Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines arts entrepreneurship education and helps students decide how their arts venture begins, lives and ends. It maintains that arts entrepreneurship education is distinct. Specifically, art intrinsically and extrinsically distinguishes arts entrepreneurs from non-arts entrepreneurs. In addition to presenting some of the more accepted tenets of entrepreneurship and a brief, mild variation on New Venture Creation, the book advances an ecosystem metaphor specifically for emerging arts entrepreneurs. Arts entrepreneurship training should approach how “business” and other decisions might be approached. The book then addresses both for- and non-profit ventures without favoring a specific arts discipline or genre. It also focuses on recessionary indicators and suggests about dealing with economic cycles. The book discusses the “dominos” metaphor in broad-based ecological elements, their movements and impact on the arts venture under consideration.