Article by Imme van Oudheusden,
4th-year student at Creative Business
In the second year, you’ll encounter the course International Creative Business. Here you and your class will be assigned to a specific region or country, depending on your lecturer’s expertise. You’ll be able to gather insights into how different markets and cultures value creative work differently. With the insights you will gather during a full-day conference about the Future of Creative Business, you’ll know more about A.I and how you could potentially ingrain it into your idea as well.
Three books are also heavily made use of during this course; Kevin Kelly’s 12 Forces, Baumann’s Liquid Times, and Toffler’s Third Wave. These will help you realize the importance of creative solutions for the future. Bigger topics such as the future of industries, changing society, and developing technology will be heavily discussed.
Your final assignment would be to create a video proposing your 2025-ready business plan. It should match the current needs of your country and also align with their values. Some of the concepts that our fellow students came up with were;
- Transforming an existing local TV channel into a cross-platform network. This to ensure New Zealand’s traditional Maori population can connect more to current generations and is able to thrive in the highly competitive streaming industry.
- Developing a perfume machine that can create a perfume with local ingredients from Saudi Arabia. Thus, supporting local communities and tailoring to the needs of consumers in Saudi Arabia, as there’s a big market for local perfume, by letting people personalize their perfume.
- Establishing a platform within the booming music industry in Japan for (new) artists and fans; Instead of a music label promoting the artists, here, the fans would be able to create content. Hereby, allowing fans to help their favorite artists out and ensuring artists won’t be tied down to a strict contract.
- Establishing a bilingual manga-platform in Saudi Arabia, where people can read, publish, and share diverse manga. This to inspire local upcoming manga artists and create an approachable place and community where fans can interact.
This course will help you figure out how to research a (niche) market within a region and how to implement a product or service. While taking into account that there are very diverse cultures that will affect the creation and implementation of your final deliverable.