Art in Entrepreneurship
By: Paul Lane (Business), John Farris (Engineering) & Beverly Seley (Art)
Grand Valley State University
The new entrepreneurship program at Grand Valley State University was designed to include students from all majors in the university. It was also designed to take people with a product idea to a first level business plan. In order to do that the course designers needed to figure out how to get sketches of the student's ideas. They sought the help of one of the established members of the art department who came into the entrepreneurship class to teach.
The artist comes into the class for one full week. In that week the artist is trying to bring the students up to the level of sketching where they could sketch their own idea. This is not a simple task as many of the students focus is on the business side of the equation. The authors believe that the ability to communicate in words and sketches is critical to getting the message across to future investors, team members, potential customer's etc.
This is a tall order for the three hours of class time in the week allotted to art in the entrepreneurship class schedule. Yet it may be the most important week of the term. It is this week that allows the faculty in the class to begin to see how the students would render their perceptions of the product that they are working on.
The artist starts off with introducing simple sketches with geometric objects. Students have to learn quickly about how to gage size, angles, distance and so forth. Moving to real objects quickly is a key to this class. The artist has students pull out a cellphone, or take off a watch and pass it to a neighbor for sketching. Students are amazed at the end of the first session at what they can do.
In the second session the artist got the students to try sketching their own ideas or things that they would use in sketching their own ideas. Thus if you were designing a restaurant being able to do a chair is important. If you were working on a folding chair that is part of something else then you would need to work on folding chairs etc. In this session the power of color was introduced as well. Students were shown a plane sketch as the artist began to add color.
This simple bit of art is a very important part of the Entrepreneurship program. For example, there was a student that had the three different required ideas. To his surprise when he sketched out his ideas the students in the class and the faculty felt he had a winner with the one he had not focused on. Why does this happen? The visual often helps others to understand the innovator's thoughts. This student switched from a used car dealership to making a device that would protect people the world over from scalding themselves and others.
Why are these sketches important? Entrepreneurs need to be able to show them to engineers to find out if the item can be made and to begin to work on how it would be made. Without the sketch the engineer may perceive something entirely different. They are essential to good customer feedback. It assumes too much to hand a customer only a written description. The entrepreneur needs to be able to show them the vision in a sketch or picture form. This could be a simple pencil sketch or a computer generated model but it all starts with the simple idea of art.
Investors, team members, small business consultants and others can help an entrepreneur with greater accuracy and speed if they have a sketch of the intended product. Without these they are creating their own visual images which may or may not be those of the entrepreneur.
What has been learned so far is that Art is an essential and central piece in the teaching of entrepreneurship. Just as many artist need entrepreneurial assistance so many entrepreneurs need the assistance of those in the arts to learn the basics. This will allow what is in their minds, to be revealed in a way that potential customers, counselors and investors can understand the idea.
Figure 1. Art Professor Beverly Seley explains the basics of sketching to entrepreneurship students.
Figure 2. Beverly Seley working with individual entrepreneurship student.
Figure 3. Entrepreneurship students experiment with water colors.