Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology as an Academic Discipline

Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology as an Academic Discipline

http://artsentrepreneurship.com http://herosjourneyentrepreneurship.org

by Dr. Elliot McGucken

Universities, founded as entrepreneurial institutions that would help create the new, no longer are. Bureaucracy has set in. Universities have forgotten, or, worse, repudiated the entrepreneurial imperative that created the fortunes that allowed their benefactors to start them in the first place. –The Entrepreneurial Imperative, by Carl J. Schramm

If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values - that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control. –Martin Luther King Jr.

For better or worse, my youthful idealism—the belief that any truly sound business endeavor must be built on a strong moral foundation—still remains today, at least as strong a it was all those years ago. --John C. Bogle, Founder of The Vanguard Group

Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology seeks to serve students, artists, and entrepreneurs with the tools to make their passions their professions—to protect and profit from their ideas—to take ownership in their creations and careers. For Adam Smith's invisible hand enriches all when happiness is pursued by artists and innovators—society's natural founts of wealth. Jefferson eloquently expressed the entrepreneurial premise:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. –The Declaration of Independence

The only clause in the main body of the United States Constitution that mentions "Rights" states the following:

The Congress shall have power to . . . promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries; --The United States Constitution



Couple these two passages together, and one has the moral premise of Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology. Every student ought be given the tools to create new ventures--to protect their intellectual property, and to pursue and profit from their dreams on their "Hero's Journey" into entrepreneurship. For it is along that journey that the long-term "wealth of nations" is generated.

Entrepreneurship has aspects of art--creation and the pursuit of higher aesthetics; and science--economics, finance, engineering, and physical invention. How these aspects, and many more--from intellectual property to corporate structures--combine to generate wealth, are part of an Epic Story that is told whenever an individual sets out to render their ideals and dreams real. Thus a most efficient way to study entrepreneurship--to unite its diverse aspects--is via Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey.



"The (AE&T) class is the first of its kind to incorporate art, technology and business." –Chapel Hill Herald, May 2006



As a new cornerstone in a classical liberal arts education, Artistic Entrepreneurship is for those seeking to make their passions their professions. This festival is dedicated to all those embarking on the "Hero's Journey" to create enduring wealth, be it a new venture, video game, indie film, record label, book, DRM system serving artists and musicians, or course.

The Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology program aims to create lasting resources serving students and professors with curriculums devoted to entrepreneurship. By marrying the study of entrepreneurship and pursuit of entrepreneurial visions to the “hero’s journey,” both a lasting skeleton and soul is given to the academic field of entrepreneurship.

By focusing on the unchanging precepts and common laws that entrepreneurship across all disciplines has in common, AE&T seeks to create an academic discipline rooted in higher principles, and brought to life each and every semester on the cutting edge of innovation found within the students’ projects.

All students encounter Joseph Campbell’s Hero With a Thousand Faces, The Odyssey, and John Bogle’s Battle for The Soul of Capitalism on the first day of class. Right there the class reaches out across all disciplines and across thousands of years, exalting the students by reminding them that they are part of a great story—an epic that they get to write. And by taking ownership in one’s life, in one’s destiny while seeking to serve both higher ideals and one’s peers, so often it is that wealth is created—both monetary and spiritual.

The various stages outlined in Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey make an ideal backbone for a semester’s syllabus devoted to entrepreneurship, and The Hero With a Thousand Faces makes an ideal companion, guide, and mentor for the rest of the students’ lives. Arts entrepreneurship sees the classical liberal arts as a most useful tool, and it invites all students to partake in the fellowship of the living story.



Serving Student Demand

Students long for a cross-disciplinary field of study that leapfrogs over the bureaucracy that all too often marks ever-narrowing academic fields, where semblance replaces soul, formalities are substituted for deeper meanings, and the letter of the law is held superior to the spirit of the law. Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology unites the formerly disparate academic fields of business, law, art, and technology in a living, breathing class, endowing the subject matter with a spirit and soul, and granting entrepreneurship and enduring mythology. For we are born to live out stories—not to serve bureaucracies as academia all too often focuses upon teaching.

A vast demand exists for the classical ideals performed in the contemporary context—for honor, integrity, courage, and committment—on Wall Street and Main Street, in Hollywood and the Heartland, in Academia and Government. And thus opportunity abounds for entrepreneurs who keep the higher ideals above the bottom line—for humble heroes in all walks of life.

Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology aims to be a most useful field of study for students, teachers, and anyone starting or launching a venture related to any field of study. The same classical values guiding the rising artistic renaissance will protect the artists' intellectual property. The immortal ideals which guide the story of blockbuster books and movies such as The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Braveheart, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Star Wars, are the very same ideals underlying the United States Constitution. These classic ideals--which pervade Homer, Plato, Shakespeare, and the Bible--are the source of both epic story and property rights, of law and business, of academia and civilization.

It is great to witness classical ideals performed in Middle Earth, upon the Scottish Highlands, long ago, in a galaxy far, far, away, and in Narnia, but too, such ideals must be perpetually performed in the contemporary context and living language.

The digital media revolution has collapsed the distance between art, business, law, and media technology programs, and students are longing for those general permanent principles found within the pages of the Great Books. In many ways, an AE&T program founded upon the classics, would become a flagship in reviving the lost art of the liberal arts education.

Throughout the greater culture, there exists a longing for contemporary heroes and heroines in literature reflecting those brave men and women wearing uniforms in real life--there exists a longing for epic stories in our books, movies, and video games, and for digital rights management software and systems based on the Founding Fathers' idealism. And thus there exist vast opportunities for rugged artistic entrepreneurs to lead renaissances on all fronts.

For a time many have been tempted to forget classical ideals, valuing short-term profits over long-term wealth, exalting the bottom line over the higher ideals; but the nascent brilliance of the technological revolutions can only achieve its fuller potential via Story. While many will suggest that the best solution to digital rights management is to remove story from movies--as Hollywood has dedicated itself to as of late--thusly removing incentive to pirate them, I counter that classical ideals can enhance both the storytelling within movies and the DRM that protects them.

Just as the Founding Fathers complimented property rights by providing everyone with the right to bear arms, a novel software system that provides all creators with a turnkey choice from a full spectrum of digital rights management would foster a renaissance in the creation and distribution of intellectual property and art. The name of this software is the 45 Revolver, and the killer app could lead next-generation social networks and content portals that would benefit Hollywood.from the indie filmmakers to the major studios. Let's build it. Let's build tomorrow's ecommerce portals—tomorrow's books, movies, video games, and culture—upon classical ideals.

That distant wave has been a long time coming, and the new fashions will be about performing the classical ideals in the contemporary context. The rising generation will lead a renaissance in storytelling; a renaissance in the composition, production, and distribution of art—a renaissance in business, culture, and civilization—in academia and entrepreneurship. For that is the artistic entrepreneur's duty.

John Bogle, who founded Vanguard—the world's largest and most-trusted mutual fund—upon the idealism of his senior thesis at Princeton University, writes:

Let's begin with Franklin's entrepreneurship. It was not only remarkable for his era; it was remarkable for any era. While in today's grandiose era of capitalism the word "entrepreneur" has come to be commonly associated with those who are motivated to create new enterprises largely by the desire for personal wealth or even greed, the fact is that entrepreneur simply means "one who undertakes an enterprise," a person who founds and directs an organization. But at its best, entrepreneurship entails something far more important than mere money. Please do not take my word for it. Heed the words of the great Joseph Schumpeter, the first economist to recognize entrepreneurship as the vital force that drives economic growth. In his Theory of Economic Development, written nearly a century ago, Schumpeter dismissed material and monetary gain as the prime mover of the entrepreneur, finding motivations like these to be far more powerful: (1) "The joy of creating, of getting things done, of simply exercising one's energy and ingenuity," and (2) "The will to conquer: the impulse to fight, . . . to succeed for the sake, not of the fruits of success, but of success itself. –John C. Bogle, Capitalism, Entrepreneurship, and Investing. The 18th Century vs. the 21st Century Remarks by John C. Bogle Founder and Former Chairman, The Vanguard Group



The Small Liberal Arts University as a Major Research Institution

Dr. Elliot McGucken’s AE&T Research/Books/Patents

“Our business schools have the chance to take the lead in shaping the future. But they will need to change radically to do so.” –Carl J. Schramm, The Entrepreneurial Imperative



Not only has the digital revolution empowered the individual and small business, but it has also empowered small universities and classical liberal arts institutions. No longer are multi-million-dollar labs and vast buildings needed to foster innovation and encourage student entrepreneurship, but simple access to digital tools and the web can provide students with a solid entrepreneurial foundation. Thus Dr. E’s class was able to build wikientrepreneur.org using the same software that powers the world’s largest encyclopedia—wikimedia.

This past year, as he honed his AE&T book due out in 2007, Dr. Elliot McGucken filed one provisional and three final patent applications—three for rights management systems for artists and creators. Here are the final applications’ titles and abstracts:



SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CONTENT MARKETPLACE, DRM MARKETPLACE, DISTRIBUTION MARKETPLACE, AND SEARCH ENGINE: THE DODGE CITY MARKETPLACE AND SEARCH ENGINE

The present invention offers novel and superior means for creating a content marketplace. The present invention allows technology companies to compete to meet and serve the creators’ rights. Just as reverse auction systems allow consumers to name their price, with service providers competing to meet the price, the present invention allows artists, creators, and content owners to define their rights, whereupon content aggregators, record labels, social networks, DRM providers, device manufacturers, search engines, and others compete to bets meet the creators’ needs. This innovation reflects the fact while technology companies are commodities, and thus artists ought declare their independence, and ascend to their natural place in the universe—those who take the risks and create the wealth on their Heroes’ Journeys ought reap the rewards. The Dodge City Marketplace will lead to greater revenue and rights for artists, superior search engines, distribution, and art, and trusted standards for DRM.



22NETS: METHOD, SYSTEM, AND APPARATUS FOR BUILDING CONTENT AND TALENT MARKETPLACES AND ARCHIVES BASED ON A SOCIAL NETWORK

The novel social network described herein allows those who create and upload content, as well as those who aggregate content and build the network, to profit in novel manners. A method and system allows users, who create content archives and marketplaces in which individuals and content in the database are connected by mutually defined relationships determined by the content creators/owners, uploaders, aggregators, and/or viewers of said content, to better profit from the networks they build. Higher-quality archives and marketplaces result. A tiered commission system, proportional to the degrees of separation in the network, provides a revenue share for creators and viewers who participate in and create content and/or marketplaces. Information inherent within the nodes is mined so as to afford a tiered revenue-sharing system. An improved method of content distribution empowering creators of content and participants is disclosed herein, along with a superior social network.



SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ALLOWING CREATORS, ARTSISTS, AND OWNERS TO PROTECT AND PROFIT FROM CONTENT: THE 45 REVOLVER

The present invention offers novel and superior means for protecting and profiting from digital content. The rights-centric, creator-centric digital rights management application will lead to greater revenue and rights for artists, and a new era of creator's entrepreneurship, as opposed to the dominant aggregator's entrepreneurship. The present invention offers a simple interface for creators, artists, users, and owners to define rights, select from a plurality of DRM options, advertising options, watermarking options, thumbnailing options, syndication options, and publish, share, sell, and distribute their content in a plurality of manners. This invention has far-ranging ramifications, as it causes DRM providers, device manufacturers, web companies, social networks, and content marketplaces to more directly compete with one-another to provide the creator and content owner the best compensation for their work. Creators can bypass the traditional and new middlemen, define their rights, sell their content, and enhance profits.



MORALITY SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR VIDEO GAME: SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CREATING STORY, DEEPER MEANING AND EMOTIONS, ENHANCED CHARACTERS AND AI, AND DRAMATIC ART IN VIDEO GAMES

This present invention pertains to introducing morality and epic storytelling into the realm of video games, resulting in video games with superior, deeper game play, expanded markets, and longer-lasting brands. The ability to render deeper emotion, story, and exalted dramatic arts within the realm of video games has been a long sought-after “holy grail” throughout the video game industry. The prior art demonstrates how others have failed and are failing to deliver more meaningful and engaging games endowed with epic storytelling. This present invention provides the missing key to realizing epic storytelling, deeper emotional involvement, and higher art in video games.



Teaching and research are inseparable, and the patent topics, the process of patenting, and the basics of intellectual property are all brought forth in the living context of the classroom. When Dr. E worked on an artificial retina for the blind, it continually aided in physics class—as a practical application, it was an inspirational tool to inspire the students to learn something. And now, the research in patents in video games, social networks, and digital rights management are continually incorporated in the AE&T class.

The beauty of Einstein’s research was that its end results could always be communicated in simple equations and geometrical pictures. The beauty of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution is that they may be readily understood, and read in their entirety in a few hours. Too much modern academia as sacrificed clarity for pretended profundity, for what Nietzsche described as “muddying my waters so as to appear deeper.”

