On Teaching Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology

First off, a big thanks to the Kauffman Foundation--to Megan Storm, Desiree Vargas, and Judith Cone--on behalf of all the students and myself, for affording us the opportunity to render Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology 101 a reality. It’s an idea whose time has come, and student demand will naturally foster research programs, teaching curriculums, and new degrees across multiple campuses. The digital media revolutions have collapsed the artificial barriers between law, business, technology, and art, and the rising students see the potential to become artist/musician/actor/director/writer/programmers--to make their living, render their dreams, and create wealth as artistic entrepreneurs. And thus they’re longing for a classical liberal arts education--the artistic entrepreneur’s greatest tool.

In contemplating art and businesses, the class naturally turns towards that which has endured--what element grants a work eternity? What element grants a brand superiority? What elements have made Warren Buffett the world’s greatest investor? In all these things, it has been Truth’s Beauty that has lead the way. Companies are great not because they make money, but because they create wealth, and think of the vast wealth Shakespeare has created, with all the performances and countless curriculums--think of all the times his words have inspired Justice in the Courtrooms, and given someone the courage to propose. Shakespeare is Hollywood’ all-time most successful screenwriter, an that’s not counting the hundreds of screenplays he’s inspired, form Clueless to Strange Brew. As Harold Bloom credits him with having invented modern literature, perhaps all of Hollywood belongs to the bard. At any rate, it would not hurt the studio heads and MBAs to read Hamlet now and then, and it’s great to witness the students gravitating towards this.

The secret to teaching entrepreneurship is the same as to teaching anything. Teach the greatest that has ever been spoken and written--that has been ventured, patented, and trademarked--that has been composed, created, and crafted--and then encourage the students to do as well, or better. Teach of the noble Hero’s Journeys that have come before--the creation of the Constitution, Vanguard, and the Mona Lisa, and the penning of Dante’s Inferno and Moby Dick--and invite students to find their own Hero’s Journey. Give the students the fundamental values and principles which can be applied in any field--let them know that Ideals are Real, encourage them to patent, trademark, and copyright their creations, and as a teacher, always do your best to lead by example. It is not enough to teach them about risk and reward, but you’ve got to show how your own risks have become your greatest rewards, and your plans for calling the bluff and raising the bar again, and again, and again.

Entrepreneurial, creative students have unbounded drive and passion that only needs to be tapped and encouraged as opposed to ignored and isolated, castigated and impugned. We no-longer live in a memorization-based society, as knowledge is just a few seconds away, as long as one knows the right questions to ask of the right people and google. Education has some catching up to do--it needs to catch up to the classics.

Part of AE&T’s mission is to get creative students in the same room to inspire one-another, as there is no better way to realize one can accomplish one’s dreams than to witness one’s peers accomplishing theirs. Students leave each class inspired to follow their vision with renewed vigor, taking it in slightly different directions and collaborating with others, committed as never before.

The famous physicist John A. Wheeler told my incoming freshman physics class at Princeton that the day to begin research was now, as the freshmen brought the most important element to the table--curiosity. Indeed, Einstein, one of Wheeler’s teachers, once said that imagination is more important than knowledge. And Wheeler added that the freshmen should take the questions to the graduate students before the professors, as grad students are on the cutting edge. It was a great display of humility from a famous physicist, and one of those inspirational moments that you keep, which gives you the freedom to take risks and chances to follow far-off ideals beyond the status quo. Simply put, Wheeler--the physicist who helped Bohr split the first atom and named the black hole--told the freshmen that students are the center and circumference of both teaching and research. So it is with artistic entrepreneurship.

Teaching entrepreneurship is about inspiring people to have the courage to follow their dreams rooted in higher ideals--to follow them beyond the MBAs, MFAs, JDs, and DJ’s--beyond the contemporary cornucopia of certifications and conventions. Bureaucracy is about holding a finger to the wind, following the person right in front of you, and repeating what you heard, and a lot of education is modeled in this manner. But the higher ideals are like the fixed stars--independent of bureaucracy and free for all to discern--and by them entrepreneurs navigate new ventures. Entrepreneurship is not so much about following the person in front of you, as it is looking up to the skies to dream of a better way.

Entrepreneurs may seem to be risk takers, but they’re actually playing it safe by following ideals the bureaucracy consistently tries to trump. To an entrepreneur, the far greater risk is in bureaucracy. With but one life to live, and time the rarest of all commodities, entrepreneurs oft seem like outlaws, but only because they’re following higher laws. The entrepreneur knows that we all become gamblers the second we’re born into a world filled with chance, and to minimize risk, the entrepreneur looks to the fixed ideals--the ideals that become the patents, trademarks, and copyrights of tomorrow’s useful inventions, innovations, and creations. The innovator knows that true wealth lies in being loyal to the abstract imagination, which always marks them as different from the crowd.

