COMM334 is a strategic communication elective module with an overseas study component designed to equip students to be able to manage and appreciate the dynamic role of communication in Asia. As part of the SMU-X Overseas programme, students will be working on a real-world communication project sponsored by an organisation based in Hong Kong, in addition to being offered opportunities to network with newsroom editors and leading communication practitioners from across Asia.
This course provides students with a valuable and comprehensive understanding necessary to navigate the region’s fast-changing and complex geopolitical and cultural landscape as businesses face insurmountable communication challenges to build trust and defend reputation. Students in this class may also be considered for internship opportunities in Hong Kong.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Understand the political social and cultural factors that influence corporate communication in different countries in Asia • Apply the principles and theories of intercultural communication when examining the industry practices
- Analyze the effectiveness of different strategies when engaging with multicultural, multiethnic stakeholders in today's technologically driven business environments
- Gain valuable insights from guest speakers who manage communication in Asia-Pacific
- Integrate many communication modules and apply knowledge to align business objectives and communication strategies for effective engagement with the highly diverse Asian audience.
The aim of this course is to learn from the thought leadership and practice of various companies and organizations in Vietnam, and for us to recognize the relationship between success and positive corporate culture. The corporate and social impact of good culture in companies and organizations cannot be underestimated.
This course’s focus on Vietnam’s corporate culture is timely as Vietnam is at an interesting point in its corporate development. Vietnam is rapidly growing into a “middle-class” economy, propelled by an expanding young workforce. In 2025-2026, the median age of the labour force is about 33. The country’s numerous corporations and organizations are necessarily adapting to new trends in marketing, change management and corporate culture.
Many organizations have already successfully adapted well to modern market demands. Do these corporations and organizations rely on one or two individuals, or do the staff function as a team, regardless of rank? Is being competitive and aggressive prized over nurturance and social support? Is the chain of command lauded, or is less hierarchy appreciated? Features of culture such as diversity and inclusion, individualism/collectivism, power distance, masculinity/femininity, uncertainty avoidance, and issues related to episodes and relationships in intercultural communication will be discussed.
This is an SMU-X Overseas course. Students will have the chance to visit Ho Chi Minh City and participate in project work with local organizations. They will also visit Vietnam companies and network with practitioners, apply their knowledge and skills in real-world settings. This hands-on experience provides practical insights into Vietnamese business practices and culture, helps develop cross-cultural competencies, and facilitates building professional networks in the Vietnamese market.
The course takes place in both SMU and our partner university in Vietnam. It culminates in a group project which will focus on understanding the corporate culture and values of an organisation based in Vietnam, and developing an integrated communication and business strategy for a programme related to social and organisational impact, tailored to its identified stakeholders.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Appreciate how various organizations and corporations in Vietnam have forged sustainable positive values in their corporate culture
- Read corporate culture using the axioms of Intercultural Communication
- Develop knowledge and skills in understanding and attending to various demographics to forge positive culture
- Forge Cross-cultural collaboration
- Develop multi-disciplinary skills to forge positive values through sound corporate culture
- Integrate other modules with this module and appreciate
AI is rapidly changing the way in which narratives are told (by organizations, brands, and leaders) and received (by audiences). In this course, you will learn what drives narrative visibility and citations in AI-generated recommendations. In addition, you will acquire the skills to use agentic AI in narrative creation. You will also develop the judgment – the new bottleneck in the age of AI agents – to evaluate and refine narratives. Finally, you will have the opportunity to apply what you have learnt to a real-time, real-world client project. The outcome of this project will be a tangible deliverable that you can add to your professional portfolio.
- Understand the strategic role of narrative in organizations.
- Learn how Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) drives visibility in AI-generated recommendations.
- Master the use of agentic AI to create narratives.
- Develop the judgment to evaluate and refine narratives.
- Apply AI-assisted storytelling to real organizational contexts
The development of new digital technologies has fundamentally changed how consumers interact with brands and each other. Marketing is no longer about pushing a sales message to a potential buyer. Businesses have to enable conversations with consumers to engage prospects with relevant content that will lead to positive actions for commercial impact. To be effective, marketers need to employ a rigorous and holistic marketing methodology across both traditional and new-emerging techniques.
This course will provide students with the relevant knowledge, perspectives, and practical skills required to develop marketing strategies that leverage the opportunities inherent on digital platforms, including social media and consumer-to-consumer social interactions. The emphasis of this course is on understanding the various digital platforms available, how to build social marketing strategies, and how to track their effectiveness. The course utilizes applicable theory, empirical analysis, and practical examples to develop the key learning points. The class format will include a combination of lectures, case study discussions, and guest speakers with relevant industry experience.