As entrepreneurship is rooted in providing useful, tangible results, it continually exhorts education to teach practical, useful entities; and it encourages professors to join the students in every class as everyone vigorously pursues their ventures. The humble Hero’s Journey unites us all, but just as the Knights of The Round Table, each must find their own unique path through the forest.

The most eloquent expressions of entrepreneurship’s precepts—of the ubiquitous Hero’s Journey that cuts across all cultures and all time—are the Great Books and Classics—from The Odyssey on down. So it is that a classical liberal arts education is a most useful entity, as John C. Bogle, the creator of the world’s largest mutual fund, demonstrated.

The proper role of intellectual property transfer departments should be to give inventors and innovators the tools to protect and profit from their creations. AE&T’s spirit sees creation as the magical act, and the creator as the rightful, natural, and primary owner; and thus it become the MBA’s and JD’s duty to serve the innovator—not to take the innovator’s private property, but to communicate the tools necessary to take the innovation to market. AE&T aims to dispel the myth that it is one type of person suited to creating and another type of person suited to owning, by giving all students the fundamental tools to protect and profit from their creations—to embark on their very own hero’s journeys.

AE&T supports an IP transfer protocol modeled off of Stanford’s “hands off” approach to technology transfer. The duty of IP departments ought to be to serve the inventor and creator with the knowledge they need to protect and profit from their invention. When the creator benefits, they are inspired to keep on creating; and thus it is important to address the rights and interests of innovators and inventors, for they are society’s natural founts of wealth.

And so it is that Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology seeks to give students, artists, and entrepreneurs the tools to make their passions their professions—to protect and profit from their ideas—to take ownership in their careers and creations. For Adam Smith's invisible hand enriches all when happiness is pursued by artists and innovators—society's natural founts of wealth.

Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology in the Press

Business Week Online reported

Where Entrepreneurship Connects to the Classics

Elliot McGucken, a professor of entrepreneurship at Pepperdine University, bemoans that "a lot of schools have dismissed the idea of teaching the great books." In a recent lecture at Pepperdine, McGucken points out that that one lesson of the classics is, "Chance favors the prepared mind.. Instead of viewing risk as a bad thing, we can also view it as a good thing." The classics inspired America's Declaration of Independence, which McGucken sees as an entrepreneurial document. Life has a way of "calling us to adventure," he concludes. Though many entrepreneurs launch businesses based on some "whimsical occurrence," it's their educational and life backgrounds that enable them to recognize the opportunity. Thus, John Bogle was able to found Vanguard based on a business-magazine article, while actually pursuing a "higher ideal" associated with making stock ownership available to large numbers of people. See this blog for more information and a related video. --BusinessWeek Online http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/mar2007/sb20070305_370422.htm?chan=smallbiz_smallbiz+index+page_getting+started



From Beethoven to Bob Dylan

"Every artist is an entrepreneur." So argues Dr. Elliot McGucken, a visiting professor at Pepperdine University, in an online video introduction to his course, Art Entrepreneurship & Technology 101, which has the professor lecturing from the shore of a small lake. Among his suggestions for artists who want to be more entrepreneurial: launch a blog (see BusinessWeek.com, 5/18/06, "The ABCs of Beginning Your Blog", prepare a one-minute presentation on "your mission," write a 20-page business plan, and be prepared to work for a long time "for free." For information on courses in entrepreneurship geared toward artists, take a look at http://www.ae2n.net. It's still in its formative stages but eventually will feature reading lists and course evaluations. –BusinessWeek Online http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/oct2006/sb20061002_056758.htm?chan=smallbiz_smallbiz+index+page_getting+started



Former investment CEO discusses moral capitalism

JAIMIE FRANKLIN

Assistant News Editor

http://graphic.pepperdine.edu/news/2007/2007-03-01-bogle.htm

Pepperdine welcomed investment giant John C. Bogle to campus Tuesday evening as the keynote speaker for National Entrepreneurship Week USA. Bogle spoke on how businesses have abandoned true ethics and the importance of classical values and a liberal education in the today’s world and attested to his humble beginnings and how they shaped his life to come.

As founder and former CEO of the Vanguard Group, the second largest mutual fund company in the world, Bogle was recognized as one of the world’s 100 most powerful and influential people by TIME Magazine in 2004. He was also hailed as one of the investment industry’s four “Giants of the 20th Century” by Fortune magazine in 1999.

Dr. Elliot McGucken organized the event. McGucken teaches a class in artistic entrepreneurship in which Bogle’s 2005 book, “The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism,” is required reading alongside Homer’s “Odyssey.”

The theme of a hero’s journey, therefore, permeated Bogle’s presentation.

“Classical precepts are the most useful tools throughout life,” McGucken said. “Ideals are a great a long-term investment, because they never change.”

Bogle reached out to students, urging them to pursue an education and to become a citizen characterized by ethics and ideals.

“Dream, but act too,” Bogle said. “You have nearly all of your own odyssey before you… if you are truly strong in will to strive, seek, find, and not to yield.”

Many students found the presentation to be valuable and could relate to Bogle’s assessment of the business world.

“I thought it was pretty interesting, especially with the moral aspect to see such a wealthy man and how he founded his business,” said freshman Maurice Collins.

Freshman Kamron King agreed.

“To see his humble beginnings makes acquiring that much wealth seem tangible,” King said.

Events will come to a close Saturday with an online lecture by McGucken. Entrepreneurship Week USA is a nation-wide event established by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and sponsored by The New York Times and Inc. magazine. --http://graphic.pepperdine.edu/news/2007/2007-03-01-bogle.htm



Festival to promote business creativity

RICHARD NAVA

Staff Writer , the Graphic:

http://graphic.pepperdine.edu/news/2007/2007-03-29-festival.htm

The excitement of the epics of the past can be utilized to promote creativity and entrepreneurship, according to the organizers of the first Hero’s Journey Entrepreneurship Festival, held Saturday.

Seaver College will host the event at the Pepperdine School of Law.

The festival will include several professionals in the arts and humanities field including Flint Dille and John Zuur of the award winning “Chronicles of Riddick” and David Whatley, the CEO of Simutronics. The festival will also include a keynote speech by William Fay, who is the executive producer of films such as “The Patriot,” “Superman Returns” and the current blockbuster movie “300.”

“The Hero’s Journey Entrepreneurship Festival seeks to give students, artists and entrepreneurs the tools to make their passions their professions,” said Dr. Elliot McGucken, visiting professor of business. “The rising generation is longing for epic story across all mediums.”

McGucken’s growing popularity is clearly visible not only in his students, but also fellow members of the Pepperdine staff and faculty. Vice Chancellor Michael Warder, for example, said the concept of spreading entrepreneurship and business to artists of all types is part of McGucken’s genius.

“I think he speaks to creative students who are steeped in the digital revolution in a very powerful and responsible way,” Warder said.

McGucken said he originally had the idea for the festival in the fall. McGucken’s work is supported by a $125,000 grant that Pepperdine received from the prestigious Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to further curriculum development for Artistic Entrepreneurship and Technology; a curriculum that has many students eager to participate.

Pepperdine student Dylan Vandam was asked to be a volunteer for the festival and said he immediately wanted to get involved.

“I want to network with other students, faculty and professionals to pursue and to incorporate the knowledge imparted from the leaders at the festival into my everyday life,” Vandam said.

As a student volunteer, Vandam has contributed to the festival by designing the t-shirts that will be worn and given away March 31. Vandam hopes to use his education in pursuing a life based on strong values, which he says he has learned as a Pepperdine student.

Junior Michelle Petty is also a participant and student volunteer for the festival. Petty is a creative writing major and said she was excited when she first heard about the event through Facebook.

Petty says she will have a multi-faceted role in the festival as an usher, liaison, and clean-up crew member.

“Even though doing this will take up a lot of my Saturday writing time, I know it will be an edifying experience,” Petty said.

The festival will begin at the Law School at 8 a.m. and will include lectures and speeches throughout the day. It will not conclude until after 8 p.m. at The Malibu Inn where there will be special musical quests.

All are welcome to volunteer and participate in the festival this Saturday, and also in the volunteer meeting that will be held today at 7 p.m. in the Atrium. For more information please contact Dr. McGucken at Elliot.McGucken@Pepperdine.Edu, or visit the festival’s Web site at http://www.herosjourneyentrepreneurship.org.

http://graphic.pepperdine.edu/news/2007/2007-03-29-festival.htm

THE PEPPERDINE GRAPHIC

New business class connects student passion with capital

AIRAN SCRUBY News Editor

Students from a variety of majors are coming together in a classroom setting to make their dreams come true.

The class, Artistic Entrepreneurship and Technology, is listed through the Business Division, but all students may participate.

The course was added to Pepperdine’s curriculum this year, and is taught by a visiting professor, Dr. Elliot McGucken. McGucken previously taught a similar course at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and has implemented the course in his new post at Pepperdine.

The course is being offered in two forms: as a freshman seminar course and as an upper-division class, comprised mainly of juniors and seniors.

McGucken said the goal of the class was to help students pursue their passion in their careers, and to keep in mind their artistic vision and ethics over the bottom line in business ventures.

“Ideals are real,” McGucken said.

McGucken’s class at UNC gained media attention as an exciting opportunity for students looking to market their artwork, or to make business an art.

“Looks like McGucken’s found a way to inspire a new generation of artistically minded entrepreneurs to follow their passion, and make a living,” wrote Teresea Ciulla in Entrepreneur Magazine.

Matt Llewellyn, a senior advertising and marketing major who is enrolled in the class, said McGucken’s youth and experience make him an effective professor.

“I think he relates to students, because he’s fresh and new,” Llewellyn said.

McGucken himself is an entrepreneur, who won a Merrill Lynch Innovations Grant for his artificial retina for the blind, runs several websites, and has several patents pending on topics ranging from video games to digital rights management.

Artie Calhoun, a senior economics major, said McGucken’s experience brought an extra dimension to the class.

“Dr. McGucken seems to be very experienced in the field of entrepreneurship and quite possibly has a lot to offer to students like myself,” Calhoun said.

Llewellyn started a company which sells bottled water in downtown Los Angeles, with packaging written in Spanish. He said he wishes he had taken the class before he started his venture.

“I think as the class goes on, I’m going to learn a lot from [McGucken],” Llewellyn said.

Llewellyn and Calhoun agreed students should take the class, regardless of their major.

“This class teaches about the advantages of thinking outside the box and keeping an open mind about the world around you,” Calhoun said. “Entrepreneurship can be found in every profession.”

Here’s what the Entrepreneur Magazine Blog had to say about AE&T:

Mixing Art With Entrepreneurship, by Teresa Ciulla: Can you actually make your passion your profession? According to Dr. Elliot McGucken, a professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who's teaching the university's first "Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology 101" class, the answer just may be yes. McGucken's class, which is comprised of a group of 45 students majoring in law, business, art, computer science, journalism and music, focuses on teaching students about creating value over just making money, about letting their higher ideals guide the bottom line. After all, as McGucken says, "Successful companies aren't successful because they make money--they're successful because they create value." Class projects range from a classical music video to a hip hop curriculum and textbook to an online art gallery to a freshman's record label that's signed more than ten bands to a social network being programmed by three computer science majors. Students are seeing that to the degree they succeed in creating useful art and ventures, they'll be able to support their passions with a profitable business. And isn't that what we're all really striving for? To find an excitement in our work in order to beat back the dullness of the typical 9-to-5 routine? Looks like McGucken's found a way to inspire a new generation of artistically minded entrepreneurs to follow their passions—and make a living.



UNC's Daily Tar Heel Reported in March, 2006

Students find dream jobs In class, passions fuel business plans

Erin Wiltgen, Staff Writer

For many, childhood and adolescence pass in a blur of hobbies and passionate adventures, activities seeped in a deep-seated excitement and love inherent in a particular pastime.

In UNC professor Elliot McGucken's "Artistic Entrepreneurship and Technology" class, students and teachers work to "make your passion your profession," transforming students' dreams and interests into potential paths for the future.

The unique course allows students interested in fields such as photography, video games, painting, classical music and film production to explore commercial and social ventures in the arts.

They search for and create a plan based in entrepreneurship, which supports and nurtures their individual visions.

"A lot of times school tells you that your dreams aren't important," says McGucken, a physics professor. "But in reality dreams are your most important asset."

The class consists of an independent project that includes three presentations, guest lectures and small-group collaboration.

Sophomore Phil Gennett's project is a clothing line, and he is trying to find a manufacturer for his creations.

He also intends to set up a talent agency.

"I want to blow it up into a new sort of entertainment, like American Idol, but also as a social network for opportunities," Gennett says.

Sophomore Ryan Dean is working on multiple projects. He runs a graphic design company called Cellar Door Design. He also has joined with a photographer in the class to create CD booklet artwork for the second album by his band, The Anchor Comes Home.

