Master Thesis
A case study in the creative industry:
How high-end entrepreneurial photographers deal
with demand uncertainty
by
HESSEL DE VRIES
University of Groningen
Faculty of Economics and Business
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Abstract
The ambiguity of how consumers value a new product because of its original and often unique character in the creative industry leads to demand uncertainty; therefore, the purpose of this study was to gain insight into how high-end entrepreneurial photographers manage their demand fluctuations. This was achieved by conducting a semi-structured interview with four entrepreneurial photographers. The semi-‐structured interviews were aimed at gaining an in-‐depth understanding of the photographers’ entrepreneurial processes and their ways of managing demand uncertainty. The results of the interviews were compared between the four entrepreneurial photographers and linked with the existing academic literature available on the two core concepts. Current study shows that the entrepreneurial photographers operate on spec and have no future focus, but focus on their entrepreneurial processes including: active search, alertness, business plan, clear goal, differentiation, diversification, fit, free work, luck, portfolio, prior knowledge, profit, reputation, social network, spreading risks and opportunities, stay yourself, survival drive, and visibility. The entrepreneurial photographers argue that their portfolio, social network and visibility in the industry are important elements with which they can generate demand. On a more general note, the findings of current study will be useful for soon to be and already practicing entrepreneurial photographers and adds knowledge and insights for future academic literature.
Introduction
A person cannot win a game that they do not play (Shane, Locke & Collins, 2003). In the field of entrepreneurship this saying illustrates that becoming a successful entrepreneur depends on an individual’s motivation of wanting to become one. This implies that if an individual wants to become an entrepreneur (i.e. a successful entrepreneur), then he or she has to put a lot of effort (i.e. investing time and money) in it to make it work. Depending on the entrepreneur’s personal goals, the ‘winning’ or ‘making it work’ means generating a sufficient amount of demand for your product or service, which at least makes it possible to make a living out of. So in order to do so, one must invest in the opportunity, however, there is always the risk that the investment does not pay off. Working in entrepreneurship is working in a risky and uncertain business (Van Praag & Cramer, 2001).
Creative industry
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Previous studies
The topic demand uncertainty has been widely studied by many researchers using models such as the Cournot and Bertrand duopoly models with the Nash equilibrium to check the properties and the game theory models (Basar & Ho, 1974; Levine & Ponssard, 1979; Vives, 1984; Sakai & Yoshizumi, 1991). These studies mostly focused on the competition between businesses and found that information is key when it comes to competition between firms. It is shown that sharing information lowers Nash costs for both parties and if the products/services are substitutes (not) sharing information is the superior strategy for the parties in Bertrand (Cournot) competition, this is vice versa for complementary products/services.
However, for this study the focus is not on the competition between entrepreneurs but on the entrepreneur and his/her demand uncertainty. This is in line with the reasoning of Shane and Venkataraman (2000) who argue that entrepreneurship is the discovery and exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities. This illustrates that, besides competition in the market, entrepreneurs deal with uncertainty in their whole environment when it comes to finding and exploiting opportunities, with the uncertainty of not knowing whether they will generate demand with it. Therefore, in this study existing literature on uncertain demand of entrepreneurs is linked with hands on experiences of entrepreneurs by interviewing them. Because of the uncertain, demanding and stressful nature of entrepreneurship, McGrath, MacMillan and Scheinberg (1992) argue that this field of knowledge and research is very interesting for soon to be and already practicing entrepreneurs.
Introduction to the theoretical background and the core concepts
important role in the society. One could therefore wonder what entrepreneurship and being an entrepreneur entails. This is discussed in the theoretical background section of the literature review that also includes a section about entrepreneurial opportunities, which appeared to be of importance in defining entrepreneurship, since the process of starting up a business or being innovative is related to the exploitation of an idea, in other words, recognizing an opportunity in the environment (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000). However, this is considered to be a subjective process, which could also be placed under one of the entrepreneurial processes (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000)
As for the core concepts of this study, many studies have focused on the innovativeness and entrepreneurial processes of entrepreneurs (Baltar & Coulon, 2014; Morris, Kuratko & Schindehutte, 2001). Although, as for innovation being a cornerstone for entrepreneurs, Koellinger (2008) argues that because of the different degrees of innovativeness and different dimensions of innovativeness of entrepreneurs, innovation cannot generally be the defining element of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurial processes (i.e. the processes covering all facets of entrepreneurship) would therefore be better suited to comprehend the understanding of entrepreneurship (Morris et al., 2001). Together with the previously mentioned demand uncertainty character of the creative industry, the entrepreneurial processes and demand uncertainty embody the core concepts of the current study.
So, before initiating the execution of the current study, the literature review addresses an important concern, which is there not being a common comprehensive understanding of what the theoretical background concepts ‘entrepreneurship’ and ‘entrepreneurial opportunities’ entail (Davidsson, 2005; Koppl, 2007; McMullen, Plummer & Acz, 2007) and what the core concepts of the current study the ‘entrepreneurial processes’ and ‘demand uncertainty’ entail. Therefore, the literature review section provides an integrative overview of the theoretical background and the core concepts of the current study.
Current study
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Netherlands, but they also work in foreign countries. In the methodology section a more detailed description of the interviewed respondents is given. Based on the above-mentioned literature gap together with the earlier mentioned characteristics of the creative industry, the following main research question is developed for this study: How do high-end creative
entrepreneurs manage their entrepreneurial processes in order to deal with demand uncertainty? This implies that the managed entrepreneurial processes of the entrepreneurs
will generate stable demand.
