisting artists to develop meaningful careers applying their artistic talents – but to utilize their creative abilities in new ways that also can benefit our communities and local businesses. And while these efforts have not thus far been quite as successful as those in the classroom – our commitment to advancing the IAE’s mission remains as strong as ever.

Year End Giving

As we prepare for the New Year, we will continue to do our best to fund our pilot program. Unfortunately, without more support, we may not be able to realize our full vision to help artists change their lives and the world with their creativity. I wish you would come to our classroom to see just how big the impact is we have already made with our students. We have quickly become an invaluable resource; something our students do not wish to lose.

With this being a time to reflect on our values and beliefs, we would like to ask that you consider an offer of support for The Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship. Whatever you can give will show us you value our work and care about the future of our students.

A tax-deductible contribution to the IAE may be made through our secure giving site or by mailing a check to The Institute For Arts Entrepreneurship, 2257 N Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60614.

To insure your tax benefits for 2011, online donations must be completed by 11:59 PM on December 31, 2011. Checks must be dated and postmarked by December 31, 2011. Please be sure to consult your tax adviser to confirm how charitable deduction rules may apply to your individual situation.

To each of you who generously support us, both today and over the past several years, please know we could never achieve our goals without you. Your kindness and generosity is so appreciated.

With blessings to you all for peace, love and prosperity in the New Year,

Lisa and Chuck Canning

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Evolutionary Creativity: Who, What and Why?

Guest Blogger — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 14:46:30 +0000

Posted: 12/22/11 on Huffington Post, Written by Jan Phillips

People often deny their creative potential. They say things like “I’m not creative. I can’t even draw a straight line.” Or “I’m not artistic. I can’t paint.” There is an assumption that being creative has something to do with painting or drawing straight lines. Claiming to be creative feels like an arrogant thing to say about yourself if you’re not an expert, not making a living from your creations, not well-known and publicly acclaimed for your imaginative gifts. But creativity is much bigger than that.

Creativity is the gift we all have that enables us to convert our experiences into other forms — into stories, poems, songs, gardens, recipes, quilts. Every day we encounter a myriad of people and adventures. We talk with people. We work with people. We argue and laugh and plan with people. Then we create stories about our interactions. Every day we wake up with a blank canvas of 24 hours. We call it our “day” — but it’s really our canvas for creating our life.

Day by day, choice by choice, thought by thought, word by word, we create our lives. And as our intentions and energies seep out beyond the boundaries of our flesh and intermingle with the intentions and energies of others, we engage in the co-creation of our families, our communities, our cultures, and ultimately, our civilization. If you’re breathing, you’re creating something — even if it’s nothing more than the energy field a person walks into when they are near you.

We know from science that our electromagnetic field (em field) extends from 8-12 feet beyond our bodies. The HeartMath Institute performed several studies to investigate the possibility that the electromagnetic field generated by the heart may transmit information that can be received by others. They concluded that the heart’s em field is an important carrier of information, so when two people are at a conversational distance, the electromagnetic signal generated by one person’s heart can influence the other person’s brain rhythms. For the first time, there is scientific proof that a compassionate heart can actually bring peace to the room.

If in your heart you have generated peace, compassion, loving and kindness, then that’s exactly what others experience when they are in your presence. You create in the world what you hold in your heart.

Years ago, we didn’t have the equipment to measure this kind of phenomenon. We never understood that we literally, consciously create the entire electromagnetic field around ourselves — that we create how it feels for others to be around us. We had creativity in a small box that was related to paints, colors, the arts, ballet, opera, Russian novels. Most of us were taught not to think of ourselves as “creative.” If a child went to a parent saying s/he wanted to be an artist when s/he grew up, the parent would frequently say, ” Oh honey, you can’t make any money as an artist. You’ll have to be something else.” And that child’s creativity would rarely thrive. Their imagination would not be nurtured.

And we know that our imagination is the most potent engine of change in the world. In the past year, we have watched people’s commitment and creativity topple oppressive regimes, stop wars, challenge the status quo, connect people around the globe. Our creativity is the manifestation of our consciousness. It is our thoughts, our prayers, our words made flesh. And what makes creativity evolutionary is the additional factor of regard for the common good.

If I am conscious of how I use my energy, manage my thoughts, compose my words, create my days, then I am a conscious creator, an evolutionary creator.

