Ever since I’m working as a lecturer in the world’s first MBA Design Management (UK) programme (1998) & later on as a co-founder of a Master in Design Management (NL) one of the core aims and goals has been to bridge the gap between Logic & Emotion (in the style of Blogger David Armano) or as Grant is describing it: ‘a linga franca’. While this could end in a longer discussion I do think that in general we’ve succeeded at least in terms of that we’ve created a common understanding of what is driving each clique and accordingly know the some of the (relevant) questions as well as some (offerings for) answers

However the world turns fast and while Design Management (addressing among others several topics covered by schools mentioned here in this thread already) is on its early maturity stage of the Creative Education Industry Life Cycle new programmes with fancy lables enter the market in order to attract new ‘early adopters’ … , but the recent demise for example of Zollverein School here in Germany backed up with several million Euros EU funding money clearly shows that it takes more than great architecture, fancy city names or closed pal networks to make a unique and sustainable offer which survives turbulent times.

BTW: The Berlin School is still heavily promoting their programme scheduled to start in February (which means tomorrow) I just got another email in my inbox

As others have suggested, a unique opportunity of higher education is the potential to take risk. Strangely, we’ve constructed a system in which such institutions, and their leaders, are increasingly risk averse. Inverting that system with some focused and thoughtful effort is certainly improbable, but not impossible.

As I conducted research into MBA programs around the country, it became very clear that a) creativity was not being taught in any form other than one class at a few schools, b) that most mba’s in brand management or marketing did not understand the concept of branding (many programs taught branding near the end of a student’s time in their program and not first as a foundation for all that was to come) and c) that most mba students were learning an old notion of how to manage a brand in the marketplace.

As a result, I came away thinking that most mba programs taught students how to be mechanics, not inventors. This distinction is huge in light of the need for rapid innovation and the shift – as Daniel Pink writes – from the information age to the conceptual age. Teaching a creative thinking class is not the answer. Today’s brand managers must understand how to develop creative ideas that connect in a meaningful way with people. They also have to know how to manage that idea through the many layers, steps, political landmines, etc. in order to protect the integrity of the idea and thus give it the best chance of having an impact in the marketplace.

I was fortunate that the Adcenter was totally experiential, so we could build all of these precepts into an evolving curriculum, thus allowing graduates to be able to hit the ground running. Where I really struggled was how to give the students enough financial education as well. In the end, I centered the entire curriculum around the idea of brand development as it related to creativity, culture (internal and external), marketing and finance ( choosing to see finance as fuel for brand ideas rather than as the reason why a brand is created and implemented).

The truth is that it would be great to turn out students who had a balance of creative driven brand experience as well as financial know-how. I think that while many companies are ready for this type of brand manager, they are not structured for it, instead having systems and procedures that destroy creativity rather than enhance it. AXE deodorant is a classic example. They literally had to declare themselves a separate entity from Unilever (not legally, but in mindset), ignore their policies and become a renegade group within the company in order to develop the brand identity. The results were so incredible, that other Unilever departments began to study their efforts. Most likely without that type of creative leadership, it would not have transformed the entire category.

Great ideas often are launched at great risk. We desperately need academia to begin to take great risks in the development of innovative curriculum.

Second, to Grant: I’m saddened not to have my alma mater listed among the institutions like Stanford and Rotman. IIT was quietly initiating this d-school/b-school/c-school “experiment” in a Mies-ian basement in the 1950s, before David Kelley or Roger Martin or Bruce Nussbaum et al (all of whom I respect to pieces of course) had even stopped wetting the bed. And we’re still the only place in the US where you can get a double masters in design AND business, not some watered-down hybrid of the two.

And oh yes, IIT’s roots may be the modernist, process-obsessed German Bauhaus, but our fastest growing student and faculty pools today are Latin America, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. I can’t tell you how invigorating that is.

/rant

My guess is that the kind of thing Grant wants from a C-school is useful primarily in consumer products and services industries, especially those where much of the value of the product comes from mental associations rather than physical attributes (e.g., beer, TV shows, apparel, etc.). I’d sure hate to tell an injection-molding-machine exec that I couldn’t help him figure out how to get to minimum efficient scale in a saturated niche unless he understood the meaning of Brittney Spears’s latest meltdown and the media response to it.

It isn’t contempt for popular culture that limits the discussion of popular culture at B schools–it’s relevance and permanence of knowledge. There’s no point investing in an academic understanding of this week’s popular culture, because it will change next week. Unless we can find some stable and useful principles that hold beneath the cultural flux, all there will be to teach about popular culture is the method of ethnography. Everything else will still be stamp collecting.

There’s also a program in Denmark at Aalborg University that some of my friends attended. That one is supposed to be quite good.

It looks like some universities are starting to realize the value of creativity. Should be promising for the future.

The danger is that this will be another jolly club, where pals appoint pals, and the odor of self congratulation extinguishes the possibility of fresh thinking. Creatives may have the Canadian problem I was talking about this week: people…