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
- Understand the implications of the Internet, mobile and information technological advances on the traditional dynamics of business, commerce and marketing and their impact on product, pricing, distribution channels and on advertising
- Understand the differences and similarities in online consumer behaviour with respect to traditional offline consumer behaviour and how increasing consumer control is changing the marketing landscape
- Analyse and assess technological advances in digital media and how they affect our decisions as Marketing Managers
- Formulate and persuasively communicate rigorous and practical solutions to commonly faced online marketing problems across industries • Understand how to integrate online marketing into an overall marketing strategy
- Understand commonly used quantitative techniques to evaluate digital marketing Return on Investment (ROI) for various online customer acquisition tools (e.g. paid search and SEO) and engagement channels (e.g. social media) to best engage with target audiences and achieve your marketing objectives
Many of the environmental and social impacts of products, services and systems are determined at the design stage. This SMU-X course teaches students to design for sustainability, using systemic, circular, regenerative and behavioural design approaches to cocreate solutions with industry or community partners. Working on a live design brief, student teams will map systems and stakeholders, uncover user insights, ideate, prototype and test concepts, and translate them into viable sustainable business designs. Along the way, students will build practical design capabilities (design research, systems mapping, co-design, prototyping and behavioural design) while contributing to more liveable, inclusive and sustainable communities.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Map complex sustainability challenges using systemic design tools (e.g., systems maps, stakeholder maps, life-cycle thinking) and reframe them as design opportunities.
- Apply human-centred and participatory co-design methods to uncover user and stakeholder insights.
- Prototype and test sustainable products, services or systems using circular, regenerative and behavioural design principles.
- Translate validated design concepts into sustainable business designs that create economic, environmental and social value.
- Collaborate in multidisciplinary design teams to co-create and present solutions with a real client.
The Capstone course allows students to apply a cross-disciplinary approach while considering both business model architecture and the formulation of business solutions. It prepares students for the complex business environment of today by emphasising the application of academic knowledge accumulated from a range of prior core courses to solving real world problems.
The course develops in students an ability to: strategically position the client and its challenge within an environmental context; appropriately scope the challenge of the client; develop and execute a workplan to address the challenge; and develop solutions by establishing a fact-base through directed primary and secondary research, drawing out relevant insights through analytic review, and engaging in abstract idea generation. The course exposes students to the uncertainties and ambiguity that exists within real-world business landscapes and organisational environments of industry clients, as well as, the challenges with engaging busy business executives and convincing them and their organisation of innovative solutions that have been devised by the students that address the client’s real-world challenges.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Assess a business problem and/or opportunity from the current business environment, including new and untapped markets
- Design interdisciplinary solutions to address the business challenge or future opportunities by considering strategy, marketing, operations, organization, finance, and communication
- Reason critically through the solution process with appropriate modes of analysis
- Describe the solution's implementation plans and processes with regard to the firm's existing strategy, market, and organization
- Apply a variety of approaches to engage with busy business executives to obtain guidance and information, as well as, secure their buy-in to your ideas
This course will not transform you into an innovator, but will help you hone your skills in managing the product development and innovation process. This course will familiarise you with how organisations manage the process of innovation and how they develop successful products, services and systems. The course is most valuable for those who want to work in industrial firms or do consulting work.
- Know where and how to find ideas for innovation
- Understand the differences between product innovation and business model innovation
- Have a toolbox for analysing and shaping a strategy for innovation
- Understand different types of organisation to promote innovation
- Improve the process of development of new products and services in order to gain time and improve the quality of the end product
- Understand the challenges of managing projects that face a lot of uncertainty
Unlock your creative potential with Human-Centred Design! This course immerses you in user-focused innovation, teaching design principles from Stanford University’s Design School/IDEO framework. You'll learn to create new products, services, experiences, and business models that truly resonate with users. Design thinking is by now known as a widely accepted and impactful way for organizations to innovate. Real world organizations ranging from startups to banks and governments employ design to improve their customer experience and organizational performance. The course is divided into four main aspects, all interconnected but separately emphasized:
(1) Human-centred design principles (e.g. empathetic user research, brainstorming, prototyping and testing),
(2) the product or service to be designed
(3) mindsets, attitudes and behaviors and
(4) design contexts. Design contexts encompass the dynamic environments of humans and businesses.