Literature Review
Theoretical background
EntrepreneurshipPrevious research mentions that the concept ‘entrepreneurship’ (i.e. an activity as means of doing business) is lacking a comprehensive definition and there does not exist a conceptual framework that covers all elements of entrepreneurship (e.g. Shane & Venkataraman, 2000; Shane, Locke & Collins, 2003). Morris et al. (2001) explain that entrepreneurship is the result of the interaction among a number of variables, which is the reason why it is difficult to establish a universal definition of the concept entrepreneurship. Subsequently, entrepreneurial activity is argued to be episodic, which tells us that the essential factors of entrepreneurship do not influence human behavior in similar fashion all the time (Carroll & Mosakowski, 1987).
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Table 1. Definitions of ‘entrepreneurship’ throughout academic literature
Definition of ‘Entrepreneurship’ Author
“Entrepreneurship encompasses acts of organizational creation, renewal or innovation”
Sharma and Chrisman (1999)
“Entrepreneurship is the discovery and exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities”
Shane and Venkataraman, (2000)
“Entrepreneurship is the process where value is created by bringing together a unique package of resources to exploit opportunities in the environment, which can occur in any organizational context with possible outcomes as: new ventures, products, services, processes, markets and technologies”
Morris (1998)
“Entrepreneurship is the process of extracting profits from new, unique and valuable combinations of resources in an uncertain and ambiguous
environment”
Amit, Glosten & Mueller (1993)
“Entrepreneurship is exploiting market opportunities through technical and/or organizational innovation(s)”
Schumpeter (1965)
“Entrepreneurship is about perceiving profit opportunities and initiate actions to fill currently unsatisfied needs or to do more efficiently what is already being done”
Kirzner (1985)
“Entrepreneurship is the creation of new enterprise” Low and MacMillan (1988)
“Entrepreneurship is identifying a business opportunity and pursuing the resources in order to start up a firm”
Carton, Hofer & Meeks (1998); Miller (1983)
“Entrepreneurship is the discovery and development of opportunities” Venkataraman (1997).
“Entrepreneurship is identifying and selecting the right opportunities for new businesses”
Stevenson, Roberts & Grousbeck (1985)
“Entrepreneurships function is to carry out new combinations of means of production”
Schumpeter (1934)
“Entrepreneurship is the practice of starting new organizations or revitalizing mature organizations, particularly new businesses generally in response to identified opportunities”
The definitions of entrepreneurship presented in table 1 are the most common used definitions in the academic literature on business studies. Looking at these 12 definitions of entrepreneurship, one can notice that besides the fact that entrepreneurship is described as a ‘process’ of ‘creating’, ‘renewal’ and ‘innovating’, it shows that ‘opportunities’ is the key element that is central to the concept entrepreneurship (i.e. the discovery and exploitation of them). As also stated by Shane and Venkataraman (2000), one initially needs to have entrepreneurial opportunities, in order to establish entrepreneurship. However, earlier theories developed and used to explain entrepreneurship have been unsuccessful in providing a comprehensive understanding of the core concept, with most of them having missed the term opportunities and being more focused on person-centric theories (Gartner, 1988). For example Khilstrom and Laffont (1979) focused on an individual’s attitude towards uncertainty to be in either labor demand or entrepreneurship. They found that people with a higher preference for certainty wanted to be in labor demand and people with a higher preference for uncertainty wanted to become entrepreneurs.
However, considering the previously mentioned definitions of entrepreneurship in table 1, opportunities appear to be a valuable part of entrepreneurship. Therefore, for current study, the definition of entrepreneurship from Shane and Venkataraman (2000),
“Entrepreneurship is the discovery and exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities”, is
used due to its comprehensiveness and overlap with most other researchers on entrepreneurship. Also, since this study is explorative, the chosen definition is rather broad allowing room for interpretation of the information gathered by the interviews with the entrepreneurial photographers. Next to that, the characteristics of an entrepreneur as mentioned by Miller (1983), and Lumpkin and Dess (1996) are also taken into consideration during this study. Furthermore, to better understand and explain entrepreneurship, as taken from the definitions of entrepreneurship in table 1, one needs to shift their attention towards the entrepreneurial opportunities within the entrepreneurial process. This brings us at the next section about entrepreneurial opportunities, which will be followed by the section about the core concepts (i.e. the entrepreneurial process and demand uncertainty) of the current study.
Entrepreneurial opportunities
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wherein new goods, services, raw materials, markets and organizing methods can be presented by using a set of new means, end, or means-ends relationships between these elements (Shane & Eckhardt, 2003). Casson (1982) already worked in this line of reasoning about the definition of opportunities, however he also mentioned that those new combinations of elements introduced are sold at a greater value than the cost of the production. Thus, taken from this it can be argued that opportunities are characterized by generating profit from the environment. However, according to Kirzner (1997), where entrepreneurial opportunities distinguish themselves from opportunities is in the creation of new means-ends frameworks. Baumol (1993) already mentioned this argument; he stated that optimization couldn’t be exploited by entrepreneurial opportunities. This shows that there appear to be different forms of opportunities. For example, Hornsby et al. (2009) noticed that opportunities also appear in the shape of renewal of goods and services or new administrative systems. Croonen, Brand & Huizingh (2014) developed a classification system of four domains for the different forms of opportunities, building on Eckhardt and Shane (2003), Short, Ketchen, Shook and Ireland (2010), and Shane and Venkataraman (2000). These four domains are: goods and services, supply of raw materials, organizing methods, and markets. Moreover, Shane and Eckhardt (2003) also developed a classification system in which the different types of opportunities can be manifested. The three main categories are: the locus of the changes that generate the opportunity (i.e. changes can arise from diverse parts long the value chain), the source of the opportunities (i.e. information asymmetries, supply vs. demand-side opportunities, productivity enhancing vs. rent seeking opportunities, and identifying catalysts of change generating the opportunities) and the initiator of the change (i.e. the actor responsible for the change/opportunity and influencing the process deriving from it). The following section will briefly consider these main categories.
