Very helpful, but in no way a requirement:  One media course and/or one strategy course and/or professional experience at a media company.

In “Media & Entertainment: Strategy Consulting Projects,” the concepts and theories introduced in previous media and strategy courses will be applied in a practical way to problems brought to the class as projects from real companies and their managers.  

The ultimate goal of this class is for students to have team experience in helping companies recognize and solve strategic media problems. 

Among the techniques the students will work on

• Industry mapping
• SCP: Structure/Conduct/Performance analysis
• Market sizing 
• Defining the goals of a project
• Defining and understanding scope
• Value propositions and Value curves
• Mapping Business Systems
• Introduction to Business Canvas and Minimal viable product

The half-semester course will introduce techniques to perform strategy consulting for media companies and teach students how to apply these techniques to real projects from real companies. In the seventh week, the teams will present their findings to the sponsoring companies.

To master these skills, each week students will be given specific tools to work through each concept and will to apply these concepts in several ways:

• to current situations of well-known companies and industries
• to a case about an evolving media SaaS company and to a case about a French media company
• to the company project they have been assigned to

Each team will do brief presentations in 10 out of the 12 classes. The teams will have an opportunity to work in a break out room for a portion of each class.

The class is limited to 28 students. There will be four teams of seven members each. Team work, and active participation in each and every class will be required.  Check in meetings (physical or by phone) with sponsor companies are required each week. Collaboration is expected and encouraged throughout the course.

The class may be assigned some readings throughout the class which will be applicable to certain problems we will be discussing.  There will be some reading that is required before the class starts. Optional textbook for this class is: Curse of the Mogul: What’s Wrong with the World’s Leading Media Companies (Knee, Greenwald, Seave; Penguin 2009.)

Ava Seave

Adjunct Professor of Business

Professor Seave is a Principal of Quantum Media, the New York City based consulting firm focused on marketing and strategic planning for media and entertainment companies as well as nonprofits. As a Quantum Media principal, she has led numerous consulting engagements since 1998 and has provided senior-level management consulting services to many companies in a broad range of assignments. Before founding Quantum Media with four...

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