Bureaucracy is the cloud wherein petty politics and Orwellian doublespeak obscure ideals, where freedom is traded for a false sense of security, where dreams and visions perish while pension funds mysteriously disappear. Bureaucrats have a massive handbook for separating the creator from their creation, for exposing the investor to the risk and themselves to the rewards as Warren Buffet and John Bogle have noted, for propagating the myths that it’s one type of person suited to creating and another type of person suited to owning, for separating Steven Jobs from Apple, for obscuring the Constitution which so simply and eloquently states that authors and inventors have the right to their own inventions and creations.

But the rising generation knows better. They want to take a chance on saying what they want and owning what they do--they know it’s a rare chance in the history of the world, and they want to rock out. ‘Cause they know deep down it’s how everything gets built. They know it’s why America is the world’s leading exporter of software and culture--of art and music. From Hollywood, to rock’n’roll, to the internet, to the iPod and iTunes--some lone artistic entrepreneur is braving it on their hero’s journey--alone for the moment, but in good company in eternity’s context.

It’s no coincidence that the world’s greatest "value" investor is also the world’s greatest investor--Warren Buffet. And it’s no coincidence that Mr. Buffett stated that his favorite time for holding a stock is eternity--the very same eternity Dante, Shakespeare, and Ayn Rand wrote for. For in both art and business, value derives from fundamental values--those fixed ideals which are sometimes difficult to discern, but which are well-worth navigating by. Even if you’re a freshman.

Artistic entrepreneurship is about putting the art and ideals back into the entrepreneurship--it’s about reminding students that great documents such as the Constitution and Benjamin Franklin’s auto-biography were written for them. They don’t need MBAs and JDs to own what they do--they just need to think a bit, read a couple classics, and follow their passions and dreams en route to creating entities worth owning.

Across the board, more and more money is being spent on marketing--in mutual funds, in Hollywood, in publishing, in academia. And thus mutual funds, Hollywood, publishing, and academia are in a state of decline.

And that’s where the artistic entrepreneurs come in.

Decline is not a ‘cause for pessimism. It’s a call to duty.

Vast opportunities exist for entrepreneurial students to head out to Hollywood, to Wall Street, to NY publishing houses. Or to launch value-based ventures in their dorm rooms, immediately achieving global distribution for their superior books, music, and movies, thanks to the digital renaissance in production and distribution. Somone’s going to build a rights-centric, creator-centric software application, social network with DRM, and web applications that allow authors and artists to upload their content, define their rights, and not only publish throughout the universe, but profit from their works.

Digital Rights Management will be solved in the same way the Founding Fathers solved property rights management--they gave everyone the right to bear arms. Neither lawyers nor corporations nor academics will solve DRM for artists--artist will solve DRM for artists--all they need is a software application that provides them with a turnkey path to all the cutting-edge DRM options. Central planning will work as well here as it did in the Soviet Union and East Germany. Give every artist a 45 Revolver, and let them define and designate their own digital rights management. It’s how the West was won.

Artistic Entrepreneurship ain’t easy, but it wasn’t easy for Steven Jobs when Apple got taken away from him. And it wasn’t easy for John Bogle when he got laid off from his Wall Street job in the seventies. But you know what happened? He was set free to launch Vanguard--a no-load mutual fund that was based on the youthful idealism of his senior thesis from the fifties--an idea that everyone on Wall Street had told him was silly for twenty years. But as is so often the case, our silly little dreams--our honest, youthful passions--are the seed of the world’s greatest ventures.

AE&T is about letting the students take the lead in performing classical ideals on the cutting edge. Letting them take ownership in the future of their culture, and letting them know that the greatest rewards have ever gone not to the risk takers, but to those who seem to be risk takers because they are following some higher code that is the mark of all innovators and leaders.

The following quote comes from the entrepreneur who launched Vanguard--the world’s largest mutual fund, but it can apply to any endeavor--movies, books, technology, literature, and art--any greater venture based on idealism and values:

My generation has left America with much to be set right; you have the opportunity of a lifetime to fix what has been broken. Hold high your idealism and your values. Remember always that even one person can make a difference. And do your part to begin the world anew.