"What's most helpful is meeting like-minded people," Dean says.

"The best thing about this class is establishing relationships with the other students and collaborating with each other."

Stefan Estrada, graduate student and teaching assistant for the class, shares a similar view.

"The people in this class have ambition and a vision of things they want to accomplish," Estrada says.

"This isn't a class where you get something done and forget about it. It continues to maybe become your career." .. . . McGucken also says that entrepreneurship classes give students a broader knowledge base.

"It's an irony that the University requires you to specialize when people typically end up switching jobs five or six times and need to know about a lot of different things," McGucken says.

At 5 p.m. Tuesday, the class will host a show at Local 506 on Franklin Street.

The show, called "Rocky Raccoon's High Tech Hollywood Hip Hop Hedge Fund Hoedown and Fashion/Art/Photography/Video Games Showdown" will feature musical and spoken-word performances, fashion shows, film and video screenings and displays of visual art and photography.

The show is designed as a networking event and as a benefit for the Music Maker Relief Foundation and three web sites - OSCommerce.com, Joomla.org and Gallery.menalto.com.

The Music Maker foundation works to help pioneers of Southern musical traditions gain recognition and meet their financial needs.

One goal of the show, and the class itself, is "to build new cultural centers," McGucken says.

"The University has been separated artificially," he says.

"This class has naturally collapsed all the barriers between business and art and law, putting all the power in the hands of the creator."



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From The Second Annual Hero's Journey Entrepreneurship Festival

From The Second Annual Hero's Journey Entrepreneurship Festival
http://herosjourneyrenaissance.org/
Ideals in Innovation
by Dr. E
Da Vinci wrote, "the depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserve" and Martin Luther King Jr. agreed, "If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values--that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control." And the title of John C. Bogle's Battle for The Soul of Capitalism says it all, as it suggests we read Adam Smith in order, with A Theory of Moral Sentiments preceding The Wealth of Nations, for as Socrates stipulated, all true wealth comes from virtue--the immortal soul, and not virtue from wealth.
There's something going on. A renaissance is rising--artists, authors, and inventors are turning towards the classical ideals so as to render them real in the living culture. A fellowship of creators, each walking the hero's journey by the immortal stars of classical antiquity, is seeking to serve the soul in art and literature--in video games, music, and film. It's been a long time coming, as the rising generation has been seeking that third act--that classical, epic thunder that we can call our own.
Come join us on March 8th as we celebrate the ultimate Renaissance Man--Leonardo da Vinci--while saluting those marking rugged journeys in the realms of screenwriting, video games, film, academia, and robotics--robots inspired by da Vinci's designs.

The Dark Ages lasted for hundreds of years--from 476 to 1000 AD. Art, innovation, and literature declined along with contemporary written history. A general demographic decline accompanied limited cultural achievements. Aristotle wrote "When storytelling declines, the result is decadence," and as they turned away from the classics and higher art and towards bread and circuses--towards reality TV and spectacle--the soul, and thus civilization, faltered.

The Italian Renaissance, which spanned the period from the end of the 1400's to about 1600, sailed beyond the Dark Ages by the immmortal stars of classical antiquity. Renaissance scholars again sought out the Great Books and Classics in the ancient monastic libraries and incorporated them in education and culture. And so too do we march on--following the lead of the immortal heroes such as da Vinci who stated, "Who sows virtue reaps honor," and "Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art." Da Vinci wrote, "the depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserve" and Martin Luther King Jr. agreed, "If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values--that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control." And the title of John C. Bogle's Battle for The Soul of Capitalism says it all, as it suggests we read Adam Smith in order, with A Theory of Moral Sentiments preceding The Wealth of Nations, for as Socrates stipulated, all true wealth comes from virtue--the immortal soul, and not virtue from wealth.

Vast opportunities exist to incorporate the soul of The Iliad and The Odyssey--of Shakespeare, the Bible, and The Inferno--in video games. The Mona Lisa, two dimensional and stationary, yet towers over the female characters in modern games in spirit and soul; as do Dante's Beatrice and Odysseus's Penelope. Knowledge of the classics--the spiritual eternities--not material wealth--became the true mark of wealth during the Renaissance, and so shall it be again. The movie 300 demonstrated that the rising generation is longing for the classical spirit and soul; and Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology 101 is revolutionizing academia with its simple precept that the spirit of our law and literature--of The Constitution and Hamlet--derive from the same place--the classical Judeo Christian heritage. And so that which had been divided into business, law, film, art, and accounting; is reunited in truth and the simplicity of soul--in a classical liberal arts education--in a foundational renaissance.

There are two Hero's Journeys in every class--the first is through the Great Books, and the second is the one each student walks alone--in a business plan or screenplay for their living venture; for the reason we read the Greats is not for tenure, but to embolden the natural ideals of our soul and gain the courage to follow our better angels and nobler dreams. The Odyssey has lasted over 2800 years because it reminds us of that immortal justice--eventually truth prevails.

Opportunity abounds to not only read those dusty old texts, but to render their ideals real in the living context via action. We've been leaving billions on the shelves--billions and far more, including those mythical entities which cannot be counted, but which count for everything. And so me march--we march for the renaissance. --Dr. E

All men whom the higher Nature has imbued with a love of truth should feel impelled to work for the benefit of future generations, whom they will thereby enrich just as they themselves have been enriched by the labors of their ancestors. --Dante

http://herosjourneyrenaissance.org/

Elliot McGucken’s IT Conversations Podcast on Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology 101

http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail1887.html

Tired of being a starving artist? Dr. Elliot McGucken's Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology 101 puts together a new approach to entrepreneurship and the arts through a fascinating application of the classic journey of mythological heroes. McGucken, a physicist, has taught the class at both UNC Chapel Hill and Pepperdine, and has expanded the concept through blogs, a festival, and an upcoming book.

In this interview McGucken describes how the course applies the structure of the monomyth, the fundamental pattern of the great hero narratives throughout history, from Odysseus, Jesus, and Buddha to Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and The Matrix. Also called the Hero's Journey, Joseph Campbell identified this pattern in his book The Hero With A Thousand Faces. McGucken even takes it a step beyond, using examples from modern real-life success stories like Richard Branson and Kid Rock.

McGucken explains why the web's democratization of both the means of production and distribution can be used by the big companies to continue to exploit artists, or instead used by indie artists themselves who preserve their own rights in their successful journey. It's your choice, if you take it.

Elliot McGucken was born in Ohio, and grew up outdoors except for when he was sitting in front of a computer. He received a B.A. in physics from Princeton and a Ph.D. in physics from UNC Chapel Hill where his dissertation on an artifical retina for the blind received several NSF grants and a Merrill Lynch Innovations Award. The retina-chip research appeared in publications including Popular Science and Business Week, and the project continues to this day.

In 1995 McGucken founded Classicals & jollyroger.com LLC as a technological tribute to the great books, and he has spoken at the Harvard Law School concerning his authena.org project for Open Source software for managing digital rights for artists. McGucken, known as "Dr. E" to his students, teaches physics and programming at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and has published a poetry book, a novel, a collection of essays, several scientific articles, and poetry in The Wall Street Journal.

McGucken founded the Hero's Journey Entrepreneurship Festival in Malibu, CA. Keynote speakers have included John C. Bogle, the founder and former CEO of Vanguard, and William Fay, executive producer at Legendary Pictures. The festival pays homage to Joseph Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces and the Hero's Journey in all walks of life.


From: http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail1887.html

Hero’s Journey Entrepreneurship / Arts Entrepreneurship

Opportunity Abounds – The Great Books Renaissance &

Hero’s Journey Entrepreneurship

This blog is a call to adventure—a call to join in the Great Books Renaissance this fall and partake in the vast entrepreneurial opportunities that abound on Wall Street and Main Street, in Hollywood and the Heartland. Forward it around and invite everyone to join us as we pursue that higher wealth—but plot, character, and meaning, all of which Aristotle ranked far above spectacle in his Poetics. And as Socrates stated that all money comes from virtue, and not virtue from money, the Great Books--which immortalize the virtous actions of classical heroes--are one's greatest investment. Join us at:



http://herosjourneyentrepreneurship.org

http://artsentrepreneurship.com

http://herosjourneyrenaissance.org

The Hero’s Journey Entrepreneurship Festival hosted both John C. Bogle, founder and former CEO of the Vanguard Group, and William Fay, executive producer at Legendary Pictures; and both told parallel stories of their journeys—whether one is creating the $1.2 trillion Vanguard Fund, or bringing Batman, Superman, and the graphic novel 300 to life with cutting-edge technologies, classical ideals are one’s best friend. Bogle lamented that the “bread and circuses” spectacles have come to replace depth and profundity in business and popular culture, and Fay paid homage to the rugged, timeless story from classical Greece envisioned and rendered by a single author—Frank Miller—that propelled 300 to box office records. Like F.A. Hayek in The Road to Serfdom, King Leonidas in 300 reminds us that sometimes the individual—the lone cowboy—has to take a principled stand against the larger group, against all odds, so as to serve the classical ideals and preserve freedom.

Take ownership in the Great Books and Classics—invest your days in Shakespeare and Dante, in Homer and Plato, in Jefferson and Franklin—in those eternities that shall never turn on you—and then shall Adam Smith and F.A. Hayek truly come to life in the classical context that plumbs our souls and exalts our spirits via Epic Stories—via comedies and tragedies that have endured thousands of years. Hayek wrote,



“The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for “conscious” control or “conscious” planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme—while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the superindividual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose.” –Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom



Hayek salutes the natural engine of wealth and freedom—the rugged individual who lives by a higher code of honor, be it King Leonidas or John Bogle—Neo or Jobs—Branson or Frodo. Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman penned the introduction to the latest edition of Hayek's classic The Road to Serfdom, in which he spoke of the troubling growth of the Matrix, of Sauron’s armies, of Darth Vader’s empire—of bureaucracy.



I said at the outset that “in some ways” the message of this book “is even more relevant to the United States today than it was when it created a sensation . . . half a century ago.” Intellectual opinion then was far more hostile to its theme than it appears to be now, but practice conformed to it far more than it does today. Government in the post World War II period was smaller and less intrusive than it is today. Johnson’s Great Society programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, and Bush’s Clean Air and Americans with Disabilities Acts, were all still ahead, let alone the numerous other extensions of government that Reagan was only able to slow down, not reverse, in his eight years in office. Total government spending—federal, state, and local—in the United States has gone from 25 percent of national income in 1950 to nearly 45 percent in 1993.



So how do we turn the tide and inspire a renaissance? Charles G. Koch, CEO of Koch Industries, recently published a great book entitled, The Science of Success, in which he penned, “For business to survive and prosper, it must create real long-term value in society through principled behavior.” Time and again we encounter this message in books by seasoned entrepreneurs, as Bogle writes in The Battle for The Soul of Capitalism, “For better or worse, my youthful idealism—the belief that any truly sound business endeavor must be built on a strong moral foundation—still remains today, at least as strong a it was all those years ago.” And too, in the Fitzgerald translation of The Odyssey, Odysseus announces, “fair dealing leads to greater profit in the end.” As all renaissances, films, novels, business, and video games begin with mere words—and as Shelly wrote that poets are the true legislators of mankind, this entrepreneurial renaissance must be rooted in a Great Books renaissance—in character and epic story. For in the beginning there was the word.

Koch cites Proverbs 29:18, “Where there is no vision, the people perish,” and Bogle cites Corinthians, “If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?” We need classic, rugged leaders, and as artists, filmmakers, and writers we too must cite and communicate those everlasting ideals to the students—if anything, as artists we have an even greater duty to communicate the classical ideals, as that is the primary purpose of the arts, as sure as it is of the academy. The proper study of business and entrepreneurship—of economics and business—must take place in a classical context, just as Adam Smith must be read in the context that he was first and foremost a “philosopher of moral sentiments.” Koch writes, “By self-interest, Smith meant what Tocqueville called enlightened self-interest, in which people benefit themselves by benefiting others.” In a speech delivered at the University of Pennsylvania, Bogle echoed this:



Permit me to close by moving briefly to a higher plane that transcends economics, a message to all of you, especially the young men and women who are gaining so much valuable economic education through the efforts of the Economics Pennsylvania. Even before venturing into economics in The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith unveiled his not inconsiderable credentials as a philosopher. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, he expressed this thought, which I hope will ring out loud and clear to each of you. For it drives home the message that, invisible hand or not, engaging the whole person goes far beyond the mere promotion of one’s own interests:

“What is it which prompts the generous among us, upon all occasions, and the meanest, upon many, to sacrifice their own interests to the greater interests of others? It is not the soft power of humanity. It is a stronger power, a more forcible motive. It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct . . . who shows us the propriety of generosity, of reining in the greatest interests of our own for yet the greater interests of others, the love of what is honorable and noble, of the grandeur, and dignity of our own character.”