I am aware that I am engaged in evolution as an agent. It is not happening to me. It is happening through me. The world is in the throes of an evolutionary shift and evolutionary creators are consciously contributing to it, weighing in on the side of fairness, compassion, justice. There is a conscious evolution movement afoot and those who are in it know that. They are proud of that, committed to that, hope-filled and humbled at the great mystery and wonder of it all.

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention says that creativity doesn’t happen in our heads but in the interaction between our imagination and our social context. It’s a matter of experience and response, a matter of relationship to others and a commentary on the significance of our encounters. Creativity is the vivid expression of who we are in the cosmos.

The world is not divided into two groups, the creative people and the not creative people. If there’s a distinction, it’s between those who are creatively productive and those with unexpressed potential. We’re all creative by default. We’re genetically predisposed to create. Each of us, to varying degrees, is intrinsically motivated to be original and to solve challenging problems. The question to ask is not, “Am I creative?” but rather, “What inspires me and how can I share that?”

Creativity is not about intelligence or information. It’s about inspiration, from the Latin spiritus, meaning “breath, courage, the soul.” Creativity is about being fully alive, living courageously, or as the painter Joan Miro says, “Expressing with precision all the gold sparks the soul gives off.” We inspire each other when we dare to create. We open others’ hearts. We unlock their doors so their spirits can soar. And this is why it matters: because the path through the dark forest can be lit by our work. Others can find their courage in the creations we conjure. Our stories can help people see these times in a new way, understand that this chaos is only a local view of the cosmos evolving beautifully.

When we join in as conscious co-creators, we are fulfilling our nature, midwifing the new even as we are made anew. We are looking at the tipping point our planet is facing and nudging it toward life. We are saying YES to the future, YES to our grandchildren, YES to the creatures that share this land. And that affirmation of life is what brings us life, that we may have it more abundantly. Dualities are giving way to the singular. Polarities are dissolving into unity. Earth is giving birth to a species that celebrates its oneness with All That Is. Yes, we are evolving and the light is on its way!

About Jan Phillips

Jan Phillips is a visionary thought leader, award-winning author and dynamic speaker. She is co-founder and Executive Director of the Livingkindness Foundation, a global network of grassroots philanthropists. Her own quest has led her into and out of a religious community, across the U.S. on a Honda motorcycle, and around the world on a one-woman peace pilgrimage. Blending east and west, art and activism, reflection and ritual, Jan’s presentations inspire consciousness and social commitment. A visionary with her eye on the future and her heart in the present, she is an invigorating speaker and story-teller.

Jan is an award-winning writer, photographer, and multi-media artist. She is the author of No Ordinary Time-The Rise of Spiritual Intelligence and Evolutionary Creativity, The Art of Original Thinking-The Making of a Thought Leader, (winner of Book of the Year Award from ForeWord Magazine, Editors Choice Award from Allbooks Review, and Best Books Award finalist from USABookNews.com), Divining the Body, God Is at Eye Level – Photography as a Healing Art, Marry Your Muse,

Follow Jan Phillips on Twitter: www.twitter.com/theejanphillips

Born Like an Artist, Evolve Like an Artist, Bloom Like an Artist

Lisa Canning — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 02:39:06 +0000

While it is easy to look at this cartoon strip created by Norwegian artist, Ida Eva Margrethe Neverdahl, and see it for its “face” value, I would encourage you to look deeper. Ida shares a great visual story, in my opinion, about how we discover our “emotional” elephant and learn to ride it. ( For more explicate training instructions read How to train your elephant to increase whole brain thinking.)

You see, we all have an elephant inside of us. And none of us has an easy time, at first, getting on its back- as this cartoon strip illustrates. But when you learn how to, your life will magically begin to flow. And you too will be able to “ride your artwave and show off its fun“ quite easily, successfully and profitably.

Growing Starbucks: Extending Brand Uniqueness or Diluting It?

Lisa Canning — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 13:07:18 +0000

At what point, if any, does extending brand uniqueness create a tipping point that then threatens the very foundation of the brand itself? Lately I have been asking myself this very question about the Starbucks brand.

Starbucks 1st store location in Seattle's Pike Place Market, 1971

As we all know, back in the 90′s Howard Schultz transformed the second most consumed drink after water, and the second most traded commodity after crude oil, coffee, into a unique retail destination for us all between work and home.