Second, the different sources of opportunities can be categorized in four subcategories. The first subcategory is characterized by looking at differences in opportunities resulting from information asymmetries and external information shocks. The second subcategory focuses on opportunities arising from supply and demand. The third subcategory considers opportunity differentiations between ‘productivity enhancing’ and ‘rent seeking’, and the fourth and final subcategory is the identification of the catalyst(s) for the change that generated the opportunity.
Third, the initiator of opportunities describes the dimension in which the actor that puts the change in motion classifies the opportunity. There are various types of actors that can possible start or influence the change and the length of the process and opportunity itself. According to Klevorick, Levin, Nelson and Winter (1995) these actors can be non-commercial (e.g. governments & universities), incumbent non-commercial in an industry (i.e. suppliers & customers already in the market), and new commercial in an industry (i.e. independent diversifying entrepreneurs entering the markets), which can initiate different opportunities (e.g. respectively setting new rules, improve market efficiency, and undiscovered business innovations/opportunities).
All in all, the role of entrepreneurs is to use their creativeness (i.e. by coordinating their decisions and actions) to develop new information with which an opportunity to make profit will arise (Kirzner, 1999). Therefore, in this study the entrepreneurial opportunities is defined as “gaining profit from the environment by doing something new” (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000). This reminds us that entrepreneurship is a process related to the identification and exploitation of a new idea (i.e. an opportunity), which is a subjective process (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000). Thus, although opportunities are objective phenomena, the identification and exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities is a subjective process. So, the recognition of opportunities is essential for entrepreneurship in order to gain, for example, demand from it. Regarding this, Baron (2006a) mentions three ways in which can increase the opportunities recognition process, namely: active searching for opportunities, being alert for opportunities and having prior knowledge of an industry or market. The entrepreneurial process seems to be a returning element of entrepreneurship (i.e. entrepreneurial opportunities are a part of the entrepreneurial process (Morris et al., 2001)). The next section will elaborate on the first core concept of this study: the entrepreneurial process.
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Core concepts
Entrepreneurial processes
As mentioned earlier, by looking at entrepreneurship as a process, it makes the concept better manageable (Morris et al., 2001). From this perspective, entrepreneurship (i.e. the entrepreneurial process) can be broken down into several concepts in relation to each other. However, Leyden and Link (2014) developed a process framework for the entrepreneurial process, which is placed below in figure 1. They describe the framework of the entrepreneurial process using four stages that need to be run through (i.e. from left to right) connected to each other with arrows. This implies that Leyden and Link argue that all four stages are a part of entrepreneurship.
Figure 1. The entrepreneurial process (Leyden & Link, 2014)
The entrepreneurial process model developed by Leyden and Link (2014) is a repetitious process between the creation of a social network and the search for a desired innovation. According to Knight (1921) and Shackle (1979), the creation of a social network is uncertain. However, the search for a desired innovation is also uncertain; the process of discovering and exploitation of an opportunity (i.e. an innovation) can occur in different dimensions (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000). The stages ‘Creation of social network’ and ‘Search for desired innovation’ are clearly related, because the social network of the entrepreneur influences the environment in which the entrepreneur searches for or stumbles upon opportunities, which explains the feedback arrow from ‘Search for desired innovation’ back to the ‘Creation of social network’ stage. Another, more elaborate model aiming to explain the entrepreneurial process is developed by Morris et al. (2001).
Morris et al. (2001) created an integrated framework of entrepreneurship, which is illustrated in figure 2a. The figure illustrates five factors (i.e. the entrepreneur, the environment, the business concept, the resources and the organizational context) each influencing the entrepreneurial process, which is located in the middle of the integrated
framework. Each of these factors is seen as a contributor to the entrepreneurial process and thus to the whole concept of entrepreneurship. For a more comprehensive understanding of the integrative framework see Morris et al. (2001).
Although various researchers tend to use different factors to characterize the entrepreneurial process(es) of entrepreneurship, the core generally consists of factors as mentioned by Timmons (1999), namely: the entrepreneurial process is opportunity-driven, creative, resource-efficient and driven by a lead entrepreneur or entrepreneurial team. However, following Kodithuwakka and Rosa (2002) the entrepreneurial process offers a way in which resources can be managed that is probably more creative and effective for the identification and exploitation of new opportunities (i.e. these opportunities can also be new resources). To get a clear overview of how the entrepreneurial process develops over time a schematic overview of the entrepreneurial process is adopted in figure 2b from Morris et al. (2001).
The entrepreneurial process framework in figure 2b illustrates that the entrepreneurial process is build-up from six stages, which will have some overlap with each other. In general the stages are run through in a logical progressive way, however, there might be some feedback cycles along the way. The first two stages are the opportunity identification and business concept development of the business venture. These stages represent the creation of the initial idea and the establishment of the business concept phase of the process. The following stages are aimed at the realization of this idea and business concept. The entrepreneur has to consider the required resources, implementing the business concept and manage the potential venture into a harvested venture.
