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Master in Designing and Leading Creative Organisations

The Master in Designing and Leading Creative Organizations equips professionals with the skills to effectively lead creative teams, placing a strong emphasis on strategic organizational design to optimize creativity and address the complexities of the dynamic creative industry landscape.

Description of the curriculum

  • Edition: 1st
  • Teaching period: from October 3rd 2024 to June 30th 2025. Final master's project presentation: June 2025
  • Schedule: Thursday and Friday from 15:00 to 21:00
  • Modality: on-site
  • Language: English
  • Price: 10.400 €
  • Qualification: Master's Degree in Designing and Leading Creative Organisations awarded by the UVic-UCC
  • Credits: 60 ECTS

Presentation

Creative teams exhibit specific characteristics in their functioning and work approach: a need for freedom and autonomy, a high degree of knowledge, low tolerance for boredom, permanent curiosity, resistance to acknowledging leadership, among others. Although these distinctive traits create favorable conditions for creative production, they also present unique demands for those responsible for leading them.

The Master considers these traits not as problematic but as a starting point. It aims to prepare those who are responsible for leading these teams with the skills to lead individuals and collectives, so they can channel energy towards the development of products or services, maintaining creativity at the highest level and channeling it productively. This channeling involves designing suitable working conditions that help define processes and responsibilities, both in an organized and flexible manner, taking into account the demands of the environment.

The context of the so-called creative industries has always been characterized by dynamism, competitiveness, and demand, requiring almost instantaneous adaptive capacity in both results and working methods. Additionally, the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) will continue to cause profound disruption to all these processes. This context, along with the intrinsic characteristics of professional activity, makes practical and unique know-how essential for those who lead and manage organizations, projects, and teams of this nature, not only to adapt but also to anticipate a complex and expectedly more complex environment. The challenge posed by all these factors in the immediate future makes the skills proposed in the Master a key foundation for managing teams in any creative field.

Syllabus

Module 1 – Design of Organizational Architecture

Module 2 – The Leadership Role

Module 3 – Team Management and Group Dynamics

Module 4 – Change and Transformation Processes

Module 5 – Political Skills 

Module 6 – Creative and Innovation Processes

Module 7 – Systemic Reading of the Environment 

Module 8 – Master's Final Project

Programme

Module 1 – Design of Organizational Architecture

Connect environmental conditions and complexity with the state and potentialities of the organization, considering the complexity of the environment and the type of project.

  • Characteristics of the creative organization
  • Dimensions of complexity
  • Circular and systemic causality analysis
  • Project management: critical path, Agile (Scrum, Canvas, Crystal, DSDM)
  • Governance role
  • Design approaches: structural, procedural, viability.

Module 2 – The Leadership Role

Identify unconscious trends in leadership exercise, connecting them with organizational dynamics and the task to be developed.

  • Leadership, power, and authority
  • Organizational dynamics of creative teams
  • Role-person-system and Imago-Affective Representations (RIA’s)
  • Analysis of one's own role and effects on teams and results
  • Optimal distance in anxiety or difficulty situations.

Module 3 – Team Management and Group Dynamics

Intervene effectively in group dynamics that affect project development and mobilize dynamics that are favorable.

  • Group phenomena and their management
  • Unconscious roles in a work team
  • The "Negative Capacity" to manage conflict situations
  • Types of interventions to redirect the task
  • Meeting management and collaborative work methodologies.

Module 4 – Change and Transformation Processes

Acquire the skills and methodologies to effectively drive and accompany complex project transition processes and channel resistances in favor of the new direction.

  • Characteristics of a transformation process
  • Types of resistances, manifestations, and their channeling
  • The role of narrative as a sense-making tool
  • Participatory conditions in change processes
  • Conceptual paradigms of change approaches.

Module 5 – Political Skills

Identify the political map of project stakeholders, their interactions, and sources of influence and power, choosing the most appropriate strategies.

  • Impact of stakeholders on project development
  • Methodologies for identifying areas of political interest and influence
  • Political representation and its function
  • Tactics and influence strategies.

Module 6 – Creative and Innovation Processes

Stimulate the creative potential of the organization and a culture of innovation among organization members, making it a habitual internal operating practice.

  • Innovation as a process and organizational implications
  • Phases and states of a creative process
  • Ability to manage uncertainty and ambivalence
  • Management of contradictions as a tool for opportunity emergence
  • The role of creativity in creative teams.

Module 7 – Systemic Reading of the Environment

Build a systemic overview of the environment and future trends, practicing propositional methodologies of organizational identity. 

