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Put Theory into Action in Creative Industries

Courses in Business for Creative Industries + Curriculum

The Master’s in Leadership for Creative Enterprises (MSLCE) curriculum equips you with the leadership, business, and strategic skills needed to excel in the creative industries. Through core courses in business management, marketing, finance, and organizational leadership — plus electives in areas like arts law, streaming, AI in creative enterprises, and brand management — you’ll learn to lead creative teams, manage complex projects, and launch innovative ventures.

Start in the fall or winter quarter.* 

MS in Leadership for Creative Enterprises Degree Requirements 

14 credits are required to complete the MSLCE degree

  • Four (4) core credits
  • Seven (7) elective credits
  • Three (3) credit course for Internship, Thesis, or Applied Project

Full-Time Enrollment

The MSLCE program is designed to be completed in one year through full-time study, beginning in either the Fall or Winter Quarter. Full-time students typically take three to four courses per quarter, combining required core courses with electives tailored to their career goals. The summer quarter is dedicated to an internship, thesis, or applied project, this accelerated option is ideal for students seeking an immersive experience and a faster path to graduation.

Part-Time Enrollment

Part-time enrollment is available for students who wish to balance their graduate studies with professional or personal commitments. Part-time students typically take one to two courses per quarter, allowing them to progress at a steady pace while continuing to work or manage other obligations.

 *All coursework must be completed within five years of the first quarter of enrollment.

MSLCE Core Courses

MSLCE Faculty member and entertainment, media and technology researcher Aymar Jean Escoffery.Understanding the Creative Industries

Aymar Jean Escoffery

Show business is just as much about the business as it is the show. This combination of art and industry has long sparked debate about the status of the cultural or creative industries, and the ways in which they intermingle art and commerce. To what degree can audiences take an active role in their experience of the media? How have technological or legislative developments influenced the way in which media products are produced, distributed and consumed? How can media products be made so that they cross cultural or national boundaries? This course will address these and other questions through an engagement with scholarship on a range of creative industries including film, radio and television broadcasting, popular music, advertising and digital gaming.

MSLCE and Kellogg professor Allison Henry who teaches the leading organizations in creative industries core course.Design, Culture + Politics: Leading Organizations in the Creative Sector

Allison Henry

Innovation involves trading off economy of thought for creativity of thought. It requires the discipline of interpreting what we see and hear in organizations from multiple standpoints.  Accordingly, we will learn to analyze situations and craft implementation plans using three perspectives on organizations—strategic design, political and cultural. While leading and managing others always presents challenges, our goal in this course is to use the three perspectives to develop a more complete understanding of these challenges and how to address them.

Economics of Creative Enterprises

Cory Sandrock

This course will give students an understanding of the language of business by studying key aspect of economics, accounting, and corporate finance. With that foundational knowledge in hand, students will explore how best to project the future of their venture and prepare an overall plan. Translating a creative concept into the language of finance is the key skill needed to launch any idea, as every potential funding source asks for certain financial information. This course will teach students how to frame creative activities with the language of business and speak intelligently about the financial data behind any new creative enterprise.

Marketing Strategies in Creative Industries

Olga Kamenchuk

The business models of creative industries are unique in many ways. Further, marketing plays a crucial role in the success of creative enterprises, which not only spend billions advertising and promoting their properties, but also depend heavily on the kindness of strangers (advertisers and donors) to fund their businesses. In this class, students will learn a consumer-driven approach to marketing strategy. After an initial overview of marketing strategy basics and creative industry idiosyncracies, learning from examples outside the world of creative enterprises, before applying the lessons and methodologies to the unique media and entertainment universe.

MSLCE Elective Courses

Arts and Entertainment Law and Ethics

Rick Morris

The legal contexts of creative work, primarily in respect to matters of contract and copyright. Topics include property acquisition, talent, union, distribution, merchandising, and software contracts, trademark and intellectual property practices, and the ethics of the deal.

The Business of Streaming

Aymar Jean Escoffery

This course offers an overview of traditional and new practices in the development of television programs. Students will be exposed to changes in how corporate broadcast and cable networks select and finance scripted and unscripted series as well as how independent and corporate digital networks are reshaping the production and marketing of television in the 21st century.

Culture and Globalization

Claudio Benzecry

What is globalization? And how does it affect cultural production? How is it that the cultural products of some countries circulate easier than others? What is the relationship between place and cultural industries? What makes a city a cultural capital? And how is it that cities compete via culture to appropriate economic capital? This course will address these and other questions through an engagement with scholarship on a range of creative industries including fashion, television, music, movies, fine arts, and the high-end food industry. The course is designed to provide a historical and theoretical introduction to the intersection between globalization and cultural production and to allow students to apply that knowledge to a range of contexts.