Figure 2a. Integrative framework of entrepreneurship (Morris et al., 2001)
Figure 2b. Framework of the entrepreneurial process (Morris et al., 2001)
The entrepreneurial process The environment The entrepreneur The organizational context
The concept The resources
Demand uncertainty
In this core concept section the link with the previous sections of the literature review (i.e. both the theoretical background and the core concept entrepreneurial process) will be made. It appears that entrepreneurship is mostly explained by the identification and exploitation of opportunities (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000), and opportunities are mostly aimed at making profit from the environment (Shane et al., 2003). There are various ways of where, what and how the opportunities arise for or through the entrepreneur (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000). This fact, combined with the fact that entrepreneurship is not a stable state of doing business but a dynamic process (i.e. an entrepreneurial process), makes the concept of being entrepreneurial orientated in doing business more complex (Morris et al., 2001). The following three paragraphs show that ‘uncertainty’ is an issue throughout each of the previous discussed sections of the literature review, finishing with the core concept of what demand uncertainty entails.
First of all, Amit et al. (1993) state that various characteristics of an entrepreneur may be unknown ‘ex ante’; the perceptions about these characteristics may disseminate, which makes all characteristics partially predictors of a certain event (i.e. achieving entrepreneurial success or failure). Therefore, it might be unclear what leads to the presence of demand, because of the difficulties in distinguishing luck from high entrepreneurial abilities or bad luck from low entrepreneurial abilities in case when demand is absent. This would make demand uncertainty hard to grasp, because this indicates there could be two uncertainties (i.e. entrepreneurial characteristics/skills and demand uncertainty). However, as for uncertainty in entrepreneurship, according to Knight (1921), entrepreneurs who make uncertain investments are characterized as having an unusually low level of uncertainty aversion.
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contingent claims on these risks (Knight, 1921). In other words, since risks are calculable of nature, markets would be setup in such a way that their probability is predictable, which would imply an absence of demand uncertainty in that case. As a result of this, entrepreneurs would more or less be turned into managers. This is the main reason why entrepreneurs are characterized as having low uncertainty aversion instead of low risk aversion. They do not know whether their investment, product or service has demand ‘ex ante’.
Definitions of core concepts
In order to maintain clarity about the core concepts of this study it is of importance that throughout the whole study the same definitions of the core concepts are used. Therefore, in this section, the definitions of the two core concepts of this research study are established and used consistently throughout this paper. Table 2 presents the core concepts with the definition and the author who developed the definition.
Table 2. The definitions of the core concepts used in current study.
Core concepts Definition Author
Entrepreneurial processes “The process of creating value by putting together a unique package of resources to exploit an opportunity” *
Stevenson et al. (1992)
Demand uncertainty for entrepreneurs
“Unknown outcomes after an investment” Knight (1921)
* Used in combination with the integrative & entrepreneurial process framework in figure 2a & 2b of Morris et al. (2001).
Conceptual process model
Figure 3 illustrates the conceptual process model of current study. This model is based upon the theoretical background and involves the core concepts of the current study. How the entrepreneurial processes are managed is represented by ‘Management of the entrepreneurial processes’, which influences the ‘demand stability’ that represents the uncertainty of demand for the entrepreneurs. On its turn, the ‘demand stability’ influences how the entrepreneur manages the entrepreneurial processes. As mentioned earlier, this study has an exploratory character, which will lead to propositions for future research on this topic.
Figure 3. Conceptual process model of the current study
Theoretical expectations
The literature review of this study provides a broad spectrum of interpretation when it comes to the theoretical expectations of how high-end creative entrepreneurs manage their demand uncertainty. As adopted from the academic literature review, identifying and exploitation an opportunity is key for entrepreneurs (Shane & Vekataraman, 2000). This indicates that the route to stable demand is optimizing the access to opportunities. This points in the direction of the three strategies mentioned by Baron (2006a) that increase the chances of getting involved with opportunities (i.e. active search, assertiveness, and prior knowledge). Linked to this, following the model of Leyden and Link (2014), the social network of the photographers is expected to play a crucial role in generating demand. These strategies are expected to be present amongst the answers given by the photographers when it comes to generating stable demand.
Management of the
entrepreneurial
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Methodology
This study thoroughly aims to gain insights into the entrepreneurial processes and how they are managed in order to generate stable demand. Most of the existing academic literature focuses on the degree of innovativeness of entrepreneurs, about how they seize opportunities, resulting in a lack of empirical studies that identify the entrepreneurial processes of entrepreneurs of how they deal with their demand uncertainty over time.
For the methodology of this research study the case study methodology of Yin (2013) was chosen, which suited developing a theory within a specific context where, thus far, no clear relation is established between the theory and the context (Leyden & Link, 2014). So, this explorative research made an effort to gain insight in the entrepreneurial processes and strategies (i.e. activities the entrepreneur undertakes, exploiting entrepreneurial characteristics and external incidentals) used in the photography industry, of how the entrepreneurs deal with the uncertainty of demand, and which strategies are of importance to generate demand stability. As mentioned in the introduction section, this study is aimed at the creative industry. Within the creative industry, the photography industry was selected to investigate, because the photography industry might not be the first thing to be considered when looking at businesses. However, it is a well-established industry with the added difficulty of it being an art form and having a very dynamic character, involving horizontal and vertical differentiation, temporal coordination with no stable 9AM to 5PM shifts and hazards of coordination when the artist has to collaborate (Caves, 2003). In addition, personal connections to the field of photography has exposed me to driven and inspiring people, and made me want to focus on this creative field of business. The people from this niche of creative industry are hard working, inspiring, easy to approach, and were eager to participate in this study. Therefore, the field of photography from within the creative industry is chosen to investigate.
The goal of this research is to clearly understand how entrepreneurial photographers deal with the demand uncertainty and thus to determine which factors characterize a successful entrepreneur in the field of photography (i.e. factors that generate demand stability). This will be done by interviewing 4 entrepreneurial photographers on the two core concepts of the literature review in the light of the theoretical background.