Putting people before products, Schultz used intuition more than “brand strategy” in those early days to develop Starbucks into the social place outside of work or home most of us did not even realize how much we needed. Schultz’s vision and intuition allowed Starbucks to leverage a low cost commodity, coffee, and transform it into a “$4.00-human-interactive-experiencial-brand.”

And now with Howard Schultz’s recent return to Starbucks as CEO, after a series of setbacks and financial downturns after his departure, the question is can he add more value to the bottom line while retaining the “human soul”- the uniqueness- he built into the Starbucks brand? Or is he reaching for the tipping point leading to the erosion of it?

According to Merriam-Webster something that is unique is defined as:

1. Being the only one.
2. Being without a like or equal.
3. Distinctively characteristic: peculiar.
4. Unusual.

There is no doubt Starbucks has managed to create a unique retail store environment with their friendly customer oriented staff, great music, comfy chairs and heartfelt emotional connective messaging.

And they have quite successfully been able to extend the feeling you get from their brand outside their stores too spending far less on advertising than other large retailers and consumer products companies to achieve tremendous brand loyalty.

Check out these 2006 comparative stats of what other companies spent on advertising for their brand.

Microsoft – more than 20 percent of their annual revenue or $11.5 billion
Coca-Cola – more than $2.5 billion
Yahoo – more than 20 percent of their annual revenue or $1.3 billion
eBay – 14 percent to 15 percent of its revenue – which was $871 million, much of that to advertise on Google
Google – In the millions rather than billions of dollars – with $188 million
Starbucks – $95 million

In 2006, Starbucks spent just $95 million on advertising with 7.8 billion in sales demonstrating their amazing strength as an “experiential brand”.

But is it possible to continue to expand the human experience of this brand while Starbucks’ transition into what Schultz hopes will be the first company to excel as both a retailer and a purveyor—in supermarkets and other mass-market channels—of consumer packaged goods?

According to Schultz, “This is a unique inflection point for Starbucks; I think we’ve identified a very big opportunity to do something that really has not been done before. And that is the following: there are many, many companies, domestically and around the world, that have built a domestic national footprint around retail stores, just like Starbucks—the Gap, Costco, Wal-Mart, Coach, Zara. And there are many consumer-packaged-goods companies—Pepsi, Coke, Kellogg’s, Campbell’s. There hasn’t been one company I can identify that has been able to build complementary channels of distribution by integrating the retail footprint and the ubiquitous channels of distribution—in our case, grocery stores and drug stores.

So the model is, Starbucks can seed and introduce new products and new brands inside our stores. We introduced VIA instant coffee in our stores. Instant coffee is a $24 billion global category that has not had any innovation in over 50 years. And no growth. If we took VIA and we put it into grocery stores and it sat on a shelf, it would have died. But we can integrate VIA into the emotional connection we have with our customers in our stores. We did that for six to eight months and succeeded well beyond expectations in our stores. And as a result of that, we had a very easy time convincing the trade, because they wanted it so badly.”

And while it’s true Starbucks has tallied up five years of positive earnings and five years of positive free cash flow, again, in part, under Schultz’s leadership, Starbucks stock has only just recently seen a rise above mid 2006 values.

However, food stocks should be on the rise. It makes sense that with unemployment up, the housing market down, and the world economy on shaky ground that food-makers would deliver stable sales.

So the question is can Starbucks continue to introduce produces like VIA into their stores and translate the uniqueness of their brand through them into distribution channels? Will their customers buy into all the products they introduce in their retail environment, bond with them, and then readily buy them from their local grocery store or drug store?

I don’t know about you, but I for one was completely turned off by VIA’s introduction at Starbucks. My sense of embracing the serenity of my “home away from work or home” felt threatened by the through I was being encouraged to take a little packet of dried coffee home as a substitute for the experience of being in their retail environment. I have always bought into Starbucks being an ” escape,” a destination, a home away from home. To add insult to injury, I was told if I liked their dried coffee, which I also perceived as cheapening the brand, I did not even have to come back into the store- I could buy it elsewhere. It almost felt like an invitation to never come back- I felt like I was losing a friend.

Howard Schultz in his 2011 book Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul specifically talks about his mission in a way that’s very different from most CEOs. “Everything we’ve tried to do,” he writes, “is steeped in humanity.” I certainly find Schultz’s new goal as being very problematic for the brand.

