Postgraduate Course: Client Consulting Project (EFIE11432)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh Futures Institute |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | Client Consulting Project develops students' ability to advise managers of creative organisations. Students work in teams to provide solutions to a real-world problem relevant to an EFI partner. The problem can relate to strategy, marketing, innovation, or any other area of business.
To complete the project, student teams apply what they have learned about value creation and capture, intellectual property, and futures thinking to deliver actionable recommendations.
The course develops the following key abilities:
- Gathering information about a client and its customers, suppliers, partners, and competitors to diagnose problems and identify solutions that can be realistically implemented given the client's internal and external constraints.
- Diagnosing organisational issues and advising a client on matters pertaining to general management.
- Collaborating as a team to solve complex problems that require interdisciplinary expertise and communicating solutions to these problems in a clear and professional manner. |
| Course description |
Creative industries are full of small and medium enterprises that face organisational problems and could benefit from external advice but cannot hire professional consultants. Meanwhile, universities are full of students who are eager to apply their skills and could make a successful career in consulting, but do not know where to start.
Client Consulting Project is an experiential course that allows students to serve as external advisors for an EFI partner organisation. In doing so, it provides students with a rare opportunity to practice management consulting in a supervised environment, gaining first-hand knowledge of creative industries and creating real value for the local business community.
In the first two weeks, students familiarise with key steps of the consulting process, learn about concepts and frameworks critical to management consulting, and practice internal and external analysis through classroom exercises. In the third week, they are assigned to project teams and introduced to their client, who presents a problem for which teams are expected to come up with solutions. Throughout the remainder of the course, teams develop their proposals and report back to the client by delivering a live presentation and a written report.
Students should be aware that this is a challenging course. A client's problem can be very vague and straddle multiple areas of business. Moreover, the information needed to address it can be incomplete or inaccurate, making the experience potentially frustrating. This is both normal and good. Helping clients define their own problems, understand their constraints, and evaluate courses of action based on noisy and incomplete information is precisely what consultants do.
The course requires students to pinpoint organisational problems and identify corrective action, thus developing logical and analytical skills. It also builds leadership and teamwork skills by having teams collaborate on complex and unstructured problems. Finally, it develops business writing and presentation skills by requiring students to pitch their solutions to actual stakeholders.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2026/27, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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Quota: 30 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 6,
Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 10,
Summative Assessment Hours 4,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
The course will be assessed by means of the following components:
1) Team Report (85%)
A report of max. 3500 words that expands upon the client presentation, providing clear argumentation and evidence to support proposed solutions, delivered approximately two weeks after the end of the course.
Learning Outcomes Assessed by Component: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
2) Individual Peer Review (15%)
An online survey administered on Learn where team members evaluate each other based on the quality of their work, effort, and collaborative attitude, delivered approximately two weeks after the end of the course.
Learning Outcomes Assessed by Component: 5 |
| Feedback |
Feedback on anyformative assessment may be provided in various formats, for example, to include written, oral, video, face-to-face, whole class, or individual. The Course Organiser will decide which format is most appropriate in relation to the nature of the assessment.
Feedback on both formative and summative in-course assessed work will be provided in time to be of use in subsequent assessments within the course.
Feedback on the summative assessment will be provided in written form via Learn, the University of Edinburgh's Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).
Formative Feedback Opportunity:
Formative feedback is ongoing feedback which monitors learning and is intended to improve performance in the same course, in future courses, and also beyond study.
Feedback on the formative assessment can be provided by the Course Organiser, the client, student peers, or external people involved in course delivery. It can be given in various formats, including written, oral, video, face-to-face, plenary, or individual, and always in time to be of use in subsequent assessments. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Understand the nature of activities involved in various steps of the consulting process, from the initial (proposal) stage to final delivery and feedback.
- Undertake critical evaluation of a client's business, making informed assessments about strategy and operations in the absence of complete or consistent data.
- Deploy the fundamental knowledge and skills required for management consulting work, including interpersonal, analytical, and communication skills.
- Apply frameworks and methods from strategic management, intellectual property law, and futures studies to provide original and pertinent advice.
- Use appropriate client engagement techniques, adequately structuring and refining queries, and actively listening to client requests to deliver expected outputs.
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Reading List
The key essential reading is Louise Wickham and Jeremy Wilcock's Business and Management Consulting (Sixth ed., Pearson, 2020).
Other essential readings depend on clients, who provide information relevant to their business. Students must engage with this information as well as academic literature relevant to the client's problems, including books, chapters, and journal articles in fields like strategy, marketing, innovation, and intellectual property law.
Recommended readings include:
- Information Is Beautiful (New ed., Collins, 2012) by David McCandless.
- Management Consulting Projects (Sixth ed., Routledge, 2021) by Ronald Cook, Michael Harris, and Dennis Barber III.
Students interested in further and more advanced material are advised to read Peter Block's Flawless Consulting (Fourth ed., Wiley, 2023). |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
rse develops individuality. |
| Keywords | Creative Industries,Cultural Organisations,Consulting Project,Student Team Consulting |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Michele Piazzai
Tel:
Email: michele.piazzai@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mr David Murphy
Tel:
Email: dmurphy7@ed.ac.uk |
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