Theory development
In the literature review section it is illustrated that most of the academic literature is aimed at what defines an entrepreneur and how he/she recognizes opportunities in the environment (e.g. Amit et al., 1993; Morris et al., 2001; Baron, 2006a). However, these studies illustrate that there is no comprehensive understanding of how an entrepreneur actually operates to generate demand. Following from these findings, it is argued that there are a lot of areas in the field of entrepreneurship research that can be defined as research gaps, because they have not yet been studied. Therefore, because the academic literature on current subject in the field of entrepreneurship is still exploratory of nature and because this study aimed to gain in-depth insights into the processes and interviews, therefore, theory development is chosen to get a more comprehensive understanding of the current issue (van Aken, Berends, & Van der Bij, 2012). To gain empirical knowledge from the field, a case study approach (Yin, 2013) was found suitable to create insights in how the entrepreneurs operated in their line of work. Such a case study would provide solutions for the how-question: ‘How do entrepreneurs manage their demand uncertainty?’ and the what-question: ‘what kind of strategies, in what way determine demand stability for the entrepreneur’ (i.e. in the field of photography for both questions).
The case studies in the current study are based on a qualitative data collection procedure that is executing semi-structured interviews with four professional entrepreneurial photographers. A case study research in the photography industry was considered suitable to address the demand uncertainty in the future for the entrepreneurs (i.e. the photographers).
Case study
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Figure 4. The four phases of case study design according to Aken et al. (2012).
Phase 1: Exploration and elaboration of the literature
As the title of the first phase already explains, the first phase focuses on the exploration and elaboration of the main subject of this research study; how entrepreneurs manage their demand fluctuation, because this subject is not explained fully in the academic literature. The existing academic literature that was researched on related fields of research or phenomena is explored and elaborated (i.e. a theoretical framework was created). The result of this exploration and elaboration can be found in the introduction and literature review section, in which the theoretical framework about the current issue is presented.
To gather the existing academic literature the online electronic databases Google Scholar and Business Source Premier were used. Since this area of research is not yet well established (e.g. Shane & Venkataraman, 2000; Shane, Locke & Collins, 2003) and this study is explorative, the most cited articles were selected to create a broad theoretical foundation for this study. Within the online databases several keywords were used to find the, for this research study, valuable academic literature on the current subject. In searching for existing academic literature the following keywords were used: entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs characteristics, entrepreneurial orientation, entrepreneurial process, demand, future, innovation, creativity, uncertainty, opportunities, opportunity recognition, success factors in entrepreneurship, networking in entrepreneurship, pattern recognition in entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship research. From these key words, academic literature on the subject at hand
Phase 4.
Conclusions and future research.
Phase 3.
Comparing findings with existing theories.
Phase 2.
Data collection.
Phase 1.
was found and a theoretical framework was created. As mentioned earlier, the core concepts on the current subject and thus for this research study are: entrepreneurial processes and demand uncertainty.
Phase 2. Data collection
In the second phase of the research process, the data was collected from the target group. The target group for this research consisted of four (three males and one female) professional entrepreneurial photographers from the Netherlands. The sample of photographers was not randomly selected from the population of photographers in the Netherlands but, as stated by Eisenhardt (1989), theoretical useful cases were chosen out of a population of Dutch photographers. Via a personal relation in the professional field of photography, a valid perspective was acquired of where in the market of photography to look for entrepreneurial photographers useful for the current study. Since the responses of willingly cooperating entrepreneurial photographers was sufficient, the case firms have been based mostly on theoretical grounds. In this study was chosen for entrepreneurial photographers from different fields of photography, for a potential comparison between different types of photography. This way an insight could be gained whether for different types of photography different entrepreneurial processes are valuable for generating demand stability.
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pictures for them, which is as described in the creative industry section of the introduction. However, in the commercial field of the creative industry, the clients also have to pay for the redemption rights of the photographer when the clients want to use their photos for commercial goals.
Table 3. Description of the four cases
*Due to privacy of the photographers and their business, their identities have been made anonymous.
Photographer* Short description of the entrepreneur
A. Photographer A graduated Cum Laude from the Artez institute of arts after which photographer A shortly worked as a theatre director and curator, while part of the attention was aimed at making ‘staged photography’. The working method of photographer A consists of executing compositions applying a combination of
handcrafted installations and photography. These installations are constructed from the finest details adopting a variety of techniques and materials. Besides these installations, the work of photographer A also consists of portraits of young children. The
photography is inspired by absurd stories that are dramatic, surreal and cinematic. (A, n.d.)
B. Photographer B is an autodidactic photographer in the field of fashion and beauty who works throughout the whole of Europe. The natural beauty of women inspires the work of photographer B. Furthermore; inspiration is drawn from sources like music, film and architecture. By the stylish strong and sexy women, with a hint of drama, it is easy recognize the work of photographer B. Photographer B has worked for brands like Vichy, Armani Make-Up, Lancome & Estee Lauder. The work of photographer B has also been published in magazines like L’Officiel, Cosmopolitan France, S Moda, Womans Health & Allure. (B, n.d.)
C. Photographer C has set up an organization that guides photography-assignments and give specialists training about images. Photographer C guided many assignments in the Netherlands and in other countries, has trained organizations such as Scotch & Soda and groups of communication professionals. Besides that photographer C is a member of the judge panel of the Silver Camera works as a professional photographer. (C, n.d.)