Yes, it’s all about character. And as that final piece of wisdom from Adam Smith confirms, character counts. –

http://johncbogle.com/speeches/JCB_adamsmithdinner_6-02.pdf



And so it is that Bogle and Koch agree with Aristotle’s Poetics—Character and Epic Story—integrity and honor—the immortal soul—must be ranked far above spectacle and mere money. Opportunity abounds for culture—for books, movies, and video games—performing the classical ideals in the contemporary context.

There is nothing more valuable that a student can learn than these eternal precepts which pervade the Great Books and Classics. Unfortunately, such precepts are all too often neglected by contemporary curriculums and textbooks, as well as the popular culture. Scores of books have been written about this decline of the spirit, from Who Killed Homer, to The Bonfire of The Humanities, to The Closing of The American Mind, to Excellence Without Soul, How a Great University Forgot Education, penned by a Harvard dean. Thomas Wolfe's novel I Am Charlotte Simmons takes a literary look at the spiritually bankrupt campus through the eyes of a freshman arriving at the fictional Dupont University from a small town, who slides into depression as her soul is deconstructed.

The deconstruction of classical ideals—of truth, duty, and honor—and the accompanying growth of middling bureaucracy—of a postmodern elite—which separates the risk taker and worker from their natural reward, has not been relegated to government. Bogle laments the augmenting bureaucratic managerial class time and again in his speeches and books, with unparalleled eloquence. In The Battle for The Soul of Capitalism, Bogle writes:



Over the past century, a gradual move from owner’s capitalism—providing the lion’s share of the rewards of investment to those who put up their own money and risk their own capital—has culminated in an extreme version of manager’s capitalism—providing vastly disproportionate rewards to those whom we have trusted to manage their enterprises in the interests of their owners. –John C. Bogle, Battle for The Soul of Capitalism



And as Hayek reminds us that the humble worker and lone innovator—not the bureaucracy—are the source of all enduring wealth creation, it is imperative that academia join the charge in communicating and instilling the individualist ideals of freedom immortalized in the pages of the Great Books, for the epic stories of The Odyssey and the Bible—of Shakespeare and Dante—are the bedrock foundations of moral capitalistic systems—of Western Civilization itself.

And thus Homer’s Odyssey is a most valuable asset—do not take my word for it—listen to Thomas Jefferson who in addition to The Declaration of Independence that speaks of the Creator who created all men equal and endowed us with the natural right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness, also wrote, "as we advance in life. . . things fall off one by one, and I suspect that we are left at last with Homer and Virgil, perhaps with Homer alone."

In July I enjoyed the great opportunity and honor to speak at the Institute for Humane Studies Cinematic and Literary Traditions of Liberty workshop at UCLA. Organized by Patrick Reasonover and his colleagues, the event was a most unique and inspiring week, packed with quality panels and discussions pertaining to economics and culture—to literature and film.

On the opening night, I delivered a presentation entitled The Entrepreneur as Modern Hero, based upon the class I teach—Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology, and the annual Hero's Journey Entrepreneurship Festival.



http://artsentrepreneurship.com

http://herosjourneyentrepreneurship.org



I proposed a new realm of video games which would bring to life the adage coined by Richard Weaver—Ideas have Consequences. Video games oft let us battle monsters—gruesome, graphic monsters. But yet, the greater monsters in reality—in this living world—are ideas—ideas which lead to societies which by and by deny freedoms while promising utopias—which devalue currencies to pay off debts incurred by massive governmental programs. Well, a game which allowed one to battle ideas—which endowed the graphically gruesome monsters with gruesome ideas and dark souls—could be a lot of fun. And too, the open-ended video game world could evolve in different directions—towards freedom, entrepreneurship, and capitalism in a moral context; or towards serfdom, tyranny, and dictatorships should the moral context be lost. One could witness what would happen both with and without the gold standard, as well as other economic policies. Furthermore, it is often said that video games lack story and soul; that they fall short of classical art—well, by endowing the game engine with a moral premise, perhaps higher art could be achieved. Imagine a Dante’s Inferno game, where the protagonist battled the demons in the nine levels of the inferno to the tune of Beethoven’s nine symphonies—now there’s a game I’d want to play a few times over, witnessing the varying outcomes based on varying degrees of success.

I also joined a panel devoted to property rights in the digital age, whence I argued that the right to intellectual property is a natural right, citing Mark Twain’s 1906 address to congress concerning the same topic. And my favorite panel, devoted to video games, was with the most prolific and accomplished Flint Dille and John Zuur, who have brought us the maverick The Chronicles of Riddick, The Fantastic Four, and the Transfomers video games, amongst many others—their IMDB bios read like novels—check them out. They are currently working on the Sin City game, based on the movie and graphic novel by Frank Miller, which sounded fascinating, for as Flint reminded us, "Sin cannot exist in a world free of the ideas of good and bad."

The moral premise is what defines all great art and enduring ventures, from Dante's Inferno, to 300, to The Science of Success, to the Vanguard mutual fund, which was based on that simple, humble entrepreneurial premise—the risk taker ought get the reward. The Libertarian Reader, edited by David Boaz, states,



Although libertarian ideas are evident in the writings of the Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu in the sixth century BC, the main thread of libertarianism goes back to the Jewish and Greek idea of a higher law, a law by which everyone, even the ruler, could be judged. The simple idea that the will of the ruler was not the ultimate source of authority helped lay the groundwork for a pluralist society, the flowering of individualism, and the eventually the scientific and economic miracles of Western civilization. –The Libertarian Reader, xii



Such ideas have ever come to us via story—the stories of the Iliad and The Odyssey—the stories of the Bible. For Moses did not come up with the ten commandments ever conducting case studies and studying for the bar in a coffee shop—no he came down from the mountain in a story, and delivered the stone tablets, which had been etched by the Hand of God. A rising renaissance, based on epic story and rugged principle, is yours for the taking, for mythology alone can capture our spiritual reality, and living mythology alone can exalt a generation.

The very same message resounds throughout Bogle’s “Vanguard: Saga of Heroes” speech delivered to the Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology class—one must take action, that one must own the risk of the renaissance, and that before anything else, one must be an idealist. Both Battle for The Soul of Capitalism and The Odyssey sail this theme on home—the central keystone in all enduring ventures and the surest ticket to a worthwhile hero's journey is the moral premise:



A year ago, in a talk on entrepreneurship that celebrated the 300th birthday of Benjamin Franklin, I reflected on this 18th century connection with a wonderful quotation: "Soon we shall know everything the 18th century didn't know, and nothing it did, and it will be hard to live with us." These words were the opening epigram of Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century, by the late Neil Postman—prolific author, social critic, and professor at New York University. Postman's book presented an impassioned defense of the old-fashioned liberal humanitarianism that was the hallmark of the Age of Reason. His aim was to restore the balance between mind and machine, and his principal concern was our move away from an era in which the values and character of Western Civilization were at the forefront of the minds of our great philosophers and leaders, and in which the prevailing view was that anything that's truly important must have a moral authority. –John C. Bogle, Vanguard: A Saga of Heroes, http://www.vanguard.com/bogle_site/sp20070227.htm



I concluded my lectures at the UCLA IHS seminar with a talk devoted to Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology, reflecting on how Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey provides a natural vehicle for not only the study of entrepreneurship, but for its manifestation in living ventures. After reading the classics, as did the Founding Fathers, the students must find their own path through the forest, as did the knights in Arthurian legend. The students must take Morpheus’s words to heart—“there is a difference between knowing the path and walking it.”

Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology is a call to adventure—a call to “begin the world anew” and forge ahead in the creation of classes and curriculums, of books, movies, and video games, which exalt the eternal verities. Ideas have consequences, and the subtitle of Bogle's book suggests that our academies haven't been leading with the correct ideas, as it reads, “How the Financial System Undermined Social Ideals, Damaged Trust in the Markets, Robbed Investors of Trillions - and What to Do About It.” Koch quotes Emerson in calling upon the academy to teach not just case studies and ephemeral methodologies, but the eternal principles embedded in the classics—Emerson wrote: “The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.”

To encourage a cultural renaissance while discouraging Wall Street scandals and the growth of government, and to inspire students to grab entrepreneurship by the right handle, there is no better route than celebrating the Great Books and Classics at all levels. By reading Shakespeare and Dante in their full glory—by celebrating them instead of deconstructing them—by letting yesterday’s masterpieces inspire tomorrow’s video games—by and by culture—and Hollywood and the Heartland—and Wall Street and government—will be reformed. For business and government bureaucracies never create immortal art, but only the rugged individual—the artistic entrepreneur.

The students, who yet show up to college with immortal souls, are longing for a classical revival and epic storytelling that trumps the reality TV and Hollywood remakes. In Homer's Iliad, Achilles states, "for as I detest the doorways of death, so too do I detest the man who speaks forth one thing, and holds in his heart another," and had Henry Blodget read The Iliad or The Inferno—if we had an academy that celebrated the truth over postmodern politics, perhaps Henry would have thought twice about saying one thing to the public, and another to the investment banks, and perhaps he would have not been banned from Wall Street for life.

My opening night IHS lecture was entitled, "The Entrepreneur as Hero." And by hero I don't mean the celebrity hero, but the humble hero—the often unsung hero who quietly goes about their tasks and innovations, simply because it is the right, or beautiful, thing to do. Throughout The Odyssey, Odysseus is known as the man who suffers much simply to bring his men on home and regain his homestead. Time and again he resists the temptations of the Sirens and short-term gratifications the Lotus Eaters succumb to—he resists boasting and revealing his identity. Heroes like Odysseus are idealists, as they navigate by higher ideals—a code of honor, and treat beggars and kings alike, holding them to the same standards as does Zeus. Long before Locke or Jefferson contemplated the Natural Rights of Men, the Greeks recognized that all-pervasive, natural, higher code of honor, which was embodied in Socrates' heroic quest for Truth and Virtue, and which powers the Biblical stories of the Judeo Christian Heritage. This common pursuit of excellence, or arête—of higher, enduring wealth—has ever marked the classic entrepreneur who grows rich not by making money, but by serving the higher ideals and creating wealth, jobs, and meaning. And the wealth that follows cannot be devalued, for it is based on something even greater than the gold standard—the God or honor standard.

All this—the entrepreneurial premise—may be found in Jefferson's words:



We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. –The Declaration of Independence



The only clause in the main body of the United States Constitution that mentions "Rights" states the following:



The Congress shall have power to . . . promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries; --The United States Constitution



Couple these two passages together, and one has the moral premise of Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology. Every student ought be given the tools to create new ventures--to protect their intellectual property, and to pursue and profit from their dreams on their "Hero's Journey" into entrepreneurship. For it is along that journey that the long-term "wealth of nations" is generated.

Entrepreneurship has aspects of art—creation and the pursuit of higher aesthetics; and science—economics, finance, engineering, and physical invention. How these aspects, and many more—from intellectual property to corporate structures—combine to generate wealth, are part of an Epic Story that is told whenever an individual sets out to render their ideals and dreams real. Thus a most efficient way to study entrepreneurship—to unite its diverse aspects—is via Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey.

As a new cornerstone in a classical liberal arts education, Artistic Entrepreneurship is for those seeking to make their passions their professions. This festival is dedicated to all those embarking on the "Hero's Journey" to create enduring wealth, be it a new venture, video game, indie film, record label, book, DRM system serving artists and musicians, or course.

In his AE&T speech, John C. Bogle humbly expressed that he was not a hero, nor an entrepreneur, so much as an idealist—an idealist who nonetheless innovated the world's first index fund—the $1.2 trillion Vanguard Group. In studying the Great Books and Classics—the vast wealth that has been handed down for thousands of years—time and again we see that the stories are driven by idealists—those who seek to serve ideal, such as honor, courage, and commitment. “Humility,” Benjamin Franklin wrote as his thirteenth and most important precept, “Imitate Jesus and Socrates.” And Koch’s “Free Market Management” humbles itself before service’s higher ideals, for it places the needs of those who are served over the needs of the management, encouraging a moral capitalism.

The classic hero, from Odysseus on down, is one who serves. This moral premise pervades all enduring literature and entrepreneurial ventures, as expressed by John C. Bogle--the "student entrepreneur" who founded the $700 billion Vanguard fund based on an idealistic premise in his 1951 Princeton senior thesis. Mr. Bogle recently quoted his original thesis in one of his eloquent speeches—



"After analyzing fund performance, I concluded that "funds can make no claim to superiority over the market averages," perhaps an early harbinger of my decision to create, nearly a quarter-century later, the world's first index mutual fund. And my conclusion powerfully reaffirmed the ideals that I hold to this day: The role of the mutual fund is to serve--"to serve the needs of both individual and institutional investors . . . to serve them in the most efficient, honest, and economical way possible . . . The principal function of investment companies is the management of their investment portfolios. Everything else is incidental."