Purveyors use distribution channels and have retailers who connect with end users for a reason- because retails act differently than purveyors. I have witnessed this first hand within the music industry. The clarinet company I represent, Buffet Crampon, increasingly in the 90′s adopted some of my best practices working with customers. Increasingly they acted more like a retailer than a distributor, or the purveyor they are, by increasing the attention they paid towards potential end users. They threw private parties and gave potential customers the opportunity, before retailers, to see and experience new products.

In the end, it pissed off retailers who felt side stepped and while left uninformed were expected to close the sale with the majority of the customers anyways. I am not sure how much it really did to help them grow their brand then but they have abandoned most of those practices now. While I realize, Starbucks first and foremost is recognized as an extremely well established retailer- a significant difference from being a purveyor dabbling in retail, placing people over products simultaneously in both distribution channels and retail environments will be challenging. Distributors exist to move product and retailers exist to sell those products to people. The motivation of each is different and as a result using the same messaging for both won’t be easy to effectively manage.

While I think Schultz’s idea is very interesting to try and be the first company to excel at both, how will Starbucks lead me or anyone else to rediscovering why we’re best friends with this as their end game strategy in their retail environment?

I don’t know about you, but I spend time with a best friend. I get to know them. I also frequently see them in the same places and I don’t just spend money on them. While distributors and Schultz alike may hope Starbucks can convincingly sell us many products at the local grocery from an experience or two in their retail environment, it is yet to be seen how well they can translate the uniqueness of their brand into repetitive buying decisions in locations outside their own doors.

Changing Education Paradigms

Lisa Canning — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 12:35:48 +0000

This animate was adapted from a talk given by education and creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson. If you are not familiar with Sir Ken, you must become familiar. His ideology is spot on. For more information on Sir Ken’s work visit: http://www.sirkenrobinson.com

Art + Medicine: Healing and Hope

Lisa Canning — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:03:19 +0000

When natural or military disaster strikes it leaves thousands of traumatized children and adults in its wake. Even after the trauma occurs, some individuals will deal with grief many months, and possibly years, later. In some cases, their caregivers may also have experienced their own suffering, making it difficult for them to provide full care. At precisely the time the traumatized child or adult may need special assistance, caregivers and social institutions may be least able to come to their aid.

A colleague of mine, recently shared with me the work of ArtReach. The ArtReach Foundation offers hope through a unique program using expressive arts and creative problem solving to help those who experience the traumatic effects or war, violence and/or natural disaster. They work with both adults and children. Their approach allows for the expression of the individual’s deepest fears and traumatic experiences to be shared and creates the opportunity for healing to occur.

This past October, members of the ArtReach Project America team, Christiane O’Hara, PHD and Timothy Puetz, PHD presented in Washington DC at at an invitation only National Summit called Arts in Healing for Warriors. This summit created interdisciplinary dialogue that highlighted important elements of the future of arts and medicine in the military. A keynote presenter Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith, along with other prominent speakers described the evidence base for the efficacy of arts programs in promoting recovery from illness and injury, with special emphasis on resilience, psychological healing, family strengthening, reintegration, and other topics of interest to the military.

If you would like to learn more about their arts based healing model, you can download Promoting Children’s Emotional and Mental Health in Communities Traumatized by War: The ArtReach Foundation Model.

Promoting Global Entrepreneurship: The Maghreb Region

Lisa Canning — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 20:50:18 +0000

I am looking forward to attending the U.S.-Maghreb Entrepreneurship Conference, PNB-NAPEO’s annual regional partnership conference in Marrakech, Morocco January 16-18, 2012. The IAE is hoping to find an educational partner in Morocco beginning with our academic year 2013-2014. We have already 2 partners in Amman Jordan. Both Queen Rania’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Princess Taghrid’s Institute for Arts and Culture. Students from both organizations will be on the IAE educational network starting in the fall of 2012. In 2013 we hope to expand into Sweden and Morocco. At that time, we will have 2 classrooms and 2 educational networks stranded through video conferencing.

At the IAE our goal is to help artists become creative flexible whole brain leaders. Our model is designed to create an educational space for artists around the world to develop a common universal shared language to stimulate, as a group, our own economic development as well as help others do the same. At the IAE we teach artists how tap into their creativity to fuel community economic development, financial growth and spur innovation. ~ Lisa Canning

Written by Lorraine Hariton and appeared on DipNote: U.S. Deptartment of State Official Blog

Lorraine Hariton serves as the Special Representative for the Commercial and Business Affairs Office, Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs.