MSLCE Managing AI in creative industries professors Leslie DeChurch, Duri Long, and Ignacio Cruz.
Managing AI in Creative Industries

Leslie Dechurch, Ignacio Fernandez, Duri Long

This course includes three components each taught by faculty whose research and practice are at the forefront of AI in organizations. We’ll explore the essentials of leveraging AI in the workplace, from developing a digital mindset to understanding AI’s role in team dynamics and enhancing AI literacy for individual and workplace advancement. Students will engage in leadership activities, case studies, and interactive discussions to critically apply AI, assess its ethical implications, and harness its potential for creative problem-solving in professional settings.

The Power of Pitching + Persuasion

Laverne McKinnon

A successful pitch relies on both your ability to craft a presentation and on your ability to present it. These skills can be mastered and are essential as a leader in the creative industries.  Writers pitch concepts and stories. Agents pitch ideas and clients. Producers pitch projects and strategies. Executives pitch their teams and CEOs. CEOs pitch their boards, shareholders and the public. The key to successful pitching is understanding yourself and how you are perceived, passionate connection to what you’re pitching, and creating resonance through listening and pitch craft. This course gives you the foundation of pitching techniques and strategies as well as the opportunity to discover, practice and master your own unique style.

MSLCE faculty member Eric Patrick who teaches New Media Production Management as part of the program courses in business for creative industries.
New Media Production Management

Eric Patrick

Increasingly, creative industries are creating works in new media, interactivity, game design, and animation, either as stand-alone properties or as part of a larger franchise. These forms often deviate from legacy production processes, and require different models of budgeting, production, management, and output. This class will analyze production processes in a variety of new media forms, including projection mapping, apps, video games, live event/theme parks, animation, installations, and VR production. We will study some of the innovative management methods that have emerged in these areas over the past two decades and develop an understanding of how these mediums effect logistical/aesthetic direction, personnel communications, and product release processes. 

Culture and Arts Analytics

Ágnes Horvát

Big data is currency for those initiated in the nuts and bolts of data science. Building on simple real-world examples and exercises that establish your data literacy, this course introduces key concepts and methods selected from recent interdisciplinary research on networks, social media, machine learning, the wisdom of crowds, and prediction markets. This class provides you with tools to apply this research to making predictions about the market for cultural goods like music, film, books and computer games. It explores factors that make prediction hard (e.g., social influence, ICTs, and the new digital economy) and gives you alternative that use the potential of Big Data.

Cultural Nonprofit Organizations

Larissa Buchholz

The traditional models that have supported cultural nonprofit organizations are decaying. Performances and traditional development no longer support them alone, increasingly artists represent a continuous workforce, and the market for volunteers is more competitive than ever before. This course introduces students to this new landscape and addresses the strategic decisions with which cultural nonprofit leaders must grapple, including the fiduciary and normative roles of board members and typical responsibilities of chief executives and artistic directors. In addition, special attention will be given to the relationship between the board and staff, which can be managed in a variety of ways, as well as management challenges that are unique to the cultural nonprofit sector. 

Personal Leadership Insights

Robert Langewisch

This course is a unique opportunity for students who are highly motivated and committed to their personal development and growth as a leader. Students are lead in small groups through a series of assignments that will help them increase self-awareness and gain clarity about their unique leadership skills, values, strengths and limitations. Each class will consist of group discussions and peer coaching exercises around self-reflective assignments. In addition, students meet one-on-one with a Leadership Coach.

MSLCE professor and business consultant Katie Hytros who teaches business models in creative industries.
Business Models in Creative Enterprises

Katie Hytros

How can you harness creative energy into a thriving business?  This course will offer a structured way to understand, analyze and apply key concepts around value creation and value capture for creative enterprises. Learn how to develop a strong fit between products/services and customers/market, and how to effectively go-to-market to meet growth and profitability targets. Various business models will be covered, from content creation, distribution, presentation, curation, and more.

MSLCE faculty member Al Heartley who teaches (In)Equity in Arts and Entertainment.
(In)Equity in Arts and Entertainment: History + Practice

Al Heartley

This course will investigate historical and current efforts toward equity, diversity, and inclusion and the pursuit of anti-racism work within the performing arts and entertainment fields. The course will delve into industry norms and trends, successes and failures, practical examples of implementation, problems within the field, and resources for emerging leaders. Areas of study will include the history of The Public Theater and East West Players, the We See You White American Theatre (WSYWAT) movement, August Wilson’s “The Ground on Which I Stand” speech, International Association of Blacks in Dance (IABD), Asian American Arts Alliance, The Kilroy’s, and the Sol Project

MSLCE faculty member Noshir Contractor who teaches Leveraging Networks in Creative Industries.
Leveraging Networks in Creative Enterprises

Noshir Contractor 

Networks play a pivotal role in the success of people and projects within the creative enterprise. Networks shape how we build and manage our careers, leverage entrepreneurship, mobilize for strategic partnerships, assemble dream teams to maximize innovation, optimize implementation, hone marketing strategies, and enhance customer engagement. Developments in the digital realm offer unprecedented opportunities to re-imagine the creative enterprise based on fluid and diverse networks. The ability to design and leverage these networks will differentiate leaders in the creative sector. This course provides you with the concepts, insights, and techniques to give you that competitive edge using a set of case studies, review articles as well as an overview of easy-to-use, but powerful, computer-based visual-analytics.

