The Dilemmas of Startups in the Creative Industries - Tension between Artistic and Market Goals

The creative industries include companies that create, produce and sell creative products and services, such as arts and cultural goods. Although their importance for European economies is widely acknowledged, their contribution to GNP, as well as the stage of development varies across the EU countries. In Poland their contribution to GNP is relatively low, comprising merely 1%. The Polish creative industries are in the very early stage of their development. Although business orientation of creative entrepreneurs was already researched, the evidence is not conclusive and little is known about orientation of creative entrepreneurs at the start-up stage. A creative person may face the dilemma, whether to produce personally and artistically satisfying work, or something that will be attractive to customers and, hence, generate profits.Some research studies suggest that satisfying market demand may contradict the perception of creative integrity. In marketing terms, this can be translated into the dilemma of being “product” versus “market” oriented.The objective of the paper is to identify business orientation of creative start-ups. The study was conducted on a sample of entrepreneurs, who planned to start their business in August 2012, in the metropolitan area of Warsaw. A quantitative study was conducted among 110 participants of the EU funded program “Entrepreneurship in the Creative Industries” (Human capital operational program, priority 6 “Open labor market”, action 6.2. “support and promotion of entrepreneurship and self-employment”) and in the initial first stage of the program, among 81 project participants, who received financial support to launch their businesses