As the Special Representative for Commercial and Business Affairs in the State Department’s Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs, one of my responsibilities is the promotion of entrepreneurship overseas — something that is critical to the State Department’s overall mission of “creating a more secure, democratic and prosperous world for the benefit of the American people and the international community.” I am proud that our efforts to promote entrepreneurship have expanded to a new corner of the globe — the Maghreb — as part of the U.S.-North Africa Partnership for Economic Opportunity (NAPEO), a regional initiative under the global alliance Partners for a New Beginning (PNB).

I was privileged to lead a State Department Entrepreneurship Delegation to Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria October 26-November 2. The delegation, which consisted of 20 distinguished U.S. entrepreneurs, angel investors, members of academia, and NGO representatives, was co-sponsored by the Global Entrepreneurship Program (GEP) in my office. One goal of the U.S.-NAPEO is to enhance economic cooperation between the United States and the Maghreb region, and to share best practices between experienced and emerging entrepreneurs with the goal of providing tools and strategies that can help to overcome some of the common challenges that entrepreneurs usually face. Our entrepreneurship delegation supported this goal. We believe that entrepreneurship is a powerful mechanism for job creation that will benefit not just the economies of the countries that hosted the delegation, but the U.S. economy as well. The delegation was enormously successful in generating excitement around entrepreneurship — after listening to pitch-sessions by aspiring entrepreneurs, we selected a total of three promising start-ups in each country for a four-month business incubation prize at the Tech Town Detroit Incubator and a full-tuition scholarship for one semester of instruction at Wayne State University. Entrepreneurship delegate Ahmed Chabbani generously represented TechTown, Wayne State University, and the American Arab Chamber of Commerce to award the prize in person. These efforts represent the type of unique public-private partnerships that the U.S.-North Africa Partnership for Economic Opportunity is building to deepen ties between the United States and the Maghreb.

We also mentored aspiring entrepreneurs in one-on-one sessions, coaching them on how to improve their business plans and pitches. Mentoring is crucial to entrepreneurial success, because it gives aspiring entrepreneurs an opportunity to learn from others’ mistakes and successes. Interestingly, the mentoring sessions were two-way exchanges — not only did our delegates provide valuable operational knowledge, but they also learned about the unique challenges of doing business in each host country. In Morocco, start-ups reported difficulty in identifying seed capital to begin their businesses. In Algeria, aspiring entrepreneurs reported difficulty in managing and distributing their funds. In Tunisia, start-ups said they needed marketing skills to expand their businesses regionally and maybe ultimately globally. As one of our delegates, Driss Temsamani, said, “We were working for a higher purpose; the satisfaction of sharing success with others…We gave them one common message, ‘You can do it!’”

In addition to helping create opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs in countries with high unemployment and other challenges, our expanded economic cooperation in the Maghreb may lead to the next “big” innovation that can help restart not only the economy of the Maghreb region but also the U.S. economy as well. Our engagement has the potential to be a “win-win.” And I think I speak for the entire delegation when I say that we were all impressed by the energy, drive, and innovation of the aspiring entrepreneurs we met in the Maghreb. Our goal for our future programming in the region is to sustain the momentum we have generated around entrepreneurship. PNB-NAPEO is now planning its annual regional partnership conference, the U.S.-Maghreb Entrepreneurship Conference, for January 16-18, 2012, in Marrakech, Morocco, where we will showcase many new partnerships that came out of the delegation. One example, our delegates are planning to create a regional angel network — with money from their own pockets — to support aspiring entrepreneurs.

I want to especially thank our U.S. embassies in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia and the local partners on the PNB-NAPEO advisory boards in each country for such an outstanding work and support in these efforts. Some of our success is immeasurable, such as the personal impact that our events had on the lives of aspiring entrepreneurs. To quote one of our winners in Morocco, Yassine El Kachchani, “This opportunity was life-changing in a very positive way. I was amazed by the level of openness and the willingness to help that the delegation and the U.S. Embassy showed during this event. […] I’m more than ready to exceed your expectations — this is my new challenge.”

Towards a New Social Contract in the Arab World

On Sept 22, 2011, regional leaders and members of civil society groups participated in a webcast discussion and online chat on social accountability, governance and managing economic transitions the Middle East and North Africa. Watch the webcast or read the chat transcript below.

http://live.worldbank.org/towards-new-social-contract-arab-world

How to Train Your Elephant to Increase Whole Brain Thinking

Lisa Canning — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 13:30:58 +0000

The story of the Rider and the Elephant goes something like this.