Increasingly, they include societal and sustainable concerns. Learning in the course will be hands-on, highly interactive and deeply engaging – through class interactions, team exercises, and a team project. This course has benefited both students and clients in a win-win learning environment. Each semester, we have worked with clients from different industries ranging from multi-nationals to small & medium enterprises, government agencies, start-ups and non-profit organizations. Past clients were surprised and delighted with the innovative prototype solutions designed by our student teams. Students also benefited from gaining invaluable experience using design concepts to deliver value to clients, learning from client’s feedback and exceeding their client’s expectations.
- Applying human-centred design principles to frame and solve complex problems.
- Collaborating effectively with diverse team members and stakeholders.
- Designing innovative solutions that address the real needs of clients and stakeholders.
- Utilizing design principles in various contexts, from for-profit to non-profit, with cultural, societal and sustainability awareness.
- Leveraging practical tools to drive meaningful change in organizations
The Capstone course allows students to apply a cross-disciplinary approach while considering both business model architecture and the formulation of business solutions. It prepares students for the complex business environment of today by emphasising the application of academic knowledge accumulated from a range of prior core courses to solving real world problems. The course develops in students an ability to: strategically position the client and its challenge within an environmental context; appropriately scope the challenge of the client; develop and execute a workplan to address the challenge; and develop solutions by establishing a fact-base through directed primary and secondary research, drawing out relevant insights through analytic review, and engaging in abstract idea generation. The course exposes students to the uncertainties and ambiguity that exists within real-world business landscapes and organisational environments of industry clients, as well as, the challenges with engaging busy business executives and convincing them and their organisation of innovative solutions that have been devised by the students that address the client’s real-world challenges.
- Assess a business problem and/or opportunity from the current business environment, including new and untapped markets
- Design interdisciplinary solutions to address the business challenge or future opportunities by considering strategy, marketing, operations,
organization, finance, and communication - Reason critically through the solution process with appropriate modes of analysis
- Describe the solution's implementation plans and processes with regard to the firm's existing strategy, market, and organization
- Apply a variety of approaches to engage with busy business executives to obtain guidance and information, as well as, secure their buy-in to your ideas
The core objective of the new SMU-X Transformative Leadership course is to nurture a new generation of young leaders motivated and capable of tackling intricate global and local challenges related to the nexus of ‘digital disruption, demographic change and diversity’ in an integrated, interdisciplinary fashion, providing the opportunity to integrate perceived differences between older and younger people in terms of values, communication priorities; age discrimination or the initiation of new types of social (‘digital’) behaviours transmitted from the plugged-in ‘Generation Z’ (born 1996 and after) to Baby Boomers (born 1946 to 1964). These three challenges (positioned at the interface of both current and future issues) are not only globally relevant but also have significant local implications for Singapore.
Embedded in the experiential SMU-X initiative, the Transformative Leadership course provides students with a unique learning opportunity to develop and implement (socially) innovative solutions to make a positive impact on business and society in close collaboration with reputable partners in business, nonprofits and government. Learners will be paired up with an external SMU-X partner to work on relevant innovative projects with real impact.
The successful completion of such transformative SMU-X projects requires learners diving deep(er) into various disciplines such as social sciences, business, political governance, public policy, demography, technology, etc. It is expected that the chosen practical challenges commissioned by SMU-X partners will ‘stretch’ students, forcing them to step out of their comfort zones and to explore the unknowns in order to make a ‘real’ difference ‘out there’ in both the social and business sectors.
In terms of effective leader development, in particular, transformative leadership, the SMU-X course design will support learners in expanding their individual capacity to be effective in leadership roles and processes. Emphasis will be put on proximal indicators of leader development such as self-views around self-concept, including leader self-awareness, leadership self-efficacy and leader. Through their SMU-X projects, students will appreciate the importance of leadership development so that they can articulate what it takes for teams and their leaders to create strong(er) alignment and high(er) levels of commitment. The latter requires interpersonal trust, care and concern as well as shared mind-sets regarding (transformative) goals and values such as the ‘real’ sharing propelled by collaborative leadership approaches.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Analyze the power and impact of global and local challenges related to digital disruption and demographic change on business and society in general;
- Explain the importance of collaborative transformative leadership in addressing some of these complex issues head on in an integrated, interdisciplinary and novel manner, bringing about transformational, out-of-the box solutions;
- Appreciate what it takes in terms of design thinking to propose user-centred solutions, that create real value for stakeholders of participating client organizations;
- Articulate how selected leadership concepts such as transformational, collaborative leadership approaches can propel innovative problem solutions;
- Reflect effectively about their own leadership outlook and the acquisition of 21th century skills such as collaborative intelligence, through impactful and innovative SMU-X projects.