ABSTRACT
Arts and cultural organizations operate in a fast-changing, challenging and competitive environment. In recent decades, the majority of them have faced a downward trend in public funding, pressure to be more entrepreneurial, increasing demand for digitalization and other challenges. Therefore, in order to thrive, arts and cultural organizations need to review and innovate their business models, stepping outside of their comfort zone and developing new activities. The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of business models of arts and cultural institutions, their innovation and emphasis is placed on how to avoid a mistake of arts and cultural institutions adopting obsolete business models. After a theoretical framework, two successful cases are presented: the Egyptian Museum in Turin and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Through semi-structured interviews with the Director of the Egyptian Museums and the Managing Director of the Van Gogh Museums, we identify how these institutions have dealt with the challenges they faced, what drove them to innovate their business models, how they have gone through this process and why they have succeeded.
