Article Type : Short commentary
Authors : Levintov A
Keywords : Producer; Entrepreneur; Impresario - conceptual nuances
These
three concepts from three different languages, English, French and Italian, are
quite synonymous, but there are some persistent nuances.
Producing and producers originated in the American
film industry and were born in the 20s of the last century directly from the
enterprise theatre, which was widespread in the United States, where not only
actors were invited, but also directors, artists and other participants in the
theatrical production. In the USSR, at the same time, all theatres became
state-owned, and, consequently, only repertory - no enterprises, entrepreneurs
and other amateur performances, since any entrepreneurial activity in the USSR
was outlawed (up to 8 years in prison). After the collapse of the USSR, film
producers were first copied from Hollywood, then theatre producers, art
producers, etc. appeared, most often just burdensome apeism, monkey job,
mediation rather than entrepreneurship. The impresario had a broader scope of
activity: theatre, musical activity, concert activity, art activity - at the
individual and collective level of performers and producers of show products. All
of them, producers, entrepreneurs and impresarios, as well as literary and
sports agents, are essentially entrepreneurs (tracing paper from the German der
Unternehmer) in a specific show environment.
Not citationally, but, in fact, the definition of entrepreneurship is an activity to generate new activities. Production as a process of converting the source material into a product through a sequence of procedures and operations needs fishing, fishing (including design), while the fishing itself is generated by the enterprise, entrepreneurship. In this sense and understanding, there were no enterprises in the USSR, including industrial ones, because entrepreneurial activity was prohibited. In many ways, this is precisely why practically all Soviet productions were meaningless, both material and non-material (for example, the production of knowledge and the production of educated people). The main thing that entrepreneurship does is the transfer of a product into a commodity: in the USSR, products were simply exchanged, hence the incredible price leapfrog and the conventionality of money. Commercial and entrepreneurial activity should not be confused and synonymized: at the turn of the 80s and 90s, I was writing a textbook on the history of commercial and entrepreneurial activity and easily found one and a half hundred Russian-language textbooks on the history of commerce and not a single one on entrepreneurship. The vast majority of entrepreneurial projects and ventures do not have commercial goals and aspirations. From personal experience: such serious entrepreneurial undertakings as the Private University for the Humanities, the Ecological University in Gorny Altai, the corporate universities of Viance (WeAnswer ) and Moscow State Pedagogical University, the Silver University, a new type of business school, the Workshop of Organizational and Activity Technologies did not have and do not have a commercial component. In the USSR, entrepreneurial activity was banned not so much as commercial, but as social, socio-cultural and cultural initiatives, which was usurped by the party, it also usurped the future and all design as work with the future. It is important to emphasize that entrepreneurship, even in the absence of a history and a formalized profession, is an activity, albeit a very peculiar one (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Scheme of industry.
To the
concept of activity
Bypassing the value theory of activity of L. von Mises,
the psychological theory of activity of Vygotsky-Leontiev- Luria -
Galperin-Elkonin Sr. - Ilyenkov -Davydov, as well as the systemic thought
-activity approach of G.P. Shchedrovitsky, we will try to stay within the
framework of a purely conceptual work. Figuratively speaking, activity is what
sets us eternal problems that must be solved daily. Any activity, metaphorically
speaking, fits into the dualism of matter or the corpuscular-wave theory of
light and everything else: it is both actor and process, and therefore cannot
be placed in the Procrustean bed of the structural matrix. Culturally and
historically formalized activity is usually called a profession. The topic,
according to Aristotle, is the key, fundamental position from which both
ontology and logic flow. Without a topic, activity turns into a utopian (placeless),
useless and uninteresting vanity of actions from any direction. The paradox of
the topic of activity lies in the fact that its place is determined and
described not by itself, but by its place among other activities, by its
penetration into other activities. If you imagine a hypothetical picture of an
activity that is not woven into other activities, then it will be very similar
to the king's new outfit, a thorough emptiness. Each activity is a kind of
daisy, the petals of which are the activities associated with this activity,
but it itself is a petal in the daisies of other activities. At the same time,
there is a core of the activity-flower (what we are used to seeing and drawing
in yellow), which is immanent precisely in this activity and has an independent
value and meaning. Here lies the history of activity - both as its own history
and as part of world history, and its mythology, and its theory, culture
(traditions), metaphysics, ethics, etc. Entrepreneurship, therefore, is never
limited to the activity it generates and extends one way or another to related
activities: McDonalds is not just fast food catering, but also an educational
environment, agriculture, the world of advertising, social policy, primarily
youth , and many others. Oddly enough, but the essence of this or that activity
is not given immediately and not always. Moreover, for an external and
extraneous look, it is usually given as a manifestation, and only by plunging
into it seriously and for a long time, you begin to understand it. So, for
example, only after several decades of being in education, I seem to understand
what it is in essence.
Educational activity is, first of all, the formation
of a human in a person, the artificialization of a person, and in this sense,
both education and development are applicable only to a person, but not to
society, society, institutions, organizations, and even more so to natural
objects [1-3].
