CIFLI CURRICULUM
Phase 2:
IDEATION
5 weeks
IDEATION
5 weeks
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Phase 3:
BUSINESS CASE
6 weeks
BUSINESS CASE
6 weeks
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Phase 4:
SHARK TANK
2 weeks
SHARK TANK
2 weeks
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Phase 5:
PROJECT WORK
5 weeks
PROJECT WORK
5 weeks
GRADUATION
AND WRAP
PARTY
AND WRAP
PARTY
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WMG NFT Gallery open
WMG NFT Gallery open
Phase 1:
FOUNDATIONS
4 weeks
FOUNDATIONS
4 weeks
Phase 2:
IDEATION
5 weeks
IDEATION
5 weeks
Phase 3:
BUSINESS CASE
6 weeks
BUSINESS CASE
6 weeks
Phase 4:
SHARK TANK
2 weeks
SHARK TANK
2 weeks
Phase 5:
PROJECT WORK
5 weeks
PROJECT WORK
5 weeks
GRADUATION AND WRAP PARTY
The 2025 course prospectus is not yet available, it will be similar to the 2024 prospectus (there may be some slight changes).
COURSE CONTENT BY WEEK
Phase 1: FOUNDATIONS
Learning the leadership mindset and business skills needed to succeed
Week 1
- Course, tutor, student introductions
- Solve challenges by being focused on solutions, not the process
- An overview of the creative sector in Australia
- What first principles thinking is and how it helps you make better career choices
- Communicate better by using customer centric communications — solve others' problems
Week 2
- Understanding key precepts of logic and how to better analyse information
- The three levels of response and the benefits of being proactive over reactive
- How to increase your responsiveness to build relationships and land opportunities
- Learn the principles of optimising systems and processes
- Systems thinking and how to understand an issue holistically
- Problem mapping and how it can identify opportunities
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Week 3
- Understanding hierarchies and role boundaries, and why these have benefits
- Chasing the alternative market to tap into better opportunities
- Complete a market and competition analysis
- Market niches and how to take advantage of these
- The benefits of having points of difference and how to identify them
Week 4
- Why you should run an objective- and outcome-driven business
- The benefits of a narrowly purposed business over having broader offerings
- How scaling a business works — benefits, risks and challenges
- Understanding databases and why they're relevant to any business
1 WEEK BREAK
Phase 2: IDEATION
Creating and exploring project and business ideas
Week 5
- Healthy perspectives on rejection and "breakage"
- Innovation generation: combining existing ideas to create something novel
- How we use jargon and metaphor and its impact on communication
- Analysing some great CIFLI business ideas (and why some of them could never work)
Week 6
- The invisible costs of dishonouring commitments
- What is scope and why is it the most important principle of any partnership?
- How to iterate your business: understanding the proof of concept
- How to iterate your business: failing fast
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Week 7
- Ethics: understanding the trolley problem, and complexity in decision making
- How to properly understand value and quantify all benefits
- How to price a product or service
- Why working for free is way smarter than it sounds
Week 8
- Improving your influence
- How to build a brand and manage how others perceive you
- The tools to build credibility: achievements, tenure, volume, skill level, feedback, scale
- Law in the arts — intellectual property, toy guns and intimacy coordination
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Week 9
- What are SMART goals and how are they way better than normal goals?
- Develop a project / goal pyramid for high-quality, adaptive planning
1 WEEK BREAK
Phase 3: THE BUSINESS CASE
Developing project and business ideas to demonstrate that they have strong potential to be financially sustainable
Week 10
- The fundamentals of business case development
- The overestimation problem and why 90% of businesses die quickly
- Learn budgeting for small business
- Why you start in the red: understanding the J-curve of investment
- What is volatility in business and how does it impact a startup?
- What is reach, what is engagement and how do they interact?
- How and why you would capture audience data
Week 11
- Understand "business requirements" and "acceptance criteria" to get the results you need
- How to evaluate suppliers or opportunities and avoid time/money wasters
- How to build a brand personality
- What is a marketing asset and what are the different types? How do they help?
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Week 12
- Conducting a "pre-mortem" to manage potential risks in your business
- Understand the pros and cons of traditional VS digital marketing
- Digital marketing's key principle: understand the value journey
- How to identify your blind spots to help overcome bias
- Case study: World Monologue Games (a hugely successful, money-losing event)
Week 13
- Reviewing business ideas developed to date
- What is expectation management and how can you use it to improve outcomes?
- Understand the primacy and recency effect and where it's relevant
- Conducting a gap analysis of 4x projects to improve their viability
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Week 14
- Deep dive into networking —the benefits of networking up, down and laterally
- How to identify stakeholders relevant to your business or career path
- 10 techniques for time management to get more done and be more impactful
- Understanding fundraising pros and cons — grants, sponsorship, crowdfunding
Week 15
- Learn how to create a Gannt chart and why it's useful
- Tools and techniques for effective task management
- How to develop a capacity plan that works in reality
- Understand the cost of context shifting
- Best practice techniques to quantify the benefits of a project
Week 16
- Practise your Shark Tank pitches and get feedback from the tutors
Phase 4: SHARK TANK
Pitching your projects to a panel of business experts
Week 17
- Pitching projects and businesses to the Shark Tank panel of business experts
Week 18
- Shark Tank debrief and discussion of next steps
- The benefits, costs and options when developing a website
- What is UX design and how does it impact engagement from customers or fans?
- The fundamentals of search engine optimisation
- Writing a business plan: the why and the how
- Understand the pros and cons of outsourcing — and the 4Ds
2 WEEK BREAK
Phase 5: PROJECT WORK
Building your creative industry projects or businesses with support and guidance from the facilitators.
Week 19
- The importance of following criteria (e.g. for applications)
- What are sunk costs, and when to persevere VS abandon
- Best practise record keeping
- How to benefit from the agile framework: an overview of SCRUM
Week 20
- The transferability of skills and how you're better at some things than you think
- How to make promotional videos
- Learn how policy and regulation impact a business and how to work with these
- Understanding Simpson’s Paradox and how statistics can lead to erroneous conclusions
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Week 21
- Understand how the media works: pros, cons, risks and rewards
- How to self-manage publicity through the media
- A portfolio career — the importance of multiple career options, and how much is too much
- The what and why of a marketing plan
Week 22
- Utilising analytics and continued improvement to refine and grow your business
- A deeper exploration of finances for small businesses
- Learn the marketing principles of selling transformations and why this is good for sales
- How to do social media as an artist and why you might not do it
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Week 23
- A health check for your digital presence: recency, relevancy + shareability
- How to manage legal risk
- Diversification: how, why and why not
- A summary of how to start a project
- Life after CIFLI
WRAP PARTY
- Fun is mandatory
The CIFLI Experience
Stef Dellzeit shares her experience as a CIFLI Pioneer.