Brand Management in the Digital Age

TJ Billard 

Brands are ubiquitous to modern society. The logics of branding shape how we view nearly every aspect of social life and, oftentimes, how we view ourselves. But the practices of brand management—of creating, shaping, maintaining, and contesting brand meaning—have transformed dramatically in recent decades. Technological changes have “opened up” the processes of branding and shifted the distribution of communicative power within consumer culture. At the same time, brands have become more “personal,” taking on public personalities and more explicit stances on issues of identity and justice. This course provides an overview of how these changes have altered the practices of brand management,=. The ultimate aim is to provide students with a practical understanding of how brand management works, while also providing them with the conceptual tools to critique those practices.

The Power of Strategic Storytelling

Nathan Walter 

Humans are innate storytellers and narratives have played a vital role in transmitting crucial information for thousands of years. Indeed, human-beings are creatures who naturally think about the world in story elements and who rely on narrative structures in order to explain their surrounding world and the actions of those who inhabit that world. In various contexts, research has repeatedly demonstrated that engaging stories may be especially valuable as they facilitate processing of new, difficult, or controversial information, produce longer-lasting effects, and encourage adoption of story-consistent attitudes and behaviors. Informed by the media psychology perspective, this course will examine core texts, story factors, audience characteristics, and processes underlying narrative persuasion, as well as ongoing inconsistencies and debates.

Image film camera for entrepreneurship in creative industries course.
Entrepreneurship in Creative Industries

Jeff Smith + John Greene

This class is co-offered by MSLCE and The Farley Center for Entrepreneurship as NUvention: Arts and Entertainment. The course brings together students from across Northwestern schools to work in interdisciplinary teams on the creation of new ventures in the arts and entertainment space. No specific genre, form, or medium will be emphasized; students are encouraged to explore ideas in a wide range of areas, including music, theater, television and the visual arts. They will learn a process of innovation and venture development that can be applied in multiple contexts. Students will be challenged to think about the role of technology in shaping the future of the arts and entertainment industries, and will interact with industry veterans who may provide feedback on their projects.

MSLCE career services staff member Mandi Glowen who teaches professional development for students in creative industries.
Professional Development

Mandi Glowen

The MSLCE Professional Development course is designed to prepare students for a career in the creative industries by complementing the theoretical MSLCE curriculum and the practical application of skills and strategy through self-assessment, reflection, industry engagement, and career opportunities. The most valuable elements this course provides are the space and time to think strategically about your career and connect on this topic with your colleagues.

Class time will be focused on elements of your individual career planning, professional and leadership development, leveraging practical strategies, and accountability. The course will achieve these objectives through goal articulation, group & individual coaching, refining individual professional value pitch, and industry networking. Additionally, the course will provide opportunities to interact with industry leaders and organizations through guest speakers and strategic individual industry connection.

MSLCE professor and Wirtz Theatre managing director Jorge Silva who teaching a course on influence and decision making in creative industries.
Influencers IRL: Decision-Making + Strategy in Creative Context

Jorge Silva

The neoclassical economic model assumes that all actors are rational—that people know what they want, and that the market will optimize to meet those desires. But people are irrational—and that’s okay! Every day, we make countless decisions shaped by cognitive biases, emotions, and social influences.

In this course, we will explore the intrapersonal and interpersonal behaviors that shape our choices at home, at work, and in creative industries. Through case studies from both the private and social sectors, students will engage in weekly exercises designed to examine the habits, processes, and structures that influence decision-making.

Key topics include behavioral economics, negotiation strategies, labor economics, personal and managerial risk management, and accessibility and inclusion strategies. By leveraging these evidence-based tools, leaders in the creative economy can better understand the forces that drive our choices—empowering not only ourselves but also fostering conditions for communal betterment.

Summer Quarter Experiential Learning

MSLCE students discussing business strategies for experiential learning in creative industries.

MSLCE students have three experiential options to choose from during their summer quarter that complement their previous courses in business and leadership for creative industries: an internship, thesis, or applied project. 

Internships in Arts, Media, Entertainment and other Creative Sectors

Students gain hands-on experience in the arts, media, entertainment, and cultural sectors through internships in locations such as Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, or abroad. The MSLCE team supports you in identifying and applying for positions that align with your career goals. Alongside your internship hours, you will complete online coursework designed to deepen professional skills and connect theory to practice.

Original Research Thesis

The thesis option allows you to conduct in-depth academic research on a topic relevant to creative industries management or leadership. Working closely with a faculty advisor, you will develop a research question, conduct analyses, and produce a formal paper presenting your findings.

Applied Projects for Real-World Impact

Similar in structure to the thesis, the applied project has a direct professional application. Under faculty guidance, you will design and execute a project—often entrepreneurial in nature—such as market research, business model development, or marketing strategy for a new creative venture. Other applied projects may focus on a consulting project, launching initiatives, or innovating within existing organizations.