This is the core creative module in the second year of the Business of Creative Industries degree. It asks you to start thinking strategically: combining your creative enthusiasms with developing entrepreneurial and practical business skills to understand, analyse and solve real-world industrial problems as well as initiate imaginative strategies and plans of your own. This is a module about developing and refining your creative business instincts and operates as a complement to the degree's other Year Two core modules: Creative Business Methods, Creative Business Leadership and Marketing and Branding. The module will be distinctive in its mode of teaching in that it will make extensive use of problem-based learning. In this, you will form small syndicates - rather like company boards or strategy groups - to research and consider solutions to industrially focused business challenges.
Module will run
Occurrence
Teaching period
A
Semester 2 2024-25
Module aims
Over the course of this module, you can expect to:
Explore the processes and procedures whereby creative businesses develop strategies to achieve objectives, across a range of sectors, and business sizes.
Develop your leadership and management skills to support and promote team working towards strategic objectives.
Critically analyse business strategies for their strengths and weaknesses, both in real-world case study and in problem- based learning environments.
Develop your own ability to devise creative business strategies based on a combined application of your knowledge of or enthusiasm for particular creative sectors, your developing practical skills and your knowledge of sector models and signal case-studies.
Module learning outcomes
At the end of this module, you will be expected to:
Be able to identify creative business objectives and define some strategic routes towards achieving them.
Apply a combination of skills - leadership, a knowledge of creative production alongside financial. planning and legal knowledge - to the development of creative business strategies.
Apply a knowledge of industrial and sector specific case-studies to the development of new project strategies.
Evaluate and critically analyse strategies for their strengths and weaknesses and use both theoretical concepts and applied practice to problem-solving.
Lead - and work co-operatively inside - teams on the realisation of creative projects. Present individual and team strategic proposals in compelling formats, written and verbal.
Indicative assessment
Task
% of module mark
Essay/coursework
70
Groupwork
30
Special assessment rules
None
Additional assessment information
The module has a task-based learning structure which delivers regular feedback as part of its process.
Indicative reassessment
Task
% of module mark
Essay/coursework
70
Essay/coursework
30
Module feedback
You will receive written feedback in line with standard University turnaround times. There will be interim verbal feedback to the syndicates at periods through their problem-based learning work.
Indicative reading
Appleton, D. (2002). Hollywood Dealmaking. New York: Allworth Press.
Smith, M. and Telang, R. (2016). Streaming Sharing Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Litwak, M. (2009). Dealmaking in the Film and Television Industry. Los Angeles: Silman James Press.
Litwak, M. (2004). Risky Business: Financing and Distributing Independent Films. Los Angeles: Silman James Press.
Wroot, J. and Willis, A. (2017). DVD, Blue-Ray and Beyond: Negotiating Formats and Platforms Within Media Consumption. London:Palgrave.