Course 2014-2015 a.y.

Course Objectives

The aim of the course is to provide students with the perspective and solid skill base needed to manage creativity-focused projects, people and ventures, preparing them to contribute effectively to today’s entrepreneurial and organizational challenges. The course objectives are the following:

• understand creativity and explore relations among creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship;
• understand creative processes in product, communication and retail within creative industries and, more general, in fast moving consumer goods with a high rate of new product development;
• understand co-creation processes, as crowd sourcing, as the practice of developing systems, products, or services through the collaborative execution of companies and customers;
• learn about the most successful business models in managing creative processes and companies and how investors/private equity evaluate them;
• assessing each student's own individual potential for creativity and appreciate the unique challenges and methods for leading others to greater creativity through teamwork.
• learnhow to formulate and execute business plans to meet objectives by identifying strategic options for long-term competitive advantage and growth, implementing strategies to deliver results and presenting effectively a business plan to the financial community

Course Content Summary

Students learn to recognize, analyze and support creativity in collaborative, complex business processes across the internal and external organizational boundaries within a wide variety of industries (not limited to stereotypically "creative" industries, such as fashion), exploring in particular:

Part 1 How creativity works in individuals and organizations

• Creativity, entrepreneurship, strategic innovation (as opposed to process or product innovation), business model innovation
• Creative industries, creative product/processes and creative people
• The legal risks in the production and marketing of creative products
• Creativity in collaborative business processes in terms of actors, roles, structures, procedures

Part 2 From creativity to business success

• Creative briefing to agencies for print, digital, broadcast and social media projects
• Co-creation, co-makership and the successful management of creative people inside and outside the firm
• How to leverage web-based resources and qualitative user feedback to inform a creative process
• Barriers and critical success factors in the creative process
• Creativity in business model innovation. Case analysis.

Part 3 Developing and implementing a business plan

• The generation of valuable innovative ideas is a necessary but not sufficient condition to guarantee a successful new venture. The goal of part 3 is to support students in transforming creative ideas into businesses. After some preliminary sessions dedicated to the sharing of basic tools and concepts regarding business planning this part will be dedicated to a business game where students, in teams, will have to create and grow successfully their new venture in symbolic industries.

Detailed Description of Assessment Methods

Like creativity itself, the course is more about experiences than just tools and methods. Each participant is expected to contribute to the learning experience and the course features a number of guests and cases, in addition to videos, research summaries, individual exercises, group assignments and a business game. Assessment of student performance is based on multiple factors throughout the semester and there is no final exam for attending students. Attendance is compulsory during briefing and tutorship sessions.

For non attending students

• Individual written exam on the Book (100%). Written exam based on the program topics in the syllabus. The exam may include the application of models and principles covered in the textbooks to additional material (e.g. short business cases, papers or articles) which is distributed during the exam session.

For attending students

• Class participation (10%)
• In-class individual assignment (30%)

 

Group project (60%)

Textbooks

Both for attending and non attending students

E. Corbellini, S. Saviolo, Management of Creative Processes, EGEA, 2013