There once was a Rider who wanted to ride the Elephant and control him. The rider was smart and tried to use his cunning logic on the elephant to persuade him to listen to him as his Rider. But the elephant could not understand a single word the rider said. He could however feel the rider’s motivation and it made the elephant angry and he refused to take even one step forward with the rider on his back.

So how does the story end? Does the rider eventually control the elephant with his great logic? Or does the elephant control the rider with his emotions?

The moral of this story: No stream of logic will EVER trump how we feel about something or someone. Human nature has proven it time and time again with both good and evil. The elephant inside of us always wins.

How to train your Elephant to accept your Rider and what to expect.

Training an elephant is about the same as training a pet.

Pets need clear simple instruction or challenges, delivered with consistency and loving kindness to learn the lesson(s) that you want them to teach them.

Pets can’t see what they need to learn. That’s why they have someone to train them.

Repetition and consistency are key to learning.

You can’t try and control how long it takes for your pet to learn the lesson. Every pet learns differently and at different speeds.

When pets resist learning what happens? A new approach is taken for a controlled period of time and then if that does not work changed. However, chances are great the second time will work if not the first.

Have empathy for your pet and trust that it will and wants to learn. Assume if it’s not learning that you have not mastered thinking from your pet’s point of view.

When your pet learns the lesson you patiently took the time to teach, both of you will see your self-esteem rise.

Elephant training is best done in groups.

How to Establishing a Great Working Herd.

Look at this chart below and see if you each can figure out how to identify how everyone in your group learns best.

Herrman's whole brain learning styles

Step 1: Take a guess at how you think each person in your group would learn best.

Step 2: Get together as soon as possible to state how you learn best and compare it against how others perceived you might learn best. Find a way to have everyone together even if you phone or skype someone into the room with the rest of you.

During your time together as a group I would:

Set ground rules about how your group will function and how you will capture the details of your goals and progress.
Set ground rules about your interpersonal dynamics.

a) How will everyone be heard? What are the rules to make sure this happens? How can communication flow fluidly between us and what will we do it fails to lift off altogether or breaks? How will we fix it/ repair it?

b) What happens if my feelings are hurt? How will I communicate it respectfully and forgive or be the one to be forgiven so that I can continue to “receive elephant pet training” from anyone in the group.

c) REPEAT often. It’s easier and easier to talk about if you do. What am I learning about my elephant and its training? Every time you meet I would have this conversation.

When you master all 4 learning consideration (above) and can adjust your communication style to address each of the 4 different quadrants (below) you will have 2 more essential tools you need to launch your business and build your customer base easily. When the rider (the left side of our brain) knows how to train the elephant (the right side of our brain) we can develop our whole brain thinking and use it to lead others towards the development of their own.

Herrman's whole brain model

Developing an Entrepreneurial Mindset: Culture of Curiosity, Shared Language and Motivation

Lisa Canning — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 15:13:40 +0000

The last class of The IAE’s first module just finished yesterday. For the entire past three months we have been exploring who we are, how we communicate, how our lives are constructed and what matters most to us. In our classroom we have been learning how to develop a culture of curiosity, shared language, increase our recognition of patterns, and explore what triggers our own motivation- all essential ingredients to begin to develop an entrepreneurial mindset.

A great deal of our learning has been done through experiences of the learning. Artists learn best this way. And while I had never, until I conceived the IAE, attempted to construct as much of the curriculum as possible in this way, it is highly impact filled and TOTALLY worth all of the effort to create. Consistently we have taken our main learning objectives and constructed group projects or situations to experience that are designed to expose our students thinking and intuitive processes so they can discover their own lessons and learning. Our students are learning how to teach themselves. Another trait of a great entrepreneurial mindset. And the results speak for themselves- they always produce far more insights then the few lessons we had in mind when we construct our experiential curriculum for our students.

At the end of each weekend of class we synthesize our learning. Together we create a list of what we have learned and reduce it down to only the essential nuggets we really need to be reminded of to continue our evolution and growth.

Here is our final learning wall for the end of our 1st module of class.

The IAE is bursting with energy, ideas, new friendships, and a sea of increased awareness and individual shifts and changes all leading towards the development of entrepreneurial mindsets.

In the end, what matters is not what we know. But how we think about what we know. And what we do with those insights to uncover the resources we need to make good choices along the way in our journey towards our creative and financial goals.