Fear, trust and alcohol

Fear, trust and alcohol

Reposted from www.intelligentnaivety.com

For cultural entrepreneurs, social interactions are not necessarily just a means to an end but represent a source of power and a greater potential for success in their own right. Entrepreneurs in the ‘new’ industries, Rifkin argues, are motivated by being “universally connected so as to affect and shape human consciousness itself.” Baron and Markman argue that this social capital and social skills can enhance an entrepreneur’s success. A high level of social capital, built on a favourable reputation, relevant previous experience, and direct personal contacts, can assist entrepreneurs in gaining access to key potential stakeholders. Once that access is gained, four social skills – social perception, impression management, persuasion and social influence, and social adaptability – can influence the quality of these interactions, and help them reap important benefits.

The power of interaction derives from its ability to facilitate compassionate support, plus strategies for managing risk and making decisions. This adds a personal or social dimension to innovation, reflecting the importance of emotions in the cultural and creative industries. By being able to share experiences and strategies, cultural entrepreneurs create an ‘imagined community’, which Banks notes is united by a mutual narrative and emotional disclosure around their choices to move away from traditional careers.

SHARING THE FEAR

Such networks help individuals in the creative industries to manage, for example, the huge fear of failure which Storey and Sykes highlight. The lifestyles of cultural entrepreneurs’ further give them resources to manage or offset the economic and cultural risks found in the sector. For example, blurring work and leisure can be a strategy for getting to know the market, and pick up new opportunities for work.

Some entrepreneurs, for example, speak of a camaraderie aspect to sharing a financial risk, even if it goes wrong: “You’ve got two people, you’ve got two incomes, you can throw money at a wall…but it doesn’t matter: ‘I’ve just wasted three grand!’ ‘So have I!’ ‘Okay – let’s stay in for three years!’ – you’ve got that as well.” Collaborators are useful for making decisions and experiencing the turbulence of implementing an idea: “It’s quite difficult to make decisions all on your own sometimes…It’s just nice to have someone to share it and experience it with.”

TRUST

The strategies outlined above can only work if there is a shared trust between agents. According to Banks, trust plays a large role in negotiations and interactions, often offsetting more formal forms and structures of protection. For Leadbeater, “the more you can depend on people you can trust, the less risk you take. So it’s easier to take risks when you have relationships with a range of people you can depend upon…” Trust is a vital ‘lubricant’ for knowledge creation: “people share and act on ideas when they trust one another.”
Yet, whilst demand for trust has risen, traditional sources of supply (class, community, family, religion) have declined. Many cultural entrepreneurs have therefore developed their own strategies for establishing this necessary trust: they all emphasised the importance of genuine, personalised relationships. One referred to the importance of being able to “speak to clients as a human being rather than having a client/customer relationship.” Another echoed this: “they’re all people at the end of the day.”

A familiar, but often underrated, factor in achieving this familiarity is the considerable role of alcohol in facilitating these networks. Every interviewee referred to having professional discussions over a drink, in part reflecting the perceived benefits of disinhibition for idea generation. This personalisation of professional business relations reflects the blurred line for cultural entrepreneurs between work and leisure, and allows the necessary development of trust. From such trust relationships, the cultural entrepreneur can develop support mechanisms, an increased understanding of alternative views and situations, and the flexible opportunity to collaborate on areas of mutual interest.

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