Creative Entrepreneurship Fundamentals

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Authored by Maria Finkelmeier

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Course Code: OMBUS-392

Next semester
starts Jan 12, 2026

12 Weeks

Level 3

Level 3

3-Credit Tuition

$1,575

In this course, you’ll be encouraged to think boldly, take creative risks, and approach your work with strategic business thinking. You’ll gain a dynamic introduction to entrepreneurial principles and develop the foundational tools needed to design, build, and launch your own creative ventures.

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You’ll begin by exploring your strengths, passions, and perspectives—using those insights to generate ideas and identify opportunities within the creative industries. Through hands-on exploration, you’ll cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset grounded in curiosity, adaptability, and collaboration.

As the lessons progress, you’ll explore key business concepts such as structure, finance, and marketing fundamentals, all through the lens of creative practice. You’ll refine your ability to communicate and pitch ideas effectively, integrating feedback to strengthen and evolve your work.

By the end of the course, you’ll have the confidence and practical strategies to bridge your artistic vision with business execution—transforming creative ideas into sustainable, real-world ventures.

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

  • Recognize your strengths and passions to generate creative business ideas
  • Explain and apply key business concepts, structures, and financial principles
  • Apply entrepreneurial thinking across diverse creative career paths
  • Develop skills in collaboration, communication, and adaptability
  • Analyze opportunities and align them with audience and industry needs
  • Refine ideas through feedback and present them with clarity and confidence
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Overview Syllabus Requirements Instructors Related Music Career Roles
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Syllabus

Lesson 1: Unpack Innovation

  • What is Entrepreneurship?
  • Unpack Innovation
  • My Role as an Entrepreneur
  • Assignment 1: Creative Venture Analysis

Lesson 2: Emerging Technologies and Opportunities

  • Start-Ups Solving Problems
  • Technology and the Music Industry: A Brief Look Back
  • Machine Learning and the Creative Industries
  • Building Communities to Ignite Opportunities
  • Assignment 2: Interview with a Founder or Arts Leader

Lesson 3: Creative Instincts 1: Listening

  • Creative Voices: Pauline Oliveros
  • Creative Voices: Finneas
  • Environmental Scan
  • SWOT Analysis
  • Assignment 3: Personal SWOT Analysis and Reflection

Lesson 4: Creative Instincts 2: Integrating and Collaborating

  • Amplifying Strengths
  • Integrating Story and Vulnerability
  • Collaboration
  • Assignment 4: Reflection on Identity and Leadership

Lesson 5: Creative Instincts 3: Ideating and Failing

  • Where Do Ideas Come From?
  • Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
  • Failure as Necessary
  • Strategies for Failure
  • Tools in Failure: Improvisation
  • Assignment 5: Business Idea Sketch

Lesson 6: Playbook 1: Defining Your Value

  • Unique Value Proposition (UVP)
  • Value Proposition Canvas
  • Mission, Vision, Values
  • Creative Voices: Catherine Morris
  • Assignment 6: Value Proposition and Mission Statement

Lesson 7: Identifying Your Customer

  • Market Segmentation
  • Geographic Segmentation
  • Demographic Segmentation
  • Behavioral Segmentation
  • Psychographic Segmentation
  • Targeting and Creating a Customer Persona
  • Assignment 7: Customer Segmentation and Persona Creation

Lesson 8: Playbook 2: Serving Your Customer

  • Branding
  • Positioning and the Expected Customer Relationship
  • Communication Channels
  • Passion-Driven Brand Case Study
  • Assignment 8: Brand Identity and Strategy

Lesson 9: Playbook 3: The Numbers

  • Seven Types of Revenue
  • Fixed vs. Variable Costs
  • Pricing
  • Start-Up Funding Sources
  • Assignment 9: Revenue Streams and Funding Plan

Lesson 10: On Stage 1: The Pitch

  • What is a Pitch?
  • The What
  • For Whom?
  • But Why?
  • Trust Me!
  • Next Steps
  • Nonverbal Communication and Delivery
  • Assignment 10: One-Minute Business Pitch Video

Lesson 11: On Stage 2: Feedback and Growth

  • Creative Voices: Company Founder
  • Critique 101
  • Releasing “The Precious”
  • Responding on Your Feet
  • Assignment 11: Peer Pitch Critique

Lesson 12: Final Evaluation and Your Founder’s Profile

  • Creative Voices: Company Founder
  • Funder Insights
  • MVP to Stability or Exit
  • Building Your Future and Portfolio
  • Assignment 12: Final Founder Profile and Reflection

Requirements

Prerequisites and Course-Specific Requirements 

Prerequisite Courses, Knowledge, and/or Skills

  • This course does not have any prerequisites.

Textbook(s)

  • No textbooks required

Student Deals
After enrolling, be sure to check out our Student Deals page for various offers on software, hardware, and more. Please contact support@online.berklee.edu with any questions.

General Course Requirements

Below are the minimum requirements to access the course environment and participate in Live Classes. Please make sure to also check the Prerequisites and Course-Specific Requirements section above, and ensure your computer meets or exceeds the minimum system requirements for all software needed for your course. 

Mac Users

PC Users

All Users

  • Latest version of Google Chrome
  • Zoom meeting software
  • Webcam
  • Speakers or headphones
  • External or internal microphone
  • Broadband Internet connection

Instructors

Maria Finkelmeier
Maria Finkelmeier

Author

Named a “one-woman dynamo” by The Boston Globe, Maria Finkelmeier is a percussionist, educator, and arts entrepreneur based in Boston, Massachusetts. She is the founder and director of Kadence Arts, a Boston-based nonprofit organization, and the cofounder of Masary Studios, a sound, light, and performance collective.

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In addition to her work as a performer and arts leader, Finkelmeier teaches at Northeastern University and previously served as program manager for the Entrepreneurial Musicianship Department at the New England Conservatory. Earlier in her career, she spent three years in Northern Sweden as an artist-in-residence at the Piteå Institution for Music and Media.

Finkelmeier has brought contemporary percussion to concert halls across the United States and Europe and to unexpected spaces such as Fenway Park, the Tree Hotel in Sweden, the Boston Center for the Arts’ historic Cyclorama, and the Frost Ice Bar for ArtWeek. Her solo project, #improvadayLIVE, blends video, classical marimba, social media, and electronics into a multisensory experience. She is a Yamaha Performing Artist and endorses Grover Pro Percussion, Vic Firth, and Remo. Read Less

What's Next?

When taken for credit, Creative Entrepreneurship Fundamentals can be applied towards the completion of these related programs:

Related Certificate Programs

Related Degree Majors

Related Music Career Roles

Employers look for skills learned in this course, when hiring for the following music career roles:

A&R Director

A&R Representative

College Marketing Representative

Marketing Manager

Marketing Representative

Music Director/Curator (Radio/Streaming Service)

Record Company Executive
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Questions?

Contact our Academic Advisors by phone at 1-866-BERKLEE (U.S.), 1-617-747-2146 (INT'L), or by email at advisors@online.berklee.edu.

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