  • Understanding the target audience and new observation methodologies (Buyer Persona, Customer Journey, Customer Experience, Conversion Funnel)
  • Communities: new models of relationship with customers
  • Conceptual and strategic methodological approaches
  • Methodologies to shape social and business contribution
  • Threats and opportunities of AI.

Module 8 – Master's Final Project

This work proposes a creative reflection-action by the participant based on an organizational situation that allows the integration of the conceptual and methodological frameworks worked on while relating to the participant's own experience.

Teachers

Jaume Benavent Guardia, Expert in the exercise of leadership roles in organisations. Project Director of the Innova Institute.
Joan Roma i Vergés, Expert in development and transformation processes in creative organisations. President of the Innova Institute.
Jaume Benavent Guardia, Expert in the exercise of leadership roles in organisations. Project Director of the Innova Institute.

Jaume Benavent Guardia

Expert in the exercise of leadership roles in organisations. Project Director of the Innova Institute.

Joan Roma i Vergés, Expert in development and transformation processes in creative organisations. President of the Innova Institute.

Joan Roma i Vergés

Expert in development and transformation processes in creative organisations. President of the Innova Institute.

Sandra Carrau Pascual, Expert in group dynamics for creative teams. Partner-Consultant of the Innova Institute.

Sandra Carrau Pascual

Expert in group dynamics for creative teams. Partner-Consultant of the Innova Institute.

Lluís Chico Roca, International business development

Lluís Chico Roca

International business development

Fernando Leeson Martínez, Expert in the design of organisational structures. Co-founder of the Innova Institute.

Fernando Leeson Martínez

Expert in the design of organisational structures. Co-founder of the Innova Institute.

Nani Marquina, Carpet designer and founder of her namesake brand.

Nani Marquina

Carpet designer and founder of her namesake brand.

Asun Panero, Creative Director and Product Development at Nusa Studio.

Asun Panero

Creative Director and Product Development at Nusa Studio.

Dani Reyes Vilaplana, Expert in organisational identity methodologies. Director of Innovation and Research, CCMA (TV3 and Catalunya Ràdio).

Dani Reyes Vilaplana

Expert in organisational identity methodologies. Director of Innovation and Research, CCMA (TV3 and Catalunya Ràdio).

Marc Roma, Creative and business director of Abacus Idea, the content area of the Abacus cooperative.

Marc Roma

Creative and business director of Abacus Idea, the content area of the Abacus cooperative.

David Sierra Lozano, Expert in organisational strategic vision. Partner-Consultant of the Innova Institute.

David Sierra Lozano

Expert in organisational strategic vision. Partner-Consultant of the Innova Institute.

Joan Teixidor, Sociologist and photographer. Facilitator of creative processes. Partner-cooperator of the Innova Institute.

Joan Teixidor

Sociologist and photographer. Facilitator of creative processes. Partner-cooperator of the Innova Institute.

Amaru Zeas-Sigüenza, Film Maker and Art Director

Amaru Zeas-Sigüenza

Film Maker and Art Director

Affiliated Company

The Master in Designing and Leading Creative Organizations has been created and designed by Innova, Institut per la innovació organitzativa i social, and is included in the line of learning activities it has been developing since 1994 around the theme of organizational transformation. The Institute supports creative organizations and teams in their transition processes, offering them consultancy, role advice, capacity development, and organizational design, through a systemic perspective and complexity management.

Innova. Institut per a la Innovació organitzativa i social

Career opportunities

The program is aimed at professionals who take on or want to prepare for leadership roles in organizations in various creative fields, such as cultural management, creative and artistic production, customer experience management, art and interactive art direction, event organization and planning, advertising management, project entrepreneurship, management of ad hoc teams of creative professionals, HR management in organizations of creative professionals, user experience management, and communication/social media management.

Payment methods

Total cost of the course: 10.400 €

The total cost includes an amount of 200 € concerning the university fees, the administration expenses and the compulsory insurances.

Payment methods

BAU, Arts and Design College of Barcelona offers different terms of payment:

  • Single payment

  • Part payment, in 3 instalments:
    • 1st payment, due on enrolment: consisting of 40 % of the fees excluding taxes. An amount of 200 € concerning the university fees is added to the resulting cost
    • 2nd payment, due November 5: consisting of 30% of the course excluding taxes
    • 3rd payment, due January 5: consisting of 30 % of the course excluding taxes

Students and former students of BAU benefit from 10% discount on any of the courses if they have exceeded at least 50% of the credits for a Degree, Higher Degree in Design or the Diploma in Graphic Design; or 100% of the credits for any of the Master’s or Postgraduate degrees.

More information about scholarships and grants.

Information about the registration process.

Academic regulations for Masters and Postgraduate Degrees of BAU.

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