imagine.. teaching

A CBP laboratory: ‘Innovation and Organization in Creative industries’

by Lars Frederiksen

The cand merc. elective course on ‘Management of Creative industries: Innovation and Organization issues’ has run successfully for the third time this spring.

Originally the course was initiated, designed and taught by three PhD students from Department of Industrial Economies and Strategy who’s interests revolve around dynamics of organizing innovation activities in the province of the creative industries. Yet, after the first ‘test-run’ in the spring of 2003 the course took major revisions by Mark Lorenzen (IVS) regarding both syllabus and structure. Since it has served also as an outlet for research results reached by imagine.. scholars. The course has in many respects functioned as a laboratory concerning matters of what, how and why to teach business students topics of innovation and organization in the realm of the creative industries.

One example of the outcome of the ‘laboratory testing’ has been a course development in two main parts. First, the course focused in six sessions on a conceptual part. This involved topics like: the division of labour and knowledge, organizational forms, institutions for coordination, costs and benefits of internal and external sources of innovation, spatial dynamics, etc. and related theories. The conceptual part was activated in close combination with empirical attention. The second part of the course focused primarily on empirical phenomena. This year such focus has been created by the use of four firm-specific case studies (i.e. including problems and challenges of innovation in real world firms like Zentropa and Propellerheads) as well as through the use of presentations from industry representatives. Two key topics and industry segments of the creative industries were focused upon through the final four sessions of the course:

- Innovation in B2B relationships: Inter-firm projects in advertising

- Organization and appropriation from innovation in B2C relationships; IPR’s and institutions in the recorded music business.

In the 2 times 3 lectures different activities were carried out: desk research on specific industry dynamics, questions guides to the industry representative were formulated and connected to suitable theories to explain industry-specific organization, longer talks (one hour) were given by invited key decisions makers from various firms and institutions of the industry in question and followed by debates between the external speakers and students mediated by the teacher. Also, these sessions served to provide students a possibility to obtain primary empirical material for their mini-projects.

In this way the course has worked as a backdrop for the evolution of the full time master: Managing Creative Business Processes. An illustrative example here is the development of the international perspective since the elective course every year has attracted students from different countries (i.e. this year from at least 8 countries including China, Italy, Germany, Poland, Norway, etc.). Also, the course involved students from other education institutions apart from the CBS (i.e. RUC, KU) and enjoyed participation of students from at least 5 different lines of full time master course offered by CBS (i.e. master of business development, finance, philosophy, management and knowledge, human resource studies, etc.).

PhD Student Lars Frederiksen and Associated professor Mark Lorenzen have taught the course and recommends four student projects that through of multiple approached reflect some of the topics and contents debated in the course.

The subjects are:

• Social networks and innovation in film production – the case of Hollywood

• New ways of organizing advertising; the impact of ICT 

• Additional commercialisation of products in the music industry

• The importance of innovation in recorded music in a digital era

Please see and download the projects here