THE NON-CONFORMISTS
The Rise of the Artful Entrepreneur
Historically, artists have always been entrepreneurs.
Whether they sought the support of a patron, were sponsored by the king, or died starving with with their ears bleeding: artists have pursued their passions at all cost. They are willing to sacrifice their comfort for the power of purpose and legacy. They are driven by a deep altruistic mission and selfish obsession at the same time. It’s irrational and it makes perfect sense.
We are in love with what we do. It’s the most romantic relationship.
We are not driven by money, we are driven by the desire to bring value to the world- instead of reaping value from it.
Some people spend their entire lives searching for meaning, some decide to do something meaningful instead. Social entrepreneurs and artists are made of the same stuff. It’s ironic that we should even add the word “social” ahead of entrepreneurship. If you are social entrepreneurs, what do we call the rest? Unsocial entrepreneurs?
I believe the second chapter of this century will be led by the creatives, the non-conformists, the marginalized, the misfits. Those who are not afraid to take risks, those who deeply want to fix something, who can re-imagine the world over and over again.
This is the rise of the Artful Entrepreneur.
When artists stretch their entrepreneurial muscles and entrepreneurs, their creative ones.
Because think about it, when every surface becomes a digital display for an augmented world, who will imagine and write our new realities? With the internet of everything: who will explore the anthropomorphic dynamics of our relationship with everything? If we can gamify learning and other processes, who will humanize the experience?
We are being challenged by a whole new world. It’s not space. Its not 20,000 leagues under the sea, not even technology…
It’s our own imagination.
As entrepreneurs, we are told to prototype quickly, fail fast, launch early — change the world. But how do we even get there? What does the creative process of innovation look like?
I don’t have all the answers, it’s a lot of jazz, but allow me to share a few thoughts and provocations that my journey and training have taught me.
1. What if we looked at the act entrepreneurship as performance art ?
That’s the super power of art. Artists often seem larger than life, doing bold things that as civilians they might not dare to do. I have been a performer for 20 years, and I can tell you that there have been many times when my characters did something I would never do. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. I don’t sing karaoke — I am terrified of it. But guess what, my character did. She sang Britney Spears on top of her lungs. It sounded horrendous and it was amazing!
There is power in the mask of performance.
And that mask doesn’t take away the honesty and authenticity of your actions. It gives you that extra degree of separation that liberates you from judgment. That frees you from hesitation.
There’s a thin line between inaction and courage…
2. Suspend your disbelief
What the present is teaching us is that whatever crazy ideas we have, they are not crazy enough. Whatever we thought was impossible: think again. Back when I was training, we learned to suspend our disbelief. Because when we suspend our disbelief we are prepared to believe anything. So, don’t think logically. Think surrealistically. Absurdly. Abstractly. Like Dali, Picasso, or Kafka. Where time melts, dimensions break down, and we turn into cockroaches!
Embrace metaphors. Because in those moment of suspension, you might just have that epiphany. And when you do, don’t stop there. When someone tells you something is impossible, it only means they do not how to do it. Truth is, someone somewhere, will eventually figure it out how make it happen. What if we went to the moon and back? What if we created power from nuclear waste? What if a network of balloons traveling on the edge of space could enable internet service everywhere? Peter Diamandis, founder and chairman of the X Prize Foundation said:
“The day before something is a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea.”
So suspend your disbelief.
3. Surprise
As actors, we were told to be interesting. To make interesting choices, surprise ourselves and others. To take risks. Intelligent algorithms can predict our actions and curate content based on our linguistics, preferences, ideologies, and our sense of humor. How predictable are we?!
German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said that we are living in ‘bubbles’ of self- reinforcing views. When we need as many points of views as possible to gain new perspectives instead. In a world of predictability, be unpredictable. Surprise is key.
4. Stay Hungry
I learned that every single action we took needed a sense of urgency. I think the way this sense of urgency translates in the real world, is by staying hungry. Even when we are content and happy, that’s the hardest part. Not hungry for things we don’t have — there’s no value in that — but for the things we don’t know. That’s how we stay hungry, by always asking ourselves questions we don’t know the answers to. The futurist Alvin Toffler said that
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. ”
So let’s learn how to learn and learn how to like it.
5. Seriously not
Failing is a trending topic! Everyone has their take on it. One of the many great things I learned from clowning: failing is funny. We should not take ourselves too seriously.
6.Immerse
How is it that with considerably little time, actors can become different characters than themselves, with a different set of beliefs, different accents, different memories. That’s not theater stuff, it’s more like covert special agent training!
Create new realities and immerse yourself in them. This is how our brains train. How we can fool our mirror neurons into believing it is real. We’re all talking about Magic Leap, Hololens, Oculus, HTC Vive, Meta, Samsung, Google’s Daydream and they keep on coming…But we have an embedded augmented reality headset called imagination: it’s free, use it.
7. Simplicity
Simplicity always wins. Now more than ever, it’s easy to over complicate things. Silence is more powerful than words. Stillness more effective than motion. Sometime the solutions we are looking for are the simplest ones.
8. Play
Play Play Play….Find playfulness in everything. Linda Naiman who focuses on innovation and leadership said,
“When we engage in what we are naturally suited to do, our work takes on the quality of play and it is play that stimulates creativity.”
Because when we are passionate about something, we do not count the minutes and hours spent, we will dedicate a decade, a lifetime to what matters.
Artists and Entrepreneurs have a lot in common.
Our platforms have been different, and that might change. The way we address problems might be different, and that might change too… But our goal is the same:
To positively impact the world.
We are just getting started. The game board is blank, there is no road map, we are going to have to Imagine it.
So, Surprise me…
Excerpt from my talk at La Ciudad de Las Ideas in Puebla Mexico, 2016. Full video below.
You can read more about me and watch my previous work here NatashaTsakos.com