–John C. Bogle, (founded the Vanguard Mutual Fund based on his senior thesis at Princeton), The Battle for The Soul of Capitalism

First off, a big thanks to the Kauffman Foundation--to Megan Storm, Desiree Vargas, and Judith Cone--on behalf of all the students and myself, for affording us the opportunity to render Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology 101 a reality. It’s an idea whose time has come, and student demand will naturally foster research programs, teaching curriculums, and new degrees across multiple campuses. The digital media revolutions have collapsed the artificial barriers between law, business, technology, and art, and the rising students see the potential to become artist/musician/actor/director/writer/programmers--to make their living, render their dreams, and create wealth as artistic entrepreneurs. And thus they’re longing for a classical liberal arts education--the artistic entrepreneur’s greatest tool.

In contemplating art and businesses, the class naturally turns towards that which has endured--what element grants a work eternity? What element grants a brand superiority? What elements have made Warren Buffett the world’s greatest investor? In all these things, it has been Truth's Beauty that has lead the way. Companies are great not because they make money, but because they create wealth, and think of the vast wealth Shakespeare has created, with all the performances and countless curriculums--think of all the times his words have inspired Justice in the Courtrooms, and given someone the courage to propose. Shakespeare is Hollywood's all-time most successful screenwriter, an that’s not counting the hundreds of screenplays he's inspired, from Clueless to Strange Brew. As Harold Bloom credits him with having invented modern literature, perhaps all of Hollywood belongs to the bard. At any rate, it would not hurt the studio heads and MBAs to read Hamlet now and then, and it's great to witness the students gravitating towards the classics.

The secret to teaching entrepreneurship is the same as to teaching anything. Teach the greatest that has ever been spoken and written--that has been ventured, patented, and trademarked--that has been composed, created, and crafted--and then encourage the students to do as well, or better. Teach of the noble Hero’s Journeys that have come before--the creation of the Constitution, Vanguard, and the Mona Lisa, and the penning of Dante’s Inferno and Moby Dick--and invite students to find their own Hero’s Journey. Give the students the fundamental values and principles which can be applied in any field--let them know that Ideals are Real, encourage them to patent, trademark, and copyright their creations, and as a teacher, always do your best to lead by example. It is not enough to teach them about risk and reward, but you’ve got to show how your own risks have become your greatest rewards, and your plans for calling the bluff and raising the bar again, and again, and again.

Entrepreneurial, creative students have unbounded drive and passion that only needs to be tapped and encouraged as opposed to ignored and isolated, castigated and impugned. We no-longer live in a memorization-based society, as knowledge is just a few seconds away, as long as one knows the right questions to ask of the right people and google. Education has some catching up to do--it needs to catch up to the classics.

Part of AE&T’s mission is to get creative students in the same room to inspire one-another, as there is no better way to realize one can accomplish one’s dreams than to witness one’s peers accomplishing theirs. Students leave each class inspired to follow their vision with renewed vigor, taking it in slightly different directions and collaborating with others, committed as never before.

The famous physicist John A. Wheeler told my incoming freshman physics class at Princeton that the day to begin research was now, as the freshmen brought the most important element to the table--curiosity. Indeed, Einstein, one of Wheeler’s teachers, once said that imagination is more important than knowledge. And Wheeler added that the freshmen should take the questions to the graduate students before the professors, as grad students are on the cutting edge. It was a great display of humility from a famous physicist, and one of those inspirational moments that you keep, which gives you the freedom to take risks and chances to follow far-off ideals beyond the status quo. Simply put, Wheeler--the physicist who helped Bohr split the first atom and named the black hole--told the freshmen that students are the center and circumference of both teaching and research. So it is with artistic entrepreneurship.

Teaching entrepreneurship is about inspiring people to have the courage to follow their dreams rooted in higher ideals--to follow them beyond the MBAs, MFAs, JDs, and DJ’s--beyond the contemporary corunucopia of certifications and conventions. Bureaucracy is about holding a finger to the wind, following the person right in front of you, and repeating what you heard, and a lot of education is modeled in this manner. But the higher ideals are like the fixed stars--independent of bureaucracy and free for all to discern--and by them entrepreneurs navigate new ventures. Entrepreneurship is not so much about following the person in front of you, as it is looking up to the skies to dream of a better way.

Entrepreneurs may seem to be risk takers, but they’re actually playing it safe by following ideals the bureaurcay consistently tries to trump. To an entrepreneur, the far greater risk is in bureaucracy. With but one life to live, and time the rarest of all commodities, entrepreneurs oft seem like outlaws, but only because they’re following higher laws. The entrepreneur knows that we all become gamblers the second we’re born into a world filled with chance, and to minimize risk, the entrepreneur looks to the fixed ideals--the ideals that become the patents, trademarks, and copyrights of tomorrow’s useful inventions, innovations, and creations. The innovator knows that true wealth lies in being loyal to the abstract imagination, which always marks them as different from the crowd.