The concept of "collective mental activity" was developed and introduced into scientific, philosophical and methodological use by G.P. Shchedrovitsky and his followers. Science is a complex organized collective activity, characterized by a number of features:
Scientific production differs from any other production and entrepreneurship in that, in addition to the standard set of producer functions (financial, organizational, PR functions, etc.), it must provide conditions for the emergence of ad hoc. Ad hoc (on occasion) as a phenomenon of scientific life is most fully described by P. Feyerabend [7,8]. Ad hoc of Archimedes was that, while taking a bath alone, he understood how to measure the volume of a complex piece of jewellery made of pure gold using the law he discovered: “a body immersed in water [or any other liquid or gas] loses so much weight how much the water displaced by it weighs. Of course, Archimedes was not focused on this law, but on how to determine whether the goldsmith mixed foreign metal with gold when forging the crown of King Hiero II. Ad hoc Galilee - a task he received from the Duke of Tuscany Cosimo II Medici, who wished both to be in the thick of the battle and to be safe. Galileo, like Leonardo da Vinci, and the Dutchman Leeuwenhoek, and Kepler, and later Galilee Newton, made a telescope with successive lenses. He preferred to do this in solitude, at night. Another night owl, a cat, always spun under his feet. Driving away the purr, Galileo accidentally touched his pipe with his elbow and suddenly saw through the telescope the sky and the Moon, its mountains and craters, similar to those on the earth. Dmitri Mendeleev dreamed of his periodic table of chemical elements, according to legend, in a dream, like a card solitaire, which the chemist was fond of: on the other hand, its atomic weight and the formulas of the main compounds. For hours in his office, he shifted this chemical "solitaire", lining up the elements according to their properties in logical rows. In the end, like a chess player, he imagined in his mind the entire field, consisting of sixty-three cells [as many elements were then known], in which the elements were to be placed. But none of the options satisfied him. And then one day in a dream he saw the only order that he could not imagine in reality. The picture was so clear and distinct that he woke up and wrote it down on a piece of paper. And in the morning the periodic table was ready. The story of solitude tells of Isaac Newton and the apple that fell on him on his parents' farm, of the ship's doctor Robert Mayer, who discovered the law of conservation of energy by comparing the blood tests of sailors taken in temperate and equatorial latitudes, of Steve Hawking, who turned the physical ontology of the universe upside down, sitting in a suburban train compartment. And there are many such examples. They say that God helps only those who are focused on a particular problem and slip ads to the seeker in time. Hoc and solution. In the conditions of collective scientific activity, the scientific producer is obliged to organize the scientist's space in such a way that it is not just solitary- it must be methodologically oriented and coordinated. The scheme of methodological work was proposed by R. Descartes. Scientific activity is not only not standardized in time, it can be carried out at any time of the day, in moments, flashes, short intervals, continuously - by any impulsiveness, most often in solitude, but can also be dialogical, in a laboratory, in a pub, at night in a dream or in insomnia. This flexibility of conditions and environment, unpredictability and dependence on chance requires patience and composure of the scientists themselves, and of the scientific management, and of the scientific producer. But at the same time, subject knowledge, an arsenal of tools, and the organization of work should always be at hand and be in a mobilized state.
Figure 2: Scheme of the methodological organization of the space of scientific activity (according to R. Descartes).
Figure
3: Induction/creative
contour of the dialogue between the explorer and the Navigator.
The
organization of the scientific research space is the prerogative of the
scientific producer and manager, but it must take into account the individual
characteristics of the performers: someone cannot work without music, someone
needs absolute silence, someone needs the presence of pretty and young girls,
someone is inspired landscape outside the window, but all this should
contribute to concentration and depth, detachment. Perhaps the concept of
detachment is the key here. Detachment is the state of the scientist himself:
the scientific producer and scientific manager does not interfere here and
cannot interfere. Detachment is a kind of sterilization of the communication
channel and communication between the scientist and the Navigator, freeing him
from interference and noise. Detachment is a necessary state close to action
crisis, voluntary refusal to search for solutions, all but one, cutting off all
sociocultural ties and contacts that act as external interference and noise,
showing trust in the Navigator, the description of which is difficult and
therefore most often it is perceived intuitively: it can be a teacher, an
opponent, God, Cosmic Mind, student, pet and any other external entity. An
induction (read creative) circuit is installed with it: It is important to note
that the role of "induction coil" (L) and "capacitor" (C)
is performed by the researcher and the Navigator alternately and rather
arbitrarily. The scientist, as the subject of research, most often finds it
difficult to indicate who made the necessary push, he or the Navigator, and
therefore usually refers to a fallen apple, a cat underfoot, a dream, a
junction of train cars, a blow of billiard balls (Figures 2,3).
How is live music different from any sound recording,
including video? - in live music there are overtones and vibrations that we do
not feel, but are experienced by us, no matter if we are in a stadium with a
hundred thousand people in the midst of a huge crowd or listening to a chamber
piano. Live music, perhaps, is only one ppm richer than a recording, but this
tiny ppm decides everything and can cause us to flow tears, emotions,
tenderness with its momentary presence with us. We experience the same thing in
the theatre from the live, non-cinema play of actors, we, breaking through the
fourth wall towards each other, begin to empathize with what is happening not
on the screen, but much deeper and more vital. And the same effect is produced
by a living word - a speaker, a politician, a preacher, a reciter, a person who
owns a living and penetrating word. So it is with scientific activity. With
scientific activity, not science. And here there is the magic of living
thought, a thought that generates other thoughts, among other people - whether
inside science, on its educational threshold or in a social, public environment
that sincerely needs to excite minds, in the presence of rulers of thoughts,
not truth or knowledge spewing out of themselves, but inducing the
breath-taking thinking of many and many, rushing for a new and living thought,
an idea with its conjectures, refutations, appendices and additions. Actually,
this is what scientific production should be doing: shaping science as an
activity and, therefore, immersing it in the scientific sphere and engineering,
in education as an entrance to science and to the socio-cultural space where
the sacraments of communion with science take place.