Watch the academy-award-winning movie Braveheart, and you will see the very same moral premise at the film's center and circumference, as expressed by William Wallace's actions and his words to the Scottish Nobles—



"There's a difference between us. You think the people of this land exist to provide you with position. I think your position exists to provide those people with freedom. And I go to make sure that they have it."



And Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero With a Thousand Faces which helped inspire Star Wars, The Matrix, The Lord of The Rings, and Dr. E's AE&T class wrote, “Man should not be in the service of society, society should be in the service of man. When man is in the service of society, you have a monster state. . .”

Entrepreneurship is the force that continually rights the world by rewarding those who serve—those who battle the bureaucracy with a better way. Entrepreneurship is an epic story wherein the world is continually "begun anew," as the humble risk-taker—the reluctant hero—the fount of lasting cultural and monetary wealth—happens upon an innovation, invention, or epiphany, and takes a risk in rendering it real for others.

The classic entrepreneur navigates on out while keeping the higher ideals over the bottom line, endures the road of trials en route to the countless showdowns with competitors and convention, seizes the sword, and returns on home with the elixir—with the rewards gained from risking their time, their talents, their passions, and their money in penning that novel, shooting that film, and creating that venture. And so often it is all based on some simple, pervading moral premise. For Google it is "Do no evil." For Apple it is "Think different." For Buffett it is "Our favourite holding period is forever." For Bogle, Wallace, and Campbell it is "institutions must serve." For this HJE Festival, it is "own the risk of the renaissance."









The most efficient way to teach eternal values is via eternal books—the most economical way to teach law, business, art, technology, and yes—economics—is via story—for story alone contains our mythical reality. Thus Homer's Odyssey and Bogle's Batte for The Soul of Capitalism and Koch’s The Science of Success make natural gatekeepers for a class on entrepreneurship, as they beckon us to look both forwards and backwards—forwards towards the students' independent projects and future ventures, and on back with humility towards the greatest that has been spoken and written. On many levels, Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology is a revival of the classical liberal arts education, replacing case studies and politicized, ephemeral curriculums with the eternal verities.

For the rising generation is longing for Epic Story, and thus opportunity abounds for artistic entrepreneurs to perform the classical ideals in the contemporary context—in Hollywood and the Heartland, on Wall Street and Main Street, in video games and academia.

The primary goal of the AE&T and HJEF endeavors is to serve you with most useful, informative, and inspirational resources regarding how best to make your passion your profession, as we celebrate the words of that classic entrepreneurial document in living ventures, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Summer Arts Entrepreneurship & Technology

Hello All,

It was a most enjoyable class this summer, and went by way too quickly. I feel everyone got the hang of "Arts Entrepreneurship & Technology"--the greater, higher wealth--truth and virtue--is from where all lasting wealth derives.

Call that bluff as you write your final business plan. It isn't easy bringing a new venture into the world, and there're a lot of people selling snakeoil regarding how to "get rich quick." But all lasting value comes from hard work, constant innovation, and the consistent discipline it takes to perform a top-notch job, time and time again.

Know that the journey is a long, hard road, but also keep in mind that the biggest risk you take is never setting off on down that road. File those provisional patents! Register those trademarks! Take a couple hours and file some copyrights! Incorporate! Register a domain or two. It can all be accomplished in a few hours, and as way leads onto way, that first step is a vast one.

In fact, the greatest risk one faces in entreprneurship is not taking that first step.

"Way leads unto way" comes from a poem--I'm sure you've seen it before:

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Well, you all know that's Robert Frost. What's the market cap of his collected works? What's the P/E ratio? When contemplating value, always keep the fundamentals in mind, and always remember the difference between money and wealth--they can print money, but wealth you've got to create. Always focus on the higher ideals, and by and by the bottom line shall follow. As Socrates said to his fellow Athenians,



"I honor and love you: but why do you who are citizens of this great and mighty nation care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul. Are you not ashamed of this? . . . I do nothing but go about persuading you all, not to take thought for your persons and your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man."


IF.....
by Rudyard Kipling
IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose,
and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, '
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son! (or woman, my daughter).

Finally, Benjamin Franklin came up with a list of thirteen virtues:

1. TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
2. SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
3. ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
4. RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
5. FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
6. INDUSTRY. Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. SINCERITY. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. JUSTICE. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. MODERATION. Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. CLEANLINESS. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.
11.TRANQUILLITY. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12. CHASTITY. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.
13. HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Franklin originally set down just twelve virtues, but then realized he'd left out the most important one--HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates. Humility will be your best friend on the long journey on out--as an entrepreneur you must stay humble before the higher ideals and the bottom line, before your customers and your employees alike. Well, take ownership in those business plans! Dream the dream in the words--do not be lead by deadlines and assigments, but always make sure you're working for your those greater, enduring goals--those dreams that make you you, for that is where all lasting wealth derives from--owning one's destiny.

Best of luck with all those futue ventures, and remember all the entrepreneurship resources on the class's websites.

The Great Books Renaissance: Hero’s Journey Entrepreneurship Festival: Fay’s 300, Bogle’s Battle, & Homer’s Odyssey

The Great Books Renaissance

Hero’s Journey Entrepreneurship Festival: Fay’s 300, Bogle’s Battle, & Homer’s Odyssey

http://herosjourneyentrepreneurship.org/

Shot on a “spartan” budget with no major stars and breathtaking technological artistry, William Fay’s number-one movie 300 (Legendary Pictures) is breaking boxoffice records via that time-tested asset—classical ideals rendered in classical story. John C. Bogle, the founder and former CEO of Wall Street’s trillion-dollar Vanguard Group, built Vanguard upon a classic, idealistic premise—the risk takers—the common investors—ought get the rewards. Homer’s Odysseus makes it on home not just via his warrior strength, but by his ability to resist temptation while serving the higher ideals.

The students in Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology 101 read Bogle’s Battle for The Soul of Capitalism alongside Homer’s Odyssey, joining a natural Fellowship that spans time and space, that ranges from Wall Street to Main Street, from Hollywood to the Heartland, from ancient Greece to popular culture. They see this—all lasting value has ever been built upon values. And they’ll get to hear it from William Fay, executive producer of 300, The Patriot, Superman, and Independence Day, as he keynotes The Hero’s Journey Entrepreneurship Festival on March 31^st at Pepperdine University: herosjourneyentrepreneurship.org.

A couple weeks back HJE was honored to host Mr. Bogle, who delivered a most eloquent speech “Vanguard: Saga of Heroes,” in which he paid tribute to the spirit of the Great Books, as well as the contemporary video game Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. Though he is the last to call himself a hero, the fact is that John Bogle always put his crew’s and clients’ interests before his own “spartan” desires. The Wall Street Journal reported on how he resisted the temptation of hundreds of millions dollars that could have easily been his throughout his career, had he not stayed focused on his simple moral premise—every fee taken by the management comes from the common investor. 300 captures the spirit of Bogle’s Battle, and one can almost envision Bogle leading a small crew of Spartans on Wall Street, motivated not by riches nor wealth, but by Honor and Duty, en route to creating Vanguard—the Street’s best deal.

Director Zach Snyder also lead a small production crew against common wisdom, and 300, based on the historic battle of Thermopylae described by Herodotus and rendered in Frank Miller’s graphic novel, is now making history. In this era of burgeoning Hollywood budgets and star-driven remakes, 300 was shot for less than 65 million—less than half of what a modern Hollywood epic costs—and instead of relying on stars, it created stars. 300 was shot entirely indoors, marrying cutting-edge technology to the timeless principles of Honor and Duty, and emerging with the lasting Glory of an Epic Story. King Leonidas’s can be heard resounding throughout Hollywood—“A new age has come—an age of freedom!”

And 300 touched a nerve. Though the fashionable postmodern sunglasses obscure this reality to many, the fact is that 300, like The Odyssey, “lifts the great song again,” via the ideals of Honor and Valor. 300 defines Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology—marrying timeless ideals to tomorrow’s technologies, performing epic truths in the living language, and returning home with the elixir—the lasting value of a timeless epic. It is quite an honor to have William Fay keynoting the HJEF.

Fay and Bogle demonstrate that opportunity abounds for those seeking to perform the classical ideals in the contemporary context—for those willing to own the risk of the renaissance. The HJEF is also quite honored to be hosting Flint Dille and John Zuur—of filmandgames.com—who are pioneering the merger of the two mediums, as well as utilizing the interactive technologies of video games to bring story to life. And Christopher Vogler of The Writer’s Journey and David Whatley of The Hero’s Journey video game will make for a most fascinating panel.

Bogle's Battle opens with a flourish from St. Paul, I Corinthians, “If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?” And 300’s King Leonidas tells us, “Well that’s an easy choice for us to make, Spartans never retreat, Spartans never surrender!”

So come join us on March 31st for that which has been a long-time coming—a Great Books renaissance—a revival of the classical spirit and soul which shall be driven by humble heroes—seeking not Glory itself, but the Honor and Duty that leads to the Glory of Epic Story—rendered in tomorrow’s video games, ventures, novels, and films.

http://herosjourneyentrepreneurship.org/

Hero's Journey Entrepreneurship: March 31st @ Pepperdine

Hero's Journey Entrepreneurship: March 31st @ Pepperdine
http://herosjourneyentrepreneurship.org/
"The stock exchange is a poor substitute for the Holy Grail" --Joseph Schumpeter

Imagine video games with plots, characters, and Epic storytelling. Imagine contemporary novels and movies with the same--with heroes and heroines--with Audrey Hepburns and Steve McQueens; whence our own John Wayne and Man with No Name ride into town for the showdown where story trumps spectacle, where Beatrice exalts Dante, and Odysseus sails on home to Penelope. Imagine software systems and startups that actually pay the artists and talent--the filmmakers, models, photographers, and bands. Imagine new classes/research programs/ventures supporting all this. Join the Hollywood Renaissance on March 31st, 2007.

John C. Bogle, Founder & Former CEO of Vanguard Delivers Entrepreneurship Week Keynote

Click To Play

John C. Bogle, Founder & Former CEO of Vanguard Delivers Entrepreneurship Week Keynote

Across the country, colleges and universities will celebrate Entrepreneurship Week (February 24 to March 3, 2007) with lectures and special programs reflecting on the significant role entrepreneurship plays in creating “the wealth of nations.” Typically thought of as a venue for business and industry, entrepreneurship’s ideals and precepts can be found in all realms of a classical liberal arts education—in every epic story based on the classic Hero’s Journey, from The Odyssey, to the American Founding, to Wall Street entrepreneur John Bogle’s founding of Vanguard.

Campbell’s Hero’s Journey tells of the reluctant hero hearing a “call to adventure.” They embark on a “road of trials,” ascend the mountain, and “return on home with the elixir”—ideals rendered real in the service of others. And classic entrepreneurs like Bogle, who keep the higher ideals above the bottom line as did Odysseus, are needed on Wall Street and Main Street, in Hollywood and the Heartland, in academia and government—such is the call to adventure in Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology 101.

Bogle first heard the “call to adventure” in 1949, when, while searching for a senior thesis topic at Princeton, he came across a Fortune Magazine article which stipulated that money managers rarely beat the market. Why then—he applied common sense to the obvious—the same common sense which let Einstein, Shakespeare, and Twain spin gold from the obvious—are we paying money managers? Bogle’s 1951 senior thesis set his ideals in stone, “The principal function of mutual funds is the management of their investment portfolios. Everything else is incidental . . . Future industry growth can be maximized by a reduction of sales loads and management fees . . . Mutual funds can make no claim to superiority over the market averages . . . funds should operate in the most efficient, honest, and economical way possible.”

Walter L. Morgan, founder of the famous Wellington Fund, read Bogle’s thesis and became his “mentor” and boss. Bogle “crossed the threshold”—taking the train from Princeton to Wall Street—and went on to replace his mentor as head the Wellington Fund, whence he assembled a “fellowship” of whiz-kids who had achieved an extraordinary record over the previous years. They accompanied him on the “road of trials” as they lead Wellington to new heights. But then, during the market decline in the early seventies, Bogle found himself fired in a “reversal of fortune.”

In the darkness of the “belly of the whale,” he saw opportunity. He would ride back into town for a “showdown.” Bogle writes, “The Company directors who fired me comprised a minority of the board of Wellington Fund itself, so I went to the Fund Board with a novel proposal: Have the Fund, and its then—ten associated funds (today there are 100), declare their independence from their manager. It wasn't exactly the Colonies telling King George III to get lost, as it were, in 1776. But fund independence—the right of a fund to operate in the interest of its own shareholders, free of conflict and domination by the fund's outside manager—was at the heart of my proposal.”

