Advances in Cultural Entrepreneurship: Looking Back and Moving Forward

Abstract

The term “cultural entrepreneurship&x201D; has been associated with two parallel but complementary streams of research. A first stream stems for the sociology of culture and focuses on entrepreneurship taking place within cultural industries (DiMaggio, 1982; Hirsch, 2000). A second stream, found predominantly in entrepreneurship and organization theory, focuses instead on the potency of culture as means of gaining legitimacy and acquiring resources for new ventures (Lounsbury and Glynn, 2001). This symposium will provide a forum for five senior scholars – three panelists and two discussants – to reflect on recent advances in cultural entrepreneurship and to discuss challenges and opportunities for future research. First, we will have a presentation by Timothy Dowd who will present a perspective grounded in the sociology of culture and highlight some unique opportunities for scholars interested in cultural production and entrepreneurship. Second, Mary Ann Glynn and Michael Lounsbury will reflect on their seminal paper on cultural entrepreneurship and sketch an agenda for future research. Finally, before opening up the floor, two leading scholars of entrepreneurship and innovation will provide some synthesizing remarks: Joep Cornelissen and Saras Sarasvathy, who have been both critical and sympathetic to the cultural entrepreneurship perspective. Their discussion will draw attention to the cultural and material contingencies of entrepreneurship and open up promising avenues of inquiry for cultural entrepreneurship scholars. Our goal for this panel symposium is to spark lively debates and meaningful conversation between the panellists as well as with the audience, which we hope will move research on cultural entrepreneurship in fruitful directions and provide us with an opportunity for better understanding the influence of interfaces on organizational and entrepreneurial processes.