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Phase 3. Comparing findings with existing theories
In this stadium the gathered data of the interview is extracted from an mp3-file and transformed into a transcript in a MS-Office-file for each interview. Next, the acquired transcripts were analyzed; in the light of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial opportunities the core concepts entrepreneurial processes and demand uncertainty from the literature review are linked in with the quotes of the entrepreneurial photographers. The quotes (i.e. the answers of the entrepreneurs) are labeled, categorized and formed into constructs. Note that the created constructs in this study are recognized as the strategies used by the entrepreneurial photographers to deal with their demand uncertainty and to generate demand. Furthermore, the interviewees were not just asked about the constructs (i.e. putting the words in their mouths). They mentioned the constructs themselves during the interview implicitly (e.g. by giving an example of how they acted in certain situations) and/or explicitly. This also applies to all constructs developed for the core concepts. Furthermore, keep in mind that this study dealt with qualitative data, so, even though some results are shown not to be present at an entrepreneur does not necessarily mean they do not exist for him/her. The constructs are presented in the table 4 in the results section, which will generate a clear overview of the outcomes of the semi-structured interviews for each entrepreneurial photographer (Miles & Huberman, 1985). These tables will facilitate the process of developing conclusions. Following the results, the discussion section elaborates and interprets the results.
terms of theory development, in case the findings of current study deviate from existing knowledge, an opportunity arises to create or adapt existing new theories on the subject.
Phase 4. Conclusions and future research
After the interpretation process in phase 3, conclusions will be drawn from the discussion section. The conclusion section will focus on the goal of the research, answering the main research question as well as mentioning the implications the current study will have for entrepreneurs and the academic literature. The implications section will function as a guide for the future research recommendations.
Quality criteria
According to Swanborn (1996) and Yin (1994) controllability, reliability and validity are the critical quality criteria making a research more veraciously. These three factors determine whether there can be spoken of an inter-subjective agreement (van Aken et al., 2012), which represents the consistency by which different researchers deal with a research problem. Eventually, the main goal of academic research is to develop trustworthy conclusions (Golman, 1999), however, in order to do so one must follow the quality criteria of academic research. The next three sections will accordingly address controllability, reliability and validity for current study.
Controllability
Van Aken et al. (2012) describe controllability as being a prerequisite for a study having a high degree of reliability and validity. To create a high degree of controllability for this research a detailed description about how the research is conducted is provided (i.e. case study selections, interview development and conduction, data analysis and ext.), making it possible for other researchers to reproduce this study in exactly the same way.
Reliability
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The semi-structured interviews will ensure that the content of the answers given by the interviewees will be the same across different interviewers and/or for more creative entrepreneurial interviewees, because the interview questions are based on the theoretical background and the core concepts of this study. During the interview, the interviewees answered questions with their experiences and anecdotes. Occasionally, to get to the bottom of the photographers’ story, follow-up questions were asked depending on the story of the photographer. Although, the way in which the determinants for demand generation were categorized and clustered might be different across researchers, this study chose to keep the constructs rather broad to create insights so further research knows where to look for and delve into them deeper. So that future research could establish more integrative definitions of these constructs.
Furthermore, the gathering of information from the respondents directly was the main subjective source of current research. Possibly an interview with clients or the agency of the photographers could reduce the research instrument bias. However, due to time pressure only one source of information per entrepreneur was consulted. Conducting interviews with four different entrepreneurs in the same industry controls for the respondents’ bias. Moreover, interviewing photographers in different fields of the photography industry controls for the potential situational bias.
Validity
Brief overview of the results
Below this paragraph an example is illustrated of an excerpt from one of the interviews executed in this study (i.e. with entrepreneurial photographer A). This excerpt is taken from the demand section of the interview. Starting with how demand is generated, the transcript of the interview shows that a follow-up question is gradually developed during the interview: “How did you end up at the agency?”, which results in an anecdote of the interviewee. In this anecdote three determinants with which the entrepreneurial photographer generates demand are identified, labelled, categorized, and turned into constructs accordingly, namely: social network (i.e. a project was generated via an publicity agency), proactiveness (i.e. actively acting upon potential opportunities, by approaching the agency you really want to generate demand with), and portfolio (i.e. if your work lacks quality, none of the demand generating would be possible).
“Interviewer: Hoe ben je eigenlijk bij het agentschap terecht gekomen?
Interviewee: Nou ik kreeg op een gegeven moment een opdracht van een reclame bureau, en toen had een ander agentschap had me benaderd of ik eens met ze wilde komen praten. En toen dacht ik hmmmm als ik op dit punt ben aangekomen dan ben ik wel benieuwd wat voor agentschappen er nog meer zijn. En toen vond ik dit agentschap toch echt wel beter dan de partij die mij toen had benaderd, maar toen dacht ik weetje ik ga gewoon proberen om bij hun een opdracht te krijgen. Ohhh dat was zo spannend, ik was dus eerst bij dat andere agentschap gaan praten en die wilden het wel, maar ik wilde veel liever bij dit agentschap. Dus ik heb ik een beetje gepushed en gebluft met die en die willen me ook graag, ze willen me sowieso al. Dus ik wil het gewoon ook wel weten anders ga ik met hun in zee. Als ik die troef niet had weet ik niet of het was gelukt, weet niet of het agentschap dat ik wilde dan mee was gegaan. Het was niet echt een bluf, maar ik heb dat wel zo even aangedikt, ik zat daar met een rood hoofd. Want bij dat agentschap heb ik gewoon zelf aangeklopt en dat gaat natuurlijk meestal niet zo, want je wordt gewoon gescout. Ik was toen ook nog vrij aan het begin, ik had niet een mega groot portfolio, het kon misschien net lukken of net niet, maar door de troef van de andere partij, ben ik wel er van overtuigd dat dat heel erg in mijn voordeel heeft gewerkt. Als ik mijn werk lelijk was hadden ze het niet gedaan, dus dat is het ook wel, maar zonder de troef hadden ze me nog langer laten werken en ontwikkelen denk ik.”
