For students 16-21 years old

The practice-based learning course seeks to unlock your entrepreneurial and leadership skills and make you more work-ready.

You will gain a greater understanding of the nature of entrepreneurship and leadership, and get equipped with the tools and mechanisms that will help you to cope with all aspects of leading and managing the innovation process - from identifying problems to applying solutions in practice.

The course comprises these units:

1. Positive beliefs about creativity (you will learn to see creativity as a powerful force for change and success and to take responsibility for your own creativity)
2. Creativity skills set (visual cognition, idea-generation and team-creativity)
3. Creative personality traits (you will cultivate the characteristics such as being proactive, passionate, hard-working, brave, curious, open to new experience, confident, independent, resilient, with strong sense of self-efficacy and self-realization)
4. Ethical creativity (generating ideas for the common good) 
5. Practical creativity (practicing our ‘Five-Step Practical Creativity Framework’)

Our ‘Five-Step Practical Creativity Framework’, a step-by-step approach to being creative in real life, helps you to strengthen your problem solving skill.

You will practice how to:

1. Identify a problem and state it the ways that encourage creative solutions.
2. Brainstorm multiple solutions. Set goals and directions for innovation. Form creative teams.
3. Evaluate solutions against criteria. Decision-making process.
4. Communicate solutions. Visual communication. Overcoming “resistance to change”.
5. Plan implementation and implement it (and act creatively throughout). Motivate team-members and support innovation culture.

Upon completion of this course, you will receive our certificate which will qualify you to join our Creative Workforce Placement programme that aims to place our students into paid internships at leading organisations.

To enrol, you will have to do a simple assessment test online.

Our Online Learning Help Center can help you to make the most of your online learning experience at MASK.

Why it is important for you to join this course?

Work-ready

Modern organisations seek employees that are creative. For example, the Members of the Confederation of British Industry reported that “first and foremost” they seek creative employees. ('Education and Skills' survey, Confederation of British Industry, 2016).

"Only five hours of creativity training given to unemployed youth increase their employability rate fivefold,"   said the authority on creativity Dr Edward De Bono (De Bono, 'Why so stupid?' book, Blackhall, 2003).

Entrepreneurial skills

Nine out of ten start-ups fail. Poor problem-solving skill, which relies on creativity, is one of the key reasons for this lack of success (E. Griffin, “Why startups fail,” Fortune Magazine, September 2014 4 IBM CEO survey, 2010).

By doing this course you will strengthen your problem solving skill.

Leadership skills

Creativity is the most important leadership quality, according to 1,500 CEOs from 60 countries and 33 industries surveyed by IBM (IBM, CEO survey, 2010). The old “command and control” leadership style has given way to the leadership that knows how to spark creativity and inspire innovation.

By doing this course, you will learn how to lead in the 21 century.