Bogle won this battle, and he implemented the moral premise of his Princeton senior thesis in the form of the world’s first index fund, returning on home with the “elixir” that is Vanguard, enriching the common investor with “the ultimate boon.” Managing the Wellington fund by hiring partners based on past performance had been a “refusal of the call” he had heard back at Princeton—a “temptation from the true path.” But our humble hero, buoyed by the eternal ideals of service, simplicity, and common sense, was “resurrected” in Vanguard, stronger than ever.

Bogle humbly describes the apotheosis: “The magic, such as it may be, of the index fund is simply that it gets the croupiers largely out of the game: No sales charges; no management fees; tiny operating costs; virtually no transaction costs; high tax efficiency. Anyone could have had—and I imagine many others did have—this banally simple, completely obvious insight.” So it is that many hear the “call to adventure,” but all too often the story ends with the “refusal of the call.” Like Odysseus, Bogle sailed it on home.

Some controversy surrounded Bogle stepping down as Vanguard’s chairman, but by then our veteran voyager had demonstrated that there was but one who could string the bow. The Vanguard brand retains its value via Bogle’s senior thesis, books, and speeches—by his words, just as the Odyssey has voyaged over 2800 years by Homer’s words. Ideals are real, and thus make excellent long-term investments.

Just as Odysseus was opposed in his own home, Bogle has oft been opposed by Wall Street Lotus Eaters who prefer short-term temptations—the Sirens of speculation and Wall Street’s casinos—over the long-term wealth that is generated by the prudent allocation of capital towards rugged innovation, integrity, and classic entrepreneurship—the kind of investing that the world’s greatest investor—Warren Buffett—also happens to favor. The common sense premise of classic entrepreneurship—the risk taker ought get the reward—resounds throughout all of Bogle’s works.

While Odysseus was risking his life, serving his country in battle, the suitors to his wife Penelope stayed back home, partying and depleting the wealth of his estate, just as the ironic, managerial class is depleting the wealth of our savings, investments, and cultural heritage. In the opening words of The Odyssey, Homer tells us why we ought to read Bogle’s Battle for the Soul of Capitalism:

He saw the townlands
and learned the minds of many distant men,
and weathered many bitter nights and days
in his deep heart at sea, while he fought only
to save his life, to bring his shipmates home.
But not by will nor valor could he save them,
for their own recklessness destroyed them all
children and fools, they killed and feasted on
the cattle of Lord Helios, the Sun,
and he who moves all day through heaven
took from their eyes the dawn of their return.
Of these adventures, Muse, daughter of Zeus,
tell us in our time, lift the great song again.

--Homer's Odyssey, translated by Fitzgerald

Battle is a most optimistic book, beginning with a call to the rising generation “To begin the world anew.” Bogle “lifts the great song again,” reminding us that entrepreneurship is a humble hero’s journey—an art that must be performed in the context of immortal ideals. Bogle writes, “In retrospect, I believe that idealism—the dream of a better world; fairness to one's fellow human beings; focus on simplicity; emphasis on stewardship—has driven my life from Blair Academy to Princeton, and then through my long career. Happily, I've learned that the link between idealism and economics is a powerful one. Indeed, both Vanguard's structure and the index fund concept are classic examples of the fact that enlightened idealism is sound economics.”

As we celebrate entrepreneurship week, we must celebrate those Great Books and Classics that have bestowed upon us the everlasting wealth that exalts the better angels of our nature. The soul is defined not via science, but via Epic Story, and thus the soul of capitalism derives not from economics, but rather economics derives from story—from hero’s journey entrepreneurship performed both in living ventures and immutable classics. By studying artistic entrepreneurship, students will see the vast opportunity that abounds in the humble service of higher ideals—in owning the risk of the renaissance.

So come join us on March 31st, 2007 for the first annual Hero's Journey Entrepreneurship Festival!

Arts Entrepreneurship as An Academic Discipline

ENTREPRENEURSHIP AS AN ACADEMIC DISCIPLINE

a lecture delivered in Dr. E’s freshman seminar, October 2006

by Dr. Elliot McGucken, October 2006

BACK STORY

“When storytelling declines, the result is decadence.” –Aristotle, Poetics

“Flawed and forced storytelling is forced to substitute spectacle for substance, trickery for truth. Weak stories, desperate to hold audience attention, degenerate into multimillion-dollar razzle-dazzle demo reels. In Hollywood imagery becomes more and more extravagant, in Europe more and more decorative. The behavior of actors becomes more histrionic, more and more lewd, more and more violent. Music and sound effects become increasingly tumultuous. The total effect transnudes into the grotesque. A culture cannot evolve without honest, powerful storytelling. When society repeatedly experiences glossy, hollowed-out , pseudo-stories, it degenerates. We need true satires and tragedies, dramas and comedies that shine a clean light into the dingy corners of the human psyche and society. If not, as Yeats warned, ‘…the center cannot hold.’”—Robert Mckee, Story

Yet while Vanguard too has emerged as a sort of prototypical 21st century firm—a virtual organization, enormous in size, heavily reliant on process, on real-time communications and computer technology, and managed largely by the contemporary numeric standards of modern management—its founding values remain intact. At our core, we remain a prototypical 18th century firm, thriving on our early entrepreneurship, on our simple investment strategies, on eternal verities such as service to others before service to self, and on putting the interests of shareholders ahead of the interest of managers, doing our best to hold high the belief that ethical principles and moral values must be, finally, the basis for any enterprise worth its salt. –John Bogle, Founder and former Chairman of Vanguard

There's a difference between us. You think the people of this land exist to provide you with position. I think your position exists to provide those people with freedom. And I go to make sure that they have it. –William Wallace in Braveheart, by Randall Wallace

Man should not be in the service of society, society should be in the service of man. When man is in the service of society, you have a monster state, and that's what is threatening the world at this minute. –Joseph Campbell, author of Hero With a Thousand Faces

THE CALL TO ADVENTURE

The modern university can benefit vastly from the academic field of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship serves the students by teaching them that the classical, eternal precepts of a liberal arts education are most useful tools. The field of entrepreneurship can exalt universities to higher roles of leadership, where rather than costing more via spiraling tuitions outpacing inflation to support esoteric studies, education regains a practical spirit, becoming an entity that creates wealth for the greater community, fostering small businesses run by and employing students and professors.

Entrepreneurship focuses a liberal arts education on practical, meaningful results; encouraging students to work for more than a grade—to work for their future, to take ownership in their lives and in investments of their time and money—to assess risk, call the bluff of the promised pension, and make their passions their professions. Artistic entrepreneurship can return the moral premise—that seed of every lasting work of art and epic business venture, of faith and the family—to Wall Street and Main Street; to Hollywood and the Heartland. And the Academy can lead the way.

In the digital age, rather than just studying case studies in entrepreneurship, the students can become the case studies on a small scale. With little capital risk, they can register domain names, file for copyrights and trademarks, and launch ecommerce sites. And when students have ownership in their own projects and visions, the textbook’s case studies come to life. It’s no longer merely academic—suddenly the university is about acquiring the practical and aesthetic tools to follow one’s dreams.

Entrepreneurship provides a method and means to unite the professional schools and the classical liberal arts disciplines that have become artificially separated on the modern campus. Business, law, art, and technology congregate in a single classroom, just as they must in the real world so as to provide useful and meaningful results such as the iPod and the xBox 360; and just as they do when a freshman shoots a digital picture, defines her rights, and uploads it for sale in a span of a few minutes. The field of entrepreneurship can inspire the academy with an exalted rigor, wherein students are inspired to read works such as the Constitution and Great Books more deeply, while working more diligently so as to further the projects they have ownership in.

CROSSING THE THRESHOLD

The Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology class I am teaching at Pepperdine University and which I have taught at UNC Chapel Hill, whose syllabus maries Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey to the entrepreneur’s quest, offers an "artistic" and efficient way to communicate the natural value of entrepreneurship's classic ideals. Qualities such as character, honor, and integrity are perhaps the most important assets in entrepreneurship, just as they are in enduring literature, and there is no better way to teach them then via classical myths. All law derives from epic storytelling, and entrepreneurs such as Steven Jobs, Richard Branson, Randall Wallace, and John Bogle of the Vanguard Group, have all followed the Hero’s Journey in their entrepreneurial quests, which students may be introduced to via entities they already know, such as The Matrix, Star Wars, The Lord of The Rings, and Braveheart. Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces makes an excellent central text for the class.

APPROACH TO THE INNER-MOST CAVE

In addition to hosting guest lecturers and successful entrepreneurs, in addition to case studies, an academic discipline must seek out the eternal precepts and principles of the field, which serve as practical tools when applied in the student’s living projects and ventures. Artistic Entrepreneurship and Technology is where the rubber hits the road, where Shakespeare, Homer, and Dante—and Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison—provide practical inspiration complementing Jobs, Bogle, Branson, and Cuban. And over time a textbook may emerge, along with a workbook, based on the general structure of the Hero’s Journey, showing the importance of the moral premise in all lasting ventures, and offering accompanying workbooks and websites to help the students along in entrepreneurial endeavors.

MEETING THE MENTORS

We need to listen to distinguished mentors, both classical and contemporary, who are calling upon us to place the higher ideals over the bottom line—those who have taken risks and bet on moral precepts that have become blockbuster movies such as Braveheart and enduring ventures such as Vanguard. In a speech entitled, Capitalism, Entrepreneurship, and Investing The 18th Century vs. the 21st Century (January 25, 2006) John Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group, writes:

But at its best, entrepreneurship entails something far more important than mere money. Please do not take my word for it. Heed the words of the great Joseph Schumpeter, the first economist to recognize entrepreneurship as the vital force that drives economic growth. In his Theory of Economic Development, written nearly a century ago, Schumpeter dismissed material and monetary gain as the prime mover of the entrepreneur, finding motivations like these to be far more powerful: (1) "The joy of creating, of getting things done, of simply exercising one's energy and ingenuity," and (2) “The will to conquer: the impulse to fight, . . . to succeed for the sake, not of the fruits of success, but of success itself.”

In order to reform Wall Street, Bogle is calling for nothing less than a literary renaissance, for as General Macarthur said, “It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.” On the first page of his book The Battle for The Soul of Capitalism, Bogle quotes not an economist, but Joseph Campbell and the Bible.

. . . The most recent episode witnessed the culmination of an era in which our business corporations and our financial institutions, working in tacit harmony, corrupted the traditional nature of capitalism, shattering both confidence in the markets and accumulated wealth of countless American families… at the root of the problem, in the broadest sense, was a societal change aptly described by Joseph Campbell: “In medieval times, as you approached the city, your eye was taken by the Cathedral. Today, it’s the towers of commerce. It’s business, business, business. We had become what Campbell called a “bottom-line” society. But our society came to measure the wrong bottom line: form over substance, prestige over virtue, charisma over character, the ephemeral over the enduring, even mammon over God. –John Bogle, The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism

Bogle’s Vanguard index fund—an entrepreneurial startup based on his senior thesis at Princeton—is one of the world’s largest and most-trusted. It is a maverick fund that bypasses the intermediaries and provides maximum returns for small investors—a fund that embodies entrepreneurship’s central maxim—the risk takers ought get the rewards.

Wall Street will be reformed when the Academy is reformed—when the Academy again places the higher ideals over the bottom line and requires the study of the epic myths and everlasting principles. And the academic field of entrepreneurship could accomplish this.

The immediate case studies will change over time, and the student’s projects will have to surf the cutting edge of their day’s technology; but the textbooks on entrepreneurship must be founded upon those precepts that never change, from Homer’s Odyssey on down—the humble hero’s journey. So it is that the class becomes a core institution, serving freshmen and business and law students—teaching all that the greater wealth is to be had by keeping he higher ideals over the bottom line—serving film students in a most efficient manner by teaching them that the story of their films, lives, and business ventures—all based upon common moral precepts—are parallel journeys.

FORMING THE FELLOWSHIP

Entrepreneurship unites the professional schools—the business and law schools—with the undergraduate program, and my classes have included students from all, ranging from a freshman with a successful record label to a third-year law student. All forty-five of us learned from one-another and the classics, and even the student who came in with an anti-capitalist bent soon agreed it was a good thing that her favorite band get paid, so that they might make more songs. We learned that just like the “force” in Star Wars, capitalism can serve exalted or degraded purposes, and that its rightful role is letting creators protect and profit from what they do; rewarding not the bureaucracy nor the intermediaries nor the tech-transfer departments, but the risk-takers—the authors, inventors, investors, and innovators on the front lines of entrepreneurship. Simply put, we learned the United States Constitution:

The Congress shall have Power to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; —The United States Constitution, Section 8, Clause 8

And I ask each class—“imagine what would happen if the CEO of Apple or Sony or Yahoo or Microsoft were to neglect the art, the business, the law, or the technology. Imagine if you worked your whole life for a pension that evaporated, whereas you could have invested in your greatest asset—your passions and dreams. Imagine if you could endow video games with epic storytelling—with a soul so that the photo-realism might gain a spiritual realism, so that video games might become enduring art; thusly increasing their markets and enhancing their brands. The world is yours for the making, and a renaissance is yours for the taking.”

