Module Description
Module Description
Creation of Value
Making money is a widely accepted goal for many in various societies. This module focuses on what does it actually mean to make money, what are values in general and how can individuals, such as entrepreneurs create them in particular. Studying the close intertwinedness of economic and cultural values will lead, perhaps surprisingly, to philosophical reflections upon the meaning of life and what could constitute “happiness”. While acquiring practical business skills by creating mock-up companies, stuedents draw the connection between what has been called rhetorics in the humanities and marketing, sales and negotiation in business studies. A discussion on the potential of “transformative entrepreneurship” for societies will round up the semester.
Please note: this module encourages creative and independent thinking. Some assignments leave a lot of freedom for self-determined individual work.
Syllabus
Syllabus
Topics to be covered:
- Entrepreneurship and the role of opportunity detection and innovation in capitalism, critical discussion of the “heroic” perception of the entrepreneur
- Discussion of economic concepts, such as exchange, forms of capital and their transformation (Pierre Bourdieu), money and its “teleological nature” (Georg Simmel), economic discourse around happiness, connection between economic and cultural understandings of the concept of value
- Critical reflection and analysis of existing brands and conceptual skills to create a new brand
- Creation of a value proposition and business model in the micro-economics sense – in the light of previous theoretical reflections
- Basics of e-commerce and creation of an e-commerce business or web-presence of a business/initiative (mock-up site) by the use of web editors
- Core concepts of rhetoric in relation to marketing, sales and negotiation practices
- Visualisation skills for the display of complex, qualitative information with a critical reflection of visualisations as a medium and their rhetorical uses
- Assignments include theoretical/analytical and practical/application-oriented exercises fostering creative thinking