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Table 4 presents the overall findings of the qualitative data gathered by the interviews, on how high-end creative entrepreneurs manage their demand uncertainty. The constructs in the categories created in the column on the left side of the table are captured during the interviews with the entrepreneurial photographers as mentioned above. The constructs are derived (i.e. as explained above) from answers provided by the interviewees on the specific question of how the entrepreneurial photographers dealt with demand uncertainty and on related questions involving how they generate demand.
Table 4. Management of entrepreneurial processes in order to generate demand stability.
Entrepreneurial photographers Constructs A B C D Entrepreneurial activities Active search Business plan Clear goal Differentiation Diversification Fit Free work No future focus On spec Portfolio Prior knowledge Profit Reputation Social Network Spreading risk & opportunities
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Discussion
The goal of the current study was to develop a comprehensive understanding of the entrepreneurial processes of entrepreneurial photographers in how they deal with the demand fluctuation in the creative industry. This was achieved through executing a case study in which four entrepreneurial photographers participated in a semi-structured interview. This way, insights could be gained to about how the respondents manage their entrepreneurial processes in order to generate stable demand.
As mentioned in the theoretical expectations, identifying and exploiting opportunities is key for entrepreneurs (Shane & Vekataraman, 2000), which indicates that the route to stable demand is optimizing the access to opportunities. This is supported by the three strategies mentioned by Baron (2006a), who argues the following three strategies increase the chances of getting involved with new opportunities: active search for opportunities, alertness for opportunities, and prior knowledge of the market or industry. Linked to this, following the model of Leyden and Link (2014), the social network of the photographers is expected to play a crucial role in generating demand. These strategies were expected to be present amongst the answers given by the photographers when it comes to generating stable demand.
The following section will treat the findings of how the entrepreneurial photographers manage their entrepreneurial process in order to generate stable demand and link them with the academic literature as discussed in the literature review.
Management of the entrepreneurial processes
visible in the industry by organizing expositions, entrepreneurial photographer B is proactive in the sense of being open for and actively experimenting with free work, and entrepreneurial photographer C and D are proactive in the sense of approaching new clients (i.e. either by seeing room for improvement, a desired collaboration by broadening the social network or because of a shared vision).
Following the constructs covered by the entrepreneurial photographers related to their demand uncertainty, it appears they operate on spec and do not focus on the future. This finding is in line with the statement of Knight (1921) mentioning that the entrepreneurs do not know whether their investment, product or service has demand ‘ex ante’. Therefore, the entrepreneurial photographers on their entrepreneurial processes and operate on spec. As taken from the interviews, they do invest in certain strategies as can be adopted from the interviews, namely: active search, alertness, business plan, clear goal, differentiation, diversification, fit, free work, luck, portfolio, prior knowledge, profit, reputation, social network, spreading risks and opportunities, stay yourself, survival drive, and visibility.
The main finding of this study is that the entrepreneurial photographers do not look far ahead in the future, because such return on investment information is impossible to achieve at the time of the opportunity discovery (Shane and Eckhardt, 2003). According to the interviewees, entrepreneurial photographers operate on spec and focus mostly on their entrepreneurial processes concerning their portfolio, social network and visibility to generate demand. Next, the constructs mentioned by the entrepreneurial photographers are described and linked to academic literature.
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not influence human behavior in similar fashion all the time. In other words, for example, the entrepreneurial photographer B only actively manages entrepreneurial processes when business is slow. In other words, when entrepreneurial photographer B’s survival drive is triggered.
As mentioned earlier, investing in free work will according to the interviewees have a positive influence on the appearance of future opportunities. Because through experimentation their prior knowledge increases and makes them more alert for opportunities, which makes them able to identify more opportunities. This is in line with our theoretical expectations, because this reasoning could be linked to the perspective of Baron (2006a), who argues that opportunities are being discovered by active search, alertness or prior knowledge. Noteworthy is that, only two entrepreneurial photographers are actively searching for opportunities in their environment (i.e. entrepreneurial photographers C & D). They argue that they always walk around with an eye for potential business. Furthermore, all four entrepreneurial photographers were convinced to be responsible for their own opportunity creation, although they do acknowledge the possibility of being lucky. But even when they are able to identify and exploit an opportunity generated by luck, they argue that it might be because of what they do or have done in the past that made those opportunities arise. Moreover, this quest for opportunities had as a result that it influences the most important constructs of the entrepreneurial photographers.
when it comes to delivering quality. However, entrepreneurial photographer C was shifting towards functioning as an agency and was therefore not just reliant on his own portfolio but also on the photographers in his pocket. To continue, the models of Leyden and Link (2014), and Morris et al. (2001) presented in the literature review section can be linked to the constructs mentioned in the beginning of this paragraph. Although, the integrative framework of entrepreneurship in figure 2a is elaborate and has a broad perspective, it is more difficult to apply for this current case study than the model of Leyden and Link (2014) in figure 1. Therefore, it is proposed to combine the model of Leyden and Link (2014) with the framework of the entrepreneurial process of Morris et al. (2001) in figure 2b for the results of this study. Because, as can be taken from the interviews with the entrepreneurial photographers, the social network is the most important resource in the business according to the interviewees, which corresponds to our theoretical expectation and can be linked with the second box of the model of Leyden and Link (2014). Even though, Knight (1921) and Shackle (1979), argue that the creation of a social network is uncertain.
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Figure 5. The adjusted framework of the entrepreneurial process (Morris et al., 2001) according to the findings from the interviews.