THE ROAD OF TRIALS: TEST, ALLIES, AND ENEMIES

While MBA programs typically want the liberal arts students to walk on over to the business school to learn about accounting and business structures before launching ventures, MBAs have just as much to gain by walking over to the arts and literature departments, to learn of aesthetics and the everlasting principles expressed in Homer on down--for who has ever created a greater brand than "homer's Odyssey?" Would that more MBAs who ran the likes of Enron and Worldcom and the countless other postmodern debacles had read classics such as Dante’s Inferno and The Iliad, in which Achilles said, “For as I detest the doorways of Death, I detest that man, who hides one thing in the depths of his heart, and speaks forth another.” Would that more artists had read the classics too, so that we might have avoided the recent scandals in NY publishing of plagiarism and fake memoirs, and so that the Hollywood box office might be revived with classical ideals performed in the contemporary context, rather than soulless remake after remake after remake.

As Aristotle said, “When storytelling declines, the result is decadence.” And so it is that Artistic Entrepreneurship is after that higher exit strategy, that, in Herman Melville’s words, cannot be “counted down in dollars from the mint.” The wealth of a renaissance might not show up on the immediate balance sheet of the day-trader or intermediaries seeking to maximize transaction fees, but there is no better long-term investment for civilization.

Einstein noted, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” Too many economists, by neglecting the family, literature, and our cultural heritage; and instead focusing on obscure equations that the world’s greatest investors—such as Bogle and Buffett—deem as useless at best and devious at worst, end up as siphoners and transferrers of wealth instead of creators of wealth. The field of entrepreneurship must recognize the source of wealth—the individual creators and those systems, recognized by classic economists such as Adam Smith—that benefit and bolster the individual creator. The study of entrepreneurship must be a study of those systems that recognize and protect the natural rights of every person to say what they want and own what they do.

In his 1906 address concerning copyright delivered to Congress, Mark Twain paid homage to these natural rights, citing two fundamental documents which are either ignored or taught only to be deconstructed:

I am aware that copyright must have a limit, because that is required by the Constitution of the United States, which sets aside the earlier Constitution, which we call the decalogue. The decalogue says you shall not take away from any man his profit. I don't like to be obliged to use the harsh term. What the decalogue really says is, "Thou shalt not steal," but I am trying to use more polite language. . . The laws of England and America do take it away, do select but one class, the people who create the literature of the land. They always talk handsomely about the literature of the land, always what a fine, great, monumental thing a great literature is, and in the midst of their enthusiasm they turn around and do what they can to discourage it.

So it is that in seeking to teach entrepreneurship, we must be careful of discouraging it. “Can entrepreneurship be taught?” is a question that echoes of Socrates’ classic question— “Can virtue be taught?” Socrates wasn’t sure, and his humility should serve as a guiding beacon in devising curriculums on entrepreneurship, as it did for Benjamin Franklin, whose thirteenth precept was, “Humility: Imitate Socrates and Jesus.”

The eternal aspects of art are no stranger to the world’s greatest investor. Warren Buffett claims, “I am an artist—not an investor.” And too, he says that his favorite time for holding a stock is eternity—that would be the very same eternity Shakespeare and Dante wrote for, based on the very same classical entities Buffett studies—the fundamentals of truth and beauty—of simple, honest arithmetic over convoluted, pretentious, postmodern, and ultimately devious financial chicanery with but one intent—to transfer all the wealth to the intermediaries and the all risk to the investors, workers, and creators. ‘Tis a world inverted, and it brings to mind Hamlet’s words, “The time is out of joint: O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!”

Buffett says, “It has been helpful to me to have tens of thousands students turned out of business schools taught that it didn’t do any good to think.” Buffett is making his point in a comic manner, as one laughs that one might not weep, but there has been tragedy too. As John Bogle points out, the lack of higher, exalted knowledge amongst the MBAs on Wall Street has not benefited the common worker—the teachers, preachers, and firemen—who trust Wall Street with their savings, investments, and pensions. Indeed—it is not Wall Street that creates wealth—it are the people of this country and the world living the free market system and taking the risks—the workers, business owners, natural entrepreneurs, and visionaries. As Buffett acknowledges, “too much intelligence and energy is being devoted to scraping the crumbs off the table of capitalism instead of preparing the meal.”

The academic field of entrepreneurship must be devoted to recognizing, bolstering, and empowering those rugged individuals who are “preparing the meal.”

THE APOTHEOSIS

The field of entrepreneurship has a wonderful power to focus diverse academic pursuits on a common goal—it calls upon education to focus on practical, tangible, and useful results—to render lofty ideals real, thusly emphasizing the great value of a liberal arts education in all pursuits. And it calls upon students to focus their energies on their passions and dreams, whereby they learn that a big trick of success is “working hard at what you love,” as Steve Jobs suggested in his 2005 Stanford commencement address.

In many ways a class on entrepreneurship is a study of American History, bringing in the founding documents on the first day, showing the students the words that stipulate that they get to say what they want and own what they do. Entrepreneurship, rather than displacing the liberal arts as some might have feared, exalts the liberal arts to a guiding role and calls upon the students to take the classical precepts to heart. For just as the liberal arts are the center and circumference of that most enduring business plan by which all modern business plans are written—the United States Constitution—so it is that the liberal arts must be the center and circumference of any curriculum devoted to entrepreneurship. Classic entrepreneurship has ever been about holding the higher ideals above the bottom line, about creating value as opposed to making money. And this is a lesson best taught by the enduring poets and prophets of yore—to be introduced in classes devoted to entrepreneurship, answering the natural yearning in every student’s heart and soul to serve a greater purpose, and create wealth via exalted meaning.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.
--Henry David Thoreau

In seeking out its defining precepts, the academic field of entrepreneurship looks towards those classic stories told over and over, with similar themes but ever-changing characters. From Braveheart, to The Matrix, to The American Founding, it's always about “we the people” stepping up and creating “a better form of government,” or business, or enterprise in the context of property rights where one gets to profit from the fruits of one’s labor, where integrity and honor walk hand-in-hand with owning what one creates; where freedom comes with the responsibility to do something useful with it. It's about long-term investing paralleling Odysseus's journey—forgoing the temptations of the Lotus Eaters and Sirens to serve one’s men—one’s employees and shareholders and customers—to make it on home. Entrepreneurship emphasizes value-investing as do Buffett and Bogle—investing one's time in worthwhile pursuits that have solid foundations—based in truth, beauty, and duty—based in service not of the bottom line, but the higher ideals. Based in service not of the managers, but of the customers.

THE ULTIMATE BOON

The world is ready for a renaissance, and entrepreneurship as an academic discipline can lead the way. The higher ideals must be placed above the bottom line on Wall Street and in Hollywood, on Main Street and in the heartland. And who better to accomplish this than today’s Academy—by communicating the vast opportunities of applying classical ideals, to every student? So it is that the academic discipline of entrepreneurship could exalt and entertain the contemporary culture, taking it to a better place.

Thinking entrepreneurially can also help students in the context of established companies and institutions—all of which must serve the customer in novel, ever-changing ways that surf the cutting-edge of technology—all of which must seek to continually reward the risk-takers and reign in the bureaucracy. Entrepreneurship can provide the student with the basic tools to launch new ventures centered around the novel, useful ideas that their boss’s bureaucracy rejects.

While most business schools hold business plan competitions and teach classes on entrepreneurship, they don't always do a great job at reaching out to the world's natural entrepreneurs and authentic founts of wealth—artists, coders, web designers, creative writers, science grad students, and local small-business owners—those reluctant heroes who’re following their passions and dreams. They possess the natural integrity and idealism that will allow them to follow those dreams come hell or high water—on past all those hurdles—on towards rendering sustainable ventures, as the rugged precepts in their souls become the character of their enterprises. Such naturals need to meet one-another—they need a class or two providing them with all the fundamentals of incorporation and intellectual property law. That is the purpose of Artistic Entrepreneurship and Technology 101.

I knew so many indie labels in Chapel Hill, so many coders running small but profitable ventures—so many grad students with cool ideas who never made it over to the business school—true entrepreneurs who could benefit from an efficient, useful class that taught of entrepreneurship’s immortal precepts and the practical tools of the trade, and married it all to technology and most useful books resources on the web. Those who would benefit most not from handing over their creations to the bureaucracy of the technology-transfer departments, but from networking with one-another, and learning how to incorporate, leverage technology, and protect and profit from their intellectual property. Who would benefit not from studying venture capital, which is oft little more than a lingering legacy of a bygone era which corrupted entrepreneurship by making it a tool of elite insiders to profit off of fake companies in 1999, but who could benefit from learning about entrepreneurship from that original American entrepreneur—Benjamin Franklin—who emphasized virtues first and foremost—virtues such as frugality and humility. For what does it profit one to gain the world and lose one’s soul?

THE ROAD HOME

So I created a business class for artists and an art class for MBAs—a class for the creative types across all disciplines, as every artist is an entrepreneur and every entrepreneur is an artist—and I based the class on Joseph Campbell's "Hero's Journey." The classic hero’s journey speaks to all levels, to all cultures, to all religions. There are multiple parallels between the entrepreneurial journey and the classical myth that pervades movies ranging from The Matrix to The Lord of The Rings to Star Wars—the call to adventure (seeing an opportunity), refusal of the call (it's too hard—somebody else would have done it—working a corporate job with a pension is safer), meeting the mentor (finding the angels/professors/books/coaches/leaders/entrepreneurs who can help), crossing the threshold (the point of no return—signing the lease/hiring employees), seizing the sword from the stone (getting the patent/raising funds), the showdown/ordeal (facing down competitors), tests, allies, and enemies (collaborators, competition, and shapeshifters). And even after all that, even after the patent has issued and the funds have been raised, there's still the classic road on home (getting the product to market!) and the return with the elixir—the exit strategy.

And too, there's the belly of the whale (Steve Jobs being kicked out of Apple by the MBAs and into the darkness of NEXT) and the resurrection (Steve Jobs returning on home, reinventing Apple with the iPod, and leading it to new heights). And it's always the least likely suspect—the reluctant hero—who somehow succeeds by keeping the higher ideals over the bottom line—Frodo was just a little Hobbit, Neo was a lowly cubicle worker—and Jobs, Branson, and Gates have not a college degree between them.

The class teaches that failure isn't failure, so much as a small step along the greater journey. In tirelessly testing different filaments, Edison said, "I have not failed 1,000 times. I have successfully discovered 1,000 ways to NOT make a light bulb."

The rigor of the Great Books and Classics is present every step of the way, along with practical applications of that wise rigor. We read the US Constitution wherein the only place the word “right” is mentioned is with respect to the right of the creator to own what they do. And then we surf over to the uspto.gov website to see how simple it is to conduct trademark and patent searches, and to find the forms for patents, copyrights, and trademarks. The class mixes the eternal, abstract principles of entrepreneurship—most of which can be found in the classics—with cutting edge, living examples.

RETURN WITH THE ELIXIR

Again, the field of entrepreneurship serves the typical liberal arts students first and foremost, as it calls on them to contemplate the eternal precepts and wisdom of the classics they are reading; and it brings the ideals to life by having them apply them to real-world scenarios in the form of their living ventures. So it is that their projects become the primary case studies, and suddenly “textbook” case studies come to life with more pertinent meaning. Entrepreneurship calls upon the student to take ownership in their ideas and their future, and it teaches that to lead is to serve—that the best way to get rich is to create wealth.

AE&T comes to life in the classroom, and developing the curriculum is akin to asking, “What eternal principles, books, and resources can form a lasting syllabus and course of study?” It's about respecting those things that never change, and once arming students with those ideals, telling them that they've got to respect that the state of life and business is constant change, and then encouraging them to go forth and capitalize on that change, as they take the responsibility of manifesting the eternal ideals in maverick manners on their very own Hero's Journeys. The greater risk is not in following dreams and ideals, but forgetting them.

Too often the liberal arts are viewed as a useless pursuit, and a Great Books education is thus replaced by business and marketing classes that offer but “cliffsnotes” versions of the fundamental principles by which all business and art last. To often entrepreneurship is viewed as the art of exploitation—MBAs marching into companies and exiting with the pensions and investments of the duped workers and stockholders—and humanities students are rightly discouraged from walking over to the business school, for in the wake of all the corporate scandals, what business school has ever passed judgment or apologized? Famous entrepreneurs such as John Bogle and Warren Buffett regualrly pass judgement on Wall Street, but MBA programs do not teach their works. Sure, the business schools offer a class on “ethics” here and there, but does that imply that accounting can be done without ethics? Sadly enough, accounting without ethics has time and again proven to be far more profitable to the short-term investors and insiders who do not get caught—and all too often to even those that do. Although Wall Street firms have been fined millions in the wake of the scandals, it all amounts to a tiny slap on the wrist--fractions of pennies on the dollars--after seven trilion was transferred circa 2000. So it is that they earn a reputation that the main requirement is not a pursuit of the truth—the classic calling of the vast majority of students—but a tacit circumvention of it. And the students they attract further reinforce the atmosphere.

