In the early fall of 2013 it is reported in Smålandsposten, the local newspaper in the Småland region in the southern part of Sweden, that an opera house recently has been founded, and that it will stage Mozart’s The Magic Flute the following summer. To accentuate the regional connection the name of the opera house is Smålandsoperan, and behind the initiative are two cultural entrepreneurs who are presented as being driven by “bringing opera to the people” on one hand, and establishing a cultural institution that could house all the region’s opera competences and interests on the other. “One should not have to go to the big cities to experience opera”, one of them is quoted, highlighting the democratic aspects of both cultural production and consumption.

One year later Smålandsoperan is considered to be a huge success; the shows have been sold-out, the opera house has been taken to the heart by the critics. And the success has continued: In 2018 the opera has firmly established itself as an actor to be relied upon with five consecutive years of sold-out shows and critically acclaimed reviews. The success has however not come easy. Run as a corporate business, the opera has not been eligible for receiving financial support from public authorities, thus being solely dependent on revenues. This has put pressure on Smålandsoperan’s board to balance the company’s artistic ambitions with harsh economic realities – and doing so in an innovative manner.

In this paper, based on empirical field work carried out at Smålandsoperan under its first year (the thick description is reported in Ericsson, 2018), the board’s innovative actions during the opera’s first year is interpreted and problematized from an institutional logic’s perspective; and it is shown how different innovations are construed by means of the mobilization of two interrelated resources. On one hand the innovations are construed in relation to an organizing context, an all-encompassing and situated form of life where people not only live very closely with each other but also have developed a shared perception of the world (Johannisson, 2005), constituted by a loosely coupled network of cultural entrepreneurs “at the margins” (cf. Scott, 2012) of the artistic field who most often are related to each other by kinship and/or friendship. On the other hand the innovations are construed in relation to an idealistic infrastructure made up of non-profit associations and movements that are knitted together by the sharing of artistic ideals and values (cf. Ericsson, 2018).