Preface
I am an artist. And I am an entrepreneur.
The ideas and views expressed in this text originate purely in my private research and own experience. Speaking of the arts, I refer mainly to the performing arts, especially dance, opera and music. My „business“ experiences refer to the services industry and specifically to management consulting services.

Definitions
What is meant by “the flexible worker of tomorrow”?
My interpretation is as follows: a person, who earns its own income and offers its work on a global market. To be able to do so, flexibility is needed regarding employers, geography, time and jobs.

What is an entrepreneur?
I would like to define an entrepreneur as a person, who decides when and to whom he/she offers his/her “services” or goods. Who is self-responsible for producing and delivering these services or goods and who lives on the income from pursuing these actions. This does not necessarily mean, that he/she has to sell the services and goods for a positive price. It can also mean, that he/she finds someone, who pays him/her to offer his/her services or goods to other people.

Answers
Are artists flexible?
Yes. They usually work in projects that last seldom longer than 3 months. Changing employers, locations, teams and very often countries for every project. Working in varying positions from contract to contract, e.g. assistant director, choreographer, performer, oeuil exterieur. Jobs are often handled parallel and acquisition for new projects is a continuous task. The job market is definitely (and has always been) international, if not global.
No. Many artists, especially in interpreting roles such as dancers, singers, musicians are employed by a theatre, opera house or orchestra for several years. (one could raise here the question of “who really is an artist?”, but that would lead too far)

Are artists market entrepreneurs?
Yes. They offer and try to sell their “work-services” permanently on a job market for artistic jobs and/or offer their “oeuvre” on the market of culture goods, and they either directly sell it or find funding. Nevertheless they very often pretend or truly believe, that they have no entrepreneurial skill whatsoever.
No. For a huge part of the artists, agencies or galleries function as intermediaries and take care of the offering and selling of services or goods on the arts and cultural goods market.
Yes. To find a gallery or agency, you ususally first have to act as an entrepreneur. Only when you’ve already shown your market potential, you’ll find someone to take care of your “business”. This is especially true for young and unknown artists.

More Questions
Why are artists flexible?
Artists are not necessarily flexible because they want to be. They usually need to be, to earn their living, because there are not enough long-term employments for all artists.

Is it “good” to be flexible?
To be a positive model for the future, there should be at least some really good benefits from being flexible. First, flexibility increases the job and therefore the income opportunities. Second, flexibility ensures a wide range of experiences and learning special skills, such as foreign languages, discovering a variety of foreign cultures and countries. Third, flexible workers usually have a wide contact network. All these are especially interesting for career starters. For all young artists - and business consultant alike - I met (not excluding myself), all this was a reason for working in those jobs, who demand extreme flexibility. But…. sooner or later you have seen enough countries and cities, have learned a couple of languages, have so many contacts all over the world, that you cannot keep in touch with half of them, you soon get tired of this life style. Especially when you wish to have a family and maintain a regular contact with a few good friends. Not to mention the stress on your health in such flexible lives, mentally and physically.

Does the worker of tomorrow have to be flexible?
Yes, jobs currently become more and more insecure, straight-lined careers are getting more rare, companies are looking for “global workers” who speak several languages, have a great willingness to travel and have intercultural skills. All this seems more and more similar to the conditions in the “arts world”. But not only globalization leads to this effect, it is also the increasing individualisation of our society. People think more and more in career paths, that fit their own work-life idea, implying varying employers and job profiles, sometimes even several educations for very diverse jobs. (e.g. a friend of mine used to be an auditor in an international company. He suddenly decided to cancel his job and become an Ostheopath. From time to time he works as an independent auditor, while he is still studying.)
At the same time I would like to doubt, that in the future workers have to be much more flexible than today. As globalization might create a higher demand for flexible workers, individualisation might create a will to be a flexible worker (at least for a period in a life-time). The demand might be covered by those who are willing to be flexible. But all others, who do not want to or cannot be as flexible, might still find enough jobs. Our society is growing older, lesser people have to produce goods for more people, who are out of the work-force. The market power is likely to return to employees (for many specialist jobs it has already), and it will be the employees, who decide how flexible they want to be.

Conclusion
Are flexible artists a model for tomorrow?
The conditions on the overall labour market seem to get more similar to the ones on the artistic labour market, concerning the demand for flexibility. Actually they are already very much alike in this regard. So the question should rather be: Are artists a model for the flexible worker today? Yes they are, as a model for a case study and research, to evaluate the long-term effects of a highly flexible work-force and labour market. Especially the negative effects of flexibility deserve a thorough research. For artists these negative sides of flexibility are often: loosing their social networks, feeling homeless, spending a lot of time and money on travel and communication, paying social security in different countries and ending up, with no or only poor pensions.
Flexible workers in the “business market” might have enough money for travels, communications and also their pension, but still suffer from the more “soft” effects and health problems, caused by intense travelling, jet lags, stress, .... In order to reduce the negative effects of a flexible live style and because they are able and willing to invest money for this, businesses and ‘non-artist entrepreneurs’ have come up with ideas worth considering by the artists. To mention some: sabbaticals, family-programs, network associations, ….

Finally, I’d like to conclude:
The flexible worker of today might be an interesting model for the flexible artist tomorrow.

...not to forget other fields of experiences in the arts, that could serve as positive models for the business world, e.g. such as intercultural teamwork and star-recruiting.