Entrepreneurship and Management in the Creative Industries (EMCI) track
In the Entrepreneurship and Management in the Creative Industries (EMCI) track, you learn state-of-the-art theories from different business disciplines. These theories help you to gain a better understanding of dynamic strategic processes in the highly competitive industries of arts and entertainment.
Be ahead of the competition
While almost everyone has their favorites 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 minute.
This leads to questions, such as:
- How, and by whom, is the economic value of creative goods decided?
- How should we understand the phenomenon of superstars versus celebrities?
- Is the industry becoming more liberal and diverse, or will it be dominated by algorithms developed by high-tech businesses like Netflix and Spotify?
In this track, you learn theory and study practice of international competition in industries like gaming, 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.
Guest lectures and teamwork
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.
Track-specific courses
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Theories of Entrepreneurship & Management in the Creative Industries
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.
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Strategic Management and Marketing Theory in the Creative Industries
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.
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Cultural Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Expect to deal with a wide range of highly relevant issues, like:
- how creative entrepreneurs can convince others to help finance their ventures;
- the effects of reviews, awards and other market signals;
- innovation and leadership in creative organisations;
- big data and the art industry;
- the impact of art policy and subsidies.
Real-life case: competition using big data
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, or 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.
Up-to-date issues
Examples of current newspaper headlines and relevant issues that could be discussed:
- fashion designers and piracy;
- reality TV (do you want to be in a band, or do you want to be on TV?);
- blockchain and empowering artists;
- crowd-funding and democratizing creative projects;
- competitive eco-sphere of video on demand (VOD);
- (e)Books and how to build a market for fan fiction;
- art galleries and the creations of superstar artists;
- future sustainability in fashion;
- blockbuster bets and long-tail investments.
Career prospects
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:
- Talpa
- Netflix
- Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
- Tommy Hilfiger
- Accenture
- Booking.com
Entrepreneurship and Management in the Creative Industries and 7 other track
Entrepreneurship and Management in the Creative Industries is one of 8 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.
'I was introduced to relevant theories I still use today'
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