How ironic it is that in this era of celebrated and revered business books such as Built to Last, nothing lasts. The family, like the pension and postmodern politician’s promise, are as ephemeral as the modern movies Hollywood produces and hypes, which less and less people are seeing. To build meaningful ventures that truly last, the moral precept must be returned to the center and circumference of every institution. This is the role of rugged entrepreneurs. And vast opportunities exist for those bold enough to lead the renaissance that places the higher ideals above the bottom line--on Wall Street and Main Street--in Hollywood and the Heartland.

Tying entrepreneurship to classical myth is a lot of fun, and if the students don't quite know who Richard Branson or John Bogle is yet, if Joseph Campbell seems a bit esoteric, they know Frodo and Neo and Luke Skywalker—a farm boy who felt there was something more out there—who heard that call to adventure and went on to save the universe. If they’ve not yet heard of Randall Wallace, the author of Braveheart, they yet know William Wallace, who lived a parallel journey. And the class reminds them that life is a great adventure to be lived with a brave heart and a free spirit.

During the most recent class the students discussed how they're watching movies and reading books differently—how they're extracting the eternal principles—the classic call to adventure, the meeting with the mentor, the road of trials, tests, allies, and enemies, the showdown/ordeal, and the return on home. And how they’re growing to see the act of following moral precepts are why the very same plot points appear in Steve Job's and Branson's careers.

In reading both The Odyssey and The Battle for The Soul of Capitalism, they see that it was simple moral precepts that guided Odysseus on home, and which inspired John Bogle to found Vanguard based on higher ideals that countered Wall Street's wisdom—the higher ideals he had felt as a senior at Princeton—that paying people to manage money was by and large a waste for the investor. Regarding Vanguard, Bogle writes,

The first invention took place only months after we began, when a simple thought, indeed one that had first occurred to me when I wrote my senior thesis at Princeton University in 1949-51, began nagging at my mind. If mutual funds as a group fail to deliver stock market returns by the amount of their heavy costs, why not own the entire market at the minimal cost we were prepared to deliver? Then, investors could capture almost 100% of that annual return, rather than the 70%-80% fraction that would likely be achieved by our peers. This banally obvious insight quickly led to the simple invention that has been the most powerful manifestation of Vanguard's philosophy—the first index mutual fund in history. Today, "Bogle's Folly"—now Vanguard 500 Index Fund—is the largest mutual fund in the world.

Bogle was a common worker on Wall Street for twenty years, just like Neo in The Matrix, before he finally launched Vanguard; to follow that ideal that he alone saw, that nobody could ever convince him wasn’t real—that fundamental moral premise that the risk takers ought to reap the rewards of their investments.

Bogle was lost his job on Wall Street during the seventies recession; forcing him to finally follow the youthful idealism of his thesis and found Vanguard, just as Randall Wallace was fired from his job in TV before being “forced” to write his very first feature film—Braveheart. So it is that failure and setbacks are contextualized—they become steps along a greater journey, where one trades ones job for one’s higher ideals; which although they pay nothing today, are infinitely better long-term investments.

I recently heard Randall Wallace speak, and he said, “I had never written a feature-length screenplay before. But I decided that I would go down swinging. I was going to write what I wanted to write, and if Hollywood decided it wasn’t good enough, that was how I was going to go out—swinging.” And Braveheart, as you know, won numerous Academy Awards, including best picture and best director. Wallace was nominated for an Academy Award.

So there it is—in the personal journeys of Bogle and Wallace—they lived epic myths centered about a moral premise, and created enduring ventures in their wake. One might call them risk-takers, but look closer, and each knew that the bigger risk was in forgoing one’s moral premise to merely “go with the flow.” So it is that entrepreneurial risk has nothing to do with the roulette wheel that Wall street has become—it has nothing to do with MBAs risking pensions in hedge funds—but risk has everything to do with the lone individual following higher ideals—providing true leadership in going against the establishment; and creating lasting wealth for all.

Wallace had lost his job in TV after telling his boss that Hollywood could do better—that Hollywood could aim higher and voyage deeper. The producer had said, “If we tried for anything deeper, the backwoods folks in Nebraska wouldn’t get it.” To which Wallace said, “I am from the backwoods folks from Tennessee, and not only would they get it, but they would love it. And it is our duty to give it to them.”

And that very same exchange became the moral premise of Braveheart,

There's a difference between us. You think the people of this land exist to provide you with position. I think your position exists to provide those people with freedom. And I go to make sure that they have it. –William Wallace in Braveheart, by Randall Wallace

And too, it is the moral premise of Vanguard:

Just as my book points out, mutual funds are the paradigm of the triumph of managers' capitalism over owners' capitalism. Yet the winning strategy ultimately is held by the firm that provides a community advantage that serves shareholders and owners, simply by taking the lion's share of those oppressive costs out of the investment equation. It is hard to imagine that Dr. Franklin, reborn in our age, wouldn't have sought to serve, not himself, but the community in exactly the same way. –John Bogle, Capitalism, Entrepreneurship, and Investing—The 18th Century vs. the 21st Century, Founder and Former Chairman, The Vanguard Group At the Greater Philadelphia Venture Group

January 25, 2006

And too, it is the moral premise of Joseph Campbell’s life and works—of the Hero’s Journey:

Man should not be in the service of society, society should be in the service of man. When man is in the service of society, you have a monster state, and that's what is threatening the world at this minute. –Joseph Campbell, author of Hero With a Thousand Faces

And when students hear these epic stories, courage is gained—the courage to fail for the moment, or get fired—but only because one is adhering to higher principles while dreaming of an exalted goal—of freedom as it was meant to be. The courage to believe in and follow Jefferson’s eloquent words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The courage to build those better ventures based on those higher ideals. Such courage will be needed to lead a renaissance; and I see that courage in each and every student I meet. May the Academy embrace it, and never stand in its way.a

More Required Reading: Mark Cuban's Blog

Mark Cuban provides a rare voice in today's "ironic" business settings. Whenever and wherever "group think" and the "wisdom of crouds" arise to save us from lone innovators and entrepreneurs, Mark steps forth to remind us that logic, rugged independence, service, and hard work are yet the true founts of enduring wealth.

Cuban provides a rare voice in today's "ironic" business settings--he shoots from the hip and tells it like it is. And he gets it right--Digital Rights Management is important for the innovator--from the lone documentarian to the major studio.

And thus, like Homer's Odyssey and John Bogle's Battle for The Soul of Capitalism, Cuban's blog is required reading in my AE&T class.

Both Cuban and Bogle call the Wall Street bluff in their works, and Cuban gives great advice on investing: your best investment is yourself--your pasions and dreams.

MARK CUBAN ON WALL STREET/INVESTING:

"So what to do if you want to invest your money? What to do if you want to end this year with more than you started with?

Simple, avoid risk.

Risk is what Wall Street lies about every day. Risk is what they try to sweep under the covers knowing that we all are addicted to the dream of financial freedom. Risk is the poison that is masked by the commercials.

When you see a commercial for a brokerage, they are telling you in a very subtle way that they remove risk. Invest with them and the risks regarding investing that you have heard about will be reduced or eliminated because they are so smart. All of which they say before they rush through all the disclaimers that confirm that everything they just said is nonsense, that they cant really avoid risk.' " --Mark Cuban

And here is some invaluable advice that forms the center and circumference of AE&T:

"3. Invest in yourself. Do the things that can get you closer to your goals and dreams. It won't come from a brokerage commercial. It will come from preparing yourself, working hard, and standing apart from your competition. You Inc. is the best stock you can ever buy... if you are willing to do the work." --Mark Cuban

When you buy a stock, or sock money away in bank, you are generally giving someone else your capital to follow their dreams. Do you really think that their dreams are more important, better, and more worthy of fulfillment than yours?

And all too often these days, when you buy a stock or invest in a mutual fund, you are funding scandals and deceit--you're funding Wall Street marketing schemes that never tell of that simple reality--Wall Street is a negative-sum game. In every transaction, there is a buyer, a seller, and an intermediary who gets a cut. Thus Wall Street loves the daily churn, as that's how the house makes its money. There is one underlying theme in all their machinations--they transfer the wealth to themselves and the risk to you.

John Bogle, the founder of the $700 billion Vanguard Fund and the classic Wall Street innovator wrote,

"That’s the substance of The Battle, so now for a little background. As I mentioned at the outset of my remarks this evening, many of the ideas in my book are consistent with the ideas of some of our best and brightest economic thinkers. My central criticism about investment management, for example, is that a huge portion of the $400 billion that our financial system consumes each year is a dead-weight drag on the returns earned by investors as a group. After all, when we deduct from the gross returns produced in the stock market, the costs that we pay to our investment intermediaries, we investors actually receive only what remains. We investors dine, in fact, at the bottom of the financial food chain. It’s pretty simple, and it’s incontrovertible."

Cuban provides the wisest of all advice--call the bluff, and invest in your own ventures and dreams.

Warren Buffett gives us practially the same advice--invest in those businesses that you yourself can understand. And since we'll never know anyone else's business better than our own, entrepreneurship is the best investment one can make.

Your artistic and entrepreneurial endeavors are superior to the Wall Street Casino--which Bogle, Buffett, and Cuban all lament, as does Lord Keynes.

In his classic The Wall Street Casino, Bogle writes, "Today's stock trading frenzy ill serves the investor. It brings to mind Lord Keynes's warning that ''when the capital development of a country becomes a byproduct of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.'' Investors who stay out of the casino and hold stocks for the long term stand the best chance that their own job of capital accumulation will be well done."

Warren Buffett says, "Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing," and sending your money off to some mutual fund who invests it goodness knows what, and takes a cut, and commissions, and fees, and pays taxes on the churn, constitutes "not knowing what your're doing."

Cuban writes, "If you play poker, you are playing against the other players, and the house only takes its commission. Just like your broker takes its commission. Unlike the stockmarket, you know the rules exactly. You know without question, the house is going to play by the rules. The gaming commission appears to actually enforce rules of play, unlike the SEC. And then there are sports bets. Like any other investment or bet, the question always come down to whether there is good information available, who knows how to use it better, and who is the competition and are they smart or not. Honestly, I don't know if the best and brightest go to Wall Street or Vegas. I don't know the number of gamblers via sports books in vegas vs the the number of gamblers, I mean investors, in the stockmarket."
For while Wall Street is a zero or negative-sum game, your passions and dreams are capable of vast returns. Starting with little or nothing, you can create a lasting work of art--a song, a symphony, a film, a book--something with eteral life--or a humble venture that actually serves customers with a useful product.

Why send your hard-earned money to distant MBAs so they can play negative-sum games trading stocks of suspect companies that are making up the accounting rulse as they go along, all the while placing the lion's share of the risk on you, while granting themselves the lion's share of the rewards?

Also, Cuban echoes the underlying premise of Arts Entreprenuership & Technology--as your passions and dreams are yoru most valuable assets, sweat equity is the most valuable equity there is:

MARK CUBAN ON BOOTSTRAPPING: Rule #1: Sweat Equity is the best start up capital.
"The best businesses in recent entrepreneurial history are those that have been started with little or no money. Dell Computer, MicroSoft, Apple, HP and tens of thousands of others started in dorm rooms, tiny offices or garages. There weren't 100 page long business plans. In all of my businesses, I started by putting together spreadsheets of my expenses, which allowed me to calculate how much revenue I needed to break even and keep the lights on in my office and my apartment. I wrote overviews of what I was selling, why I thought the business made sense, an overview of my competition and why my product and/or service would be important to my customers, and why they should buy or use it. All of it on a piece of yellow paper or in a word processing file, and none of it cost me more than the diet soda I was drinking while I was writing it up." --Mark Cuban

MARK CUBAN ON THE FUTURE OF HOLLYWOOD: Coming soon . . .

MARK CUBAN ON DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT: "Property owners have every right to do whatever they think is necessary to protect their property. Homeowners can build walls and add security. Content owners can add copy protection schemes to their digital content.

Unfortunately for content owners, digital rights/copy protection schemes have always proven crackable. No matter how smart the good guys think their programmers are, the bad guys have programmers that are just as smart. More importantly, the good guys have to build the perfect protection scheme, impenatrable by any of infinite number of possible attacks. The bad guys only have to find out where the good guys screwed up. Its a lot easier to be the bad guys and crack the copy protection. Which is exactly why every effort to fully protect digital content has failed."

So check Mark's blog out.