In the Entrepreneurship and Management in the Creative Industries (EMCI) track, you learn state-of-the-art theories rooted in different business disciplines, such as strategic marketing, management, entrepreneurship and digital innovation. These theories help you to gain a better understanding of dynamic strategic processes in the highly competitive industries of the arts and entertainment.
While almost everyone has their favourites when it comes to, for instance, movies, music, or books, some of these creative products are far more successful than others. Why? Especially when you consider that in many cases, the differences in underlying product attributes are minimal.
This leads to questions, such as:
In this track, you learn theory and study practice of international competition in industries like music, fashion, and the arts. You critically analyse the dynamic processes that drive success (or failure) by addressing tensions that are common in these industries: art versus commerce, creativity versus management, craft versus technology and individual inspiration versus creative systems.
Dive into diverse business fields, ranging from entrepreneurship and innovation to marketing, strategy and organisational design. Expect inspiring guest lecturers from museums, orchestras and theatres, but also from start-ups, crowdfunding platforms and large firms such as RTL/Videoland, Armada Music, Amsterdam Dance Event and Endemol. Team up with fellow students to work on interesting business cases and present them in class.
Choose this track if you have the desire to work in the creative industries or if you plan to work in any industry in which creativity and innovation play a central role.
Obtain an overview of differences and similarities between the creative industries and other sectors by studying different areas in business administration, ranging from strategic management to marketing and from organisation theory to innovation management. Themes include: extremely long versus extremely short product life cycles, extreme market uncertainty with high flops to hits ratios and the role of endorsement and word of mouth.
In this course, you will explore the building blocks of strategic management and marketing theory (competition, market, organisation, innovation and strategy), discuss the meaning of these fundamental concepts for the creative industries and make clear how different viewpoints can have significant implications on theoretical understanding and management.
You will be exposed to a wide range of highly relevant issues ranging from how creative entrepreneurs convince others to help finance their ventures, to innovation and leadership in creative organisations. Emphasis is on gaining a fine-grained understanding of the effects of market signals on performance differentials, big data and the art industry, and the impact of art policy and subsidies on cultural entrepreneurship, to name a few.
Simply analysing vast amounts of data does not ensure competitive success. For instance, both Amazon and Netflix use big data to capture customer preferences. However, only a few of their products become hits. Learn what differentiates successful competitive strategies from the rest by applying contemporary theories used in fields like marketing, management and digital innovation.
Discover when taking a leap of faith is a viable business strategy or when not to listen to your customer.
Bonus: discover why Netflix’s approach to using big data to understand customer preferences led to the hit series House of Cards while Amazon’s series called Alpha House was a flop.
Examples of current newspaper headlines and relevant issues that could be discussed:
Joshua Picauly: 'In my early twenties, I realised that the dynamically evolving Creative Industries would be an interesting place to work. That is why I chose the EMCI track, which is the only MSc programme in Europe that focuses on the Creative Industries from a business economics perspective.' Read Joshua's full review
Graduates of the Master's programme in Business/Entrepreneurship and Management in the Creative Industries (EMCI) have excellent job prospects for positions as managers, consultants, strategists and entrepreneurs in both profit and non-profit organisations.
Our graduates can be found working at:
Entrepreneurship and Management in the Creative Industries is one of 9 tracks you can opt for in our MSc Business Administration. If you are more interested in another field of international business, read the info on one or more of the other tracks.