Setting the Stage for Innovation

What today’s entrepreneurs can learn from Kantor’s theater

Author’s note: This is an article I wrote for KIC InnoEnergy for their KICkoff pitch competition at the Cricoteka Museum.

At the beginning of next month, the KICkoff Sustainable Energy Pitch Finals will take place in Krakow, a city that’s been generating buzz lately as a center of Central European tech innovation. So perhaps it’s appropriate that the competition venue is the newly-built Cricoteka museum and theater, a place dedicated to one of Krakow’s most famous and innovative personalities: Tadeusz Kantor (1915–1990).

Theater director, actor, set designer, artist and general cultural icon, Tadeusz Kantor, above all, was a man who made things happen.

He was known as an innovator in his lifetime, introducing such elements as using mannequins as actors in his plays. He was the first person to introduce the concept of “happenings” to Polish theater and art, abandoning the traditional stage in favor of surprising unsuspecting audiences with performances held in public.

It’s no coincidence that the venue housing his memory arose in Krakow. Kantor’s ties to the city go deep. He served as a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, staged his first productions and later founded his theater here, and now the Cricoteka museum documents his life and works — and sets the stage for a new era of innovation.

It’s also no coincidence that an event dedicated to promoting innovative thinking and revolutionary technology is taking place in a museum dedicated to Kantor. After all, today’s entrepreneurs can learn a lot from him, as we’ll see.

5 lessons entrepreneurs can learn from Kantor

1. Change the setting

When Kantor decided the traditional setting of a theater, where audiences come prepared to see a spectacle put on by actors on a stage, was stifling his creativity, he chose to give it up entirely. Kantor said it best himself: “Up to this point, I have tried to overcome the stage, but now I have abandoned the stage outright; that is, I’ve abandoned a place whose relationship with the audience is always well-defined. In searching for a new place, I theoretically had all the reality of life at my disposal.”

In entrepreneurial terms, the most disruptive (and successful) startups have changed the setting completely. Rather than try to improve upon hotels or hotel bookings, Airbnb changed the setting to people’s private homes — and Uber did the same for private cars instead of taxis. Skype got you to use the web instead of landlines to call people, and Spotify has made countless users sell their record collections.

The sustainable energy field is also ripe with entrepreneurs changing the old setting of getting our energy from fossil fuels, and instead exploring newer, greener methods of powering our homes and fueling our cars. When looking for ideas for your next product or startup, consider if you can change the setting of how things have been done in the past.

2. Form a community

Throughout his artistic and theatrical career, Kantor was the creator of numerous artistic groups and circles that would get together and stage exhibitions or other events. After World War II, he was one of the creators of the Young Visual Artists’ Group and later founded the Grupa Krakowska (Krakow Group), though his greatest achievement came in 1955, when he created the Cricot 2 Theater. With the talented writers, actors and designers he recruited for the group, he created productions that were groundbreaking at the time for Polish theater.

Any seasoned entrepreneur knows that a good community can make your product — and a bad one, or lack thereof, can break it. This works on two levels: first, you want to be an active member of your local startup community, no matter how small it is. Not only will this give you access to technical talent that can help build your product as well as venture capital that can fund it, but you’ll find invaluable support in the form of mentors and other entrepreneurs whose experiences you can learn from.

Second, it’s just as important to build a community around your startup. It’s easy these days to build a product or app — the harder part is to get people to use it. This can be made easier by creating a following of people who are already interested in your idea or the general market you’re in, and keep them engaged through channels such as your website, app or social media. Having a community means your future products have a built-in user base, your betas have eager testers, and you have direct access to feedback on what you’re doing.

In Kantor’s day, his community met in one place to discuss and organize events. Today, there are Slack channels, subreddits, Twitter, numerous forums and other virtual spaces where you can build your community, as well as good, old-fashioned IRL meet-ups for entrepreneurs all over the world.

3. Diversify your business model

Over the course of his career, Kantor worked as a theater director, set designer, artist, art theoretician, actor in his own plays and lecturer — and there’s probably some titles missing from that list. Though he was consistently creating art after World War II, when the communist authorities banned any art that didn’t conform to their worldview, Kantor ceased exhibiting and instead focused on his theater work and lecturing. When conditions became more favorable in 1955, he released all of the art he had created in the prior period and continued to be involved in both the visual arts and theater until his death.

While there’s something to be said for specialization, sometimes it’s not the best way forward for an entrepreneur — especially if market conditions change rapidly and your product no longer fits. That’s where diversification can be the difference between your startup failing or finding a new market. Whether that means having several products in various markets or diversifying your product or service to fit a variety of users depends on your company and team, but in general, basing your business on doing or making just one thing can have disastrous consequences.

4. Don’t be afraid to go backwards

In the 1970s, Kantor became disillusioned with the happenings he had introduced to Polish audiences, so he went back to directing theater. Did he see that return as a failure? No; he went on to stage some of his best-known works during that era, creating the “Theater of Death” genre he’s famous for. It’s also when he won international recognition (and awards) for his work.

For young companies, the introduction of a new service or product is as nerve-wracking as it is exciting. Even with extensive testing and market research, the new product might not be as successful as the original, may only fit the market for a short time, or may fail completely. When this happens, going back to the original product may seem like a step backward, but it can be the best move you can make to save your company. Sometimes a pivot goes 360 degrees to a previous idea or business model that might prove successful again.

Like artists, many entrepreneurs suffer from a common affliction: they’re always looking to start something new. Often this leads to innovative new products. Other times, it’s best to go back to what’s already there, and keep working to improve it — and that’s OK too.

5. Leave your mark

The innovations Tadeusz Kantor introduced and his performances and artworks made such an impact on Poland’s culture that today there’s a museum dedicated to him. While most entrepreneurs aren’t striving for their own museums, they do need to consider the mark they’re making on the world, and whether their legacy will be positive or negative — or non-existent.

When you’re creating a company, the primary focus shouldn’t just be on making the biggest profit possible. You want your work to make a difference in peoples’ lives — including the lives of your co-founders or employees. That’s why it’s important for entrepreneurs to think of what they want to accomplish in the long term, and to build a company that reflects that.