Partnerships between business and arts organisations could potentially transform the way business is done, both in terms of profit and culture, a panel of executives from the arts sector has told a Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) lunch in Adelaide.

Chair of Bell Shakespeare Company Chair and Coca-Cola Amatil, Suncorp and Westfield Group Director, Ilana Atlas, said while the business sector thought it knew what it needed to learn from the arts sector, it had not yet scratched the surface.

She said business could learn from the way in which arts organisations such as the Bell Shakespeare Company achieved excellence "living off the smell of an oily rag".

"Arts organisations are always doing amazing things with nothing," Ms Atlas said.

Arts organisations were all about innovation and creativity which were embedded in their culture. They thought creatively to use their resources more efficiently.  

Business was already using the arts to entertain customers and to inspire staff. Yet business could also use performance to provide a safe and accessible way for their employees to experience complex social situations and to provide insight into these situations, she said.

And businesses were beginning to realise that the only way to differentiate products in an overstocked marketplace was to create something that was transcendent, physically beautiful and emotionally compelling.

"Engaging with the arts changes the way we think and our behaviour. The arts make us confront our beliefs. They connect our hearts and brains - they integrate body and soul," Ms Atlas said.

Brink Productions Chair and Australia Business Arts Foundation (AbaF) State Councillor, which links arts groups with business and donors, Carolyn Mitchell, said South Australia provided particularly diverse opportunities for partnerships between business and the arts.

Ms Mitchell, a commercial law consultant with Cowell Clarke Lawyers and director of a number of arts organisations, said Adelaide's smaller community provided a chance for businesses of all sizes to be involved with arts organisations of all sizes.

South Australia had a small layer of larger arts organisations such as the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and a handful of larger arts sponsors but most businesses were small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and most arts ventures were small. More of these were forming partnerships, Ms Mitchell said.

While businesses initially had been involved in the arts to signal the community and social responsibility their shareholders and customers wanted, they were generally enriched by the interaction, she said.

"Being creative in business is transformative... being involved with the arts can and will and should be seen as an ordinary relationship for business," Ms Mitchell said.

Director of the South Australian Museum Director, Dr Suzanne Miller, said South Australia had an enormous potential for partnerships between business and the arts.

"People say we are small but here we cannot afford to have sectors in their ivory towers," she said. "We have the opportunity to be driving the national agenda in partnerships between sectors."

She said the SA Museum had benefited from such integration, fostering conversation between its traditional work "silos": the creative front of house; the scientific research back of house and the business administration.

The SA Museum recognised that it must partner with business and could contribute to the corporate objectives of its partners as well as benefit from accessing different funding sources.

SALA festival director, Penny McAuley, said the SALA festival, which featured the works of 5143 visual artists in 542 business venues throughout South Australia, was an important partnership between business and the arts.

The festival provided significant value to artists as a way of taking their work to the public but it also had incredible value for businesses who housed collections.

"There's an inner artist in all of us, I believe," Ms McAuley said. "SALA is about participation and connectivity with people. It's a pathway for people to engage in dialogue with the arts. Having art in foyers provides an opportunity for customers and employees to have a conversation about things they might not normally talk about - it enriches the depth and diversity of the workplace."

"It activates and ignites the imagination," she said. Engaging with the arts also provided a pathway between businesses and the community they serviced, Ms McAuley said.

The panel told the CEDA audience that the business sector could learn a lot about employee engagement from the arts sector, which was built around partnerships between "people who love what they do".

Arts organisations had a capacity to engage their employees, having the ability to manage bright, talented and sometimes difficult people. And this engagement with the culture of the organisation and a passion for its work enabled arts organisations to do more with less.

Ms Atlas said arts companies were gender agnostic and the sector was the only sector in which men and women worked for equal pay.

"Business is always talking about employee engagement but arts organisations do this all the time. You see women and men doing lots of things, across a whole range of tasks, to produce something excellent. ...they run flexible organisations... they have cross gender roles and responsibilities - all with minimum fuss," she said.  

Ms Mitchell said: "The lesson we learn is that if we find something we love doing, money is not the driver."