Bureaucracy is the cloud wherein petty politics and Orwellian doublespeak obscure ideals, where freedom is traded for a false sense of security, where dreams and visions perish while pension funds mysteriously disappear. Bureaucrats have a massive handbook for separating the creator from their creation, for exposing the investor to the risk and themselves to the rewards as Warren Buffet and John Bogle have noted, for propagating the myths that it’s one type of person suited to creating and another type of person suited to owning, for separating Steven Jobs from Apple, for obscuring the Constitution which so simply and eloquently states that authors and inventors have the right to their own inventions and creations.

But the rising generation knows better. They want to take a chance on saying what they want and owning what they do--they know it’s a rare chance in the history of the world, and they want to rock out. ‘Cause they know deep down it’s how everything gets built. They know it’s why America is the world’s leading exporter of software and culture--of art and music. From Hollywood, to rock’n’roll, to the internet, to the iPod and iTunes--some lone artistic entrepreneur is braving it on their hero’s journey--alone for the moment, but in good company in eternity’s context.

It’s no coincidence that the world’s greatest "value" investor is also the world’s greatest investor--Warren Buffet. And it’s no coincidence that Mr. Buffett stated that his favorite time for holding a stock is eternity--the very same eternity Dante, Shakespeare, and Ayn Rand wrote for. For in both art and business, value derives from fundamental values--those fixed ideals which are sometimes difficult to discern, but which are well-worth navigating by. Even if you’re a freshman.

Artistic entrepreneurship is about putting the art and ideals back into the entrepreneurship--it’s about reminding students that great documents such as the Constitution and Benjamin Franklin’s auto-biography were written for them. They don’t need MBAs and JDs to own what they do--they just need to think a bit, read a couple classics, and follow their passions and dreams en route to creating entities worth owning.

Across the board, more and more money is being spent on marketing--in mutual funds, in Hollywood, in publishing, in academia. And thus mutual funds, Hollywood, publishing, and acadmeia are in a state of decline.

And that’s where the artistic entrepreneurs come in.

Decline is not a ‘cause for pessimism. It’s a call to duty.

Vast opportunities exist for entrepreneurial students to head out to Hollywood, to Wall Street, to NY publishing houses. Or to launch value-based ventures in their dorm rooms, immediately achieving global distribution for their superior books, music, and movies, thanks to the digital renaissance in production and distribution. Somone’s going to build a rights-centric, creator-centric software application, social network with DRM, and web applications that allow authors and artists to upload their content, define their rights, and not only publish throughout the universe, but profit from their works.

Digital Rights Management will be solved in the same way the Founding Fathers solved property rights management--they gave everyone the right to bear arms. Neither lawyers nor corporations nor academics will solve DRM for artists--artsist will solve DRM for artists--all they need is a software application that provides them with a turnkey path to all the cutting-edge DRM options. Central planning will work as well here as it did in the Soviet Union and East Germany. Give every artist a 45 Revolver, and let them define and designate their own digital rights management. It’s how the West was won.

Artistic Entrepreneurship ain’t easy, but it wasn’t easy for Steven Jobs when Apple got taken away from him. And it wasn’t easy for John Bogle when he got laid off from his Wall Street job in the seventies. But you know what happened? He was set free to launch Vanguard--a no-load mutual fund that was based on the youthful idealism of his senior thesis from the fifties--an idea that everyone on Wall Street had told him was silly for twenty years. But as is so often the case, our silly little dreams--our honest, youthful passions--are the seed of the world’s greatest ventures.

AE&T is about letting the students take the lead in performing classical ideals on the cutting edge. Letting them take ownership in the future of their culture, and letting them know that the greatest rewards have ever gone not to the risk takers, but to those who seem to be risk takers because they are following some higher code that is the mark of all innovators and leaders.

The following quote comes from the entrepreneur who launched Vanguard--the world’s largest mutual fund, but it can apply to any endeavor--movies, books, technology, literature, and art--any greater venture based on idealism and values:

My generation has left America with much to be set right; you have the opportunity of a lifetime to fix what has been broken. Hold high your idealism and your values. Remember always that even one person can make a difference. And do your part to begin the world anew.

–John C. Bogle, (founded the Vanguard Mutual Fund based on his senior thesis at Princeton), The Battle for The Soul of Capitalism