Emerging media is a vital element of the modern business world, in for-profit, social impact, and non-profit ventures alike. Startups as well as established organizations connect with audiences, engage customers, collaborate, and compete with one another through interactive media. Websites and social media, mobile devices and apps, video games and immersive experiences, all present opportunities for new business models that challenge organizations and individuals to embrace change, spark innovation, and survive disruption across markets. The present business climate demands that recent graduates come equipped with broad interdisciplinary knowledge and skills, and especially the ability to thoughtfully combine both quantitative and humanistic understanding. Students of Interactive Media + Business (IMB), will be challenged to imagine and implement interactive products and services that fearlessly investigate the recently possible in media, technology, and communication. IMB majors are also expected to think holistically about the impact of their work in society as well as the business value, whether it involve software or hardware, virtual or physical, product or experiment. Through coursework that requires the hands-on application of traditional as well as emerging theory and practice across multiple disciplines, IMB majors will graduate well prepared for stimulating careers and leadership roles in diverse organizations across the globe.
Students of IMB will begin their education in one of the world’s business and media capitals, Shanghai, in one of the most dynamic economies in the world, China. IMB majors and minors will take a unique blend of media and business foundation courses, including Application Lab, which introduces modern business theory and practice, user experience design and user testing, as well as mobile software and hardware prototyping. For their second media foundation, IMB students choose between Interaction Lab, which covers interaction design, electronics, computation, and digital fabrication, or Communications Lab, which covers digital media production methods, including imaging, audio, video, and Web development. Business foundations include Economics of Global Business, which prepares students with a systematic understanding of the international business environment, including macroeconomic theories, and the roles of international trade and finance. The second Business foundation, Principles of Financial Accounting, prepares students to evaluate the current condition of a business, and assess its likely future prospects. Students also choose from a range of flexible core and elective categories across the disciplines of business and media, art and design, the humanities, social and physical sciences, as well as computation and data. Students also have unique opportunities to pursue coursework and gain practical experience in other global business and media capitals, especially New York, Tel Aviv, London, and Berlin. Majors finish with a Capstone Studio course by synthesizing methods of research and practice to produce an interactive project and business plan.