Furthermore, regarding the visibility of the entrepreneurial photographer, it is argued by the interviewees that potential clients generally do not ‘google’ for photographers. As a photographer you somehow have to be visible with your portfolio, with a website, within an agency, acknowledged within the field or even as someone who always walks around with his/her camera; the environment has to see you are active in the field of photography. This visibility is key; it is what delivers opportunities and a broader social network.
From the point of visibility the entrepreneurial photographers were very clear about the fact that the field of photography is a traditional business (i.e. a traditional profession), whatever you do, in the end it is about taking a picture with a photo camera. So, one could wonder in what way the photographers distinguished themselves from other photographers. On this note, they referred to themselves as having a personal style, and that they tried to stay close to themselves to who they are and what they do, which entails that their strategy is to differentiate themselves from other photographers by delivering a unique product or service (i.e. on the creative side of the job), which could be regarded as ‘style-innovation’. Entrepreneurial photographer D argued that being yourself is more attractive for the outside world, and entrepreneurial photographer B added to that that it is more valuable to be the best version of yourself, because nobody is like you. This style-innovation has a rather subjective character, however, it points in the direction of the third box ‘Search for desired innovation’ of the model of Leyden and Link (2014). This would imply searching for your true style. Although, because of the subjective character of style-innovation, one could argue whether the innovativeness then still exists. This would be in line with the reasoning of Caves (2000),
who argued that the creative industry is characterized by the ambiguity of how consumers value a new product because of its original and often unique character.
As for this unique personal style of the photographers, they also put a lot of emphasis on the ‘fit’ between themselves and the client when it comes to generating demand from innovativeness (i.e. in this sense innovativeness is seen as ‘personal style’). The entrepreneurial photographers argue that the clients approach them because of their specific style, so, there has to be a fit between their needs (i.e. vision of the client) and the style of the photographer. This fit also contributes to the line of reasoning of the adjusted framework model explained in figure 5, because it can be embodied by the box ‘Developing a concept’ and the photographers argue that a good fit it needs to be established with each client again. Also, entrepreneurial photographer B mentioned that over time it is sometimes best for both parties to split ways because there is no good fit (i.e. the fit might also change over time). Moreover, this personalization, which the entrepreneurial photographers exploit, is achieved mainly by ‘doing what you love’ (i.e. as the interviewees refer to it). It is their internal drive to exploit respectively their passion, perfectionism, the urge for development of their skills, and to become the best in their field of photography. In other words, differentiating the business in the field by staying closer to themselves. The entrepreneurial photographers argued that, the passion of an artist is catching (i.e. getting inspired about the profession of an entrepreneur by talking to an entrepreneur and/or by seeing the entrepreneur working), and as a result, he/she would be more eager to hire you.
In the literature review, the entrepreneurial opportunities are defined as gaining profit from the environment by doing something new (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000). This is supported by the statements of the entrepreneurial photographers, who argue that for each job it is essential that there has to be made profit. However, the profit can present itself in different forms (e.g. experience, money, new opportunities). The entrepreneurial photographers argue that it is not about the actual profit but what the new possibilities are with this profit. Without profit, in any shape, the entrepreneurial photographers would not consider exploiting the opportunity.
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labels ‘entrepreneur’ and ‘resources’ in the model of Morris et al. (2001) in figure 2a). Entrepreneurial photographer C argued that when having a clear goal a business plan is developed. However, this business plan is only followed in the begin phase and potentially when business is going slow or very unstructured (i.e. chaos in available opportunities), to focus on the goal again. Furthermore, the goals of the entrepreneurial photographers vary widely and change over time. They argue that once goals are achieved, there are already new goals in mind for their progress. This hunger for progression could again be related to the entrepreneurial characteristic ‘competitive aggressiveness’ of Miller (1983) and Lumpkin & Dess (1996). Although, according to the entrepreneurial photographers they not get involved with competing with other photographers but with themselves (i.e. personal development). Their competition element is based purely on getting the best out of themselves.
Propositions
- Portfolio - Social network - Visibility - - - - - - - - - - s
- Innate entrepreneurial characteristics o Survival drive
o Personal development o Proactiveness
Figure 6. The adjusted conceptual process model with example factors important for how demand is generated (top arrow) and how is acted upon the state of the demand (bottom arrow).
Implications
The current study has generated a large amount of thorough data about the entrepreneurial processes and the demand uncertainty of four entrepreneurial photographers in the creative industry. The findings of the interviews add value to the academic literature on the creative industry. Noteworthy is that, even though because of the diverse selection of photographers was diverse within the field of photography (i.e. product, fashion, corporate business and commercial) the raw constructs were largely the similar across the interviewees.
However, as mentioned earlier, there is a possibility that the list of constructs from table 4 might be categorized and clustered differently by different researchers, which depends on the degree of detail with which the results are presented. However, this does not change the content of the answers of the interviewees (i.e. the results of this study), but only the way it is presented in the study. Since this study aimed to get insights into this field of research, the constructs are kept rather broad. For example, the support of family and friends (e.g. financially and/or morally) is included in the construct social network. Next to these broader constructs, also noteworthy and more specific constructs for the industry are included because of their value for the entrepreneurial photographers (e.g. the fit and portfolio).
Management of the entrepreneurial
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Furthermore, this study is aimed at a rather small niche of the creative industry and also only small sample of entrepreneurs was interviewed. Therefore, even though the findings roughly point in the same direction, generalizability of the results must be carefully treated. More importantly, as mentioned earlier one keep in mind that this study dealt with qualitative data, so, even though some results are shown not to be present at an entrepreneur, this does not mean they do not exist for him/her. As for the results of this study presented in table 4, all the relevant determinants for generating demand taken from the interviews are included.
Future research
Conclusion
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