Creative Marketing: marketing education outside its place

Within the current economic climate the ability of business to develop innovative processes and outputs is receiving heightened interest from marketers and economists alike. Creative base skills are being directly linked with the generation of competitive advantage at individual, organisational and national levels. So if the importance of creative based thinking is no longer in question, then surely it becomes the responsibility of educational institutions to ensure that emphasis is given to the nurturing of creative inclinations.

The paper reviews current thought from social sciences and management literature relating to creativity, creative thinking, creative problem solving and entrepreneurship. It case studies a marketing based module taught within a design school, completely outside of the traditional business school environment, to non-business undergraduates, to highlight creative based pedagogical issues and overlaps. The paper argues that there is a need for, and value in actively integrating creativity facilitating pedagogy in business schools. It believes that there is little current research being generated to highlight how this could be best achieved in the UK and that there should be an infrastructure in place where innovative marketing educators form a variety of backgrounds could share best “different” practice surrounding the subject.