My post on Friday brought some interesting comments, on line and off.
Vincent LaConte chasened me for ignoring his program and I stand
corrected.
IIT was quietly initiating this
d-school/b-school/c-school "experiment" in a Mies-ian basement in the
1950s. [...] [W]e'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.
Katarina Graffman pointed out the St. Martins College "design laboratory," which is described as
a
creative bridge between education and the commercial agenda of
industry, consultancy and business. It is a design studio housed in
the busy and vibrant atmosphere of Central Saint Martins Innovation.
The Lab draws on some of the most able and multi-talented of recent
graduates from University of the Arts London courses at all levels.
Graduates
are employed as part of a creative team of designers in a managed,
project-orientated, studio environment. They work on commercial briefs
with real deadlines, real fees and a wide range of clients with whom to
negotiate and inspire.
Projects are in key areas such as
branding & communications, product design, interiors and trend
forecasting, or any combination of these. Designers work in
collaboration with clients as enablers, strategists, leaders,
implementers and team players. They are employed as creative thinkers
who can translate concepts into realisable solutions while challenging
and initiating change in the real and digital worlds.
Charles
Kouns described his Creative Brand Management program at the VCU.
Kouns did a review of MBA programs, discovering that creativity was
un(der)represented in the curriculum, that marketing profs did not
grasp the concept of branding, and that programs treated branding in an
old fashioned way. He says, "I came away thinking that most mba
programs taught students how to be mechanics, not inventors."
Kouns is
too diplomatic to put it this way, but I couldn't help thinking that
the problem here is the David Aaker model of branding which continues
to hold sway in the b-school world. What is missing in the b-school approach to branding is a feeling for the real sources of innovation: culture, trends, meanings, new markets, shifting concepts, new patterns. There can be no real creativity in the corporation without a mastery of the creativity in our culture. For most b-schools, this culture might as well be on Mars.
Three things about Kouns' approach impressed me.
First,
he cares about politics. He struggles to teach students how to "manage
idea through 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." My hero here is the now departed
Geoffrey Frost, the man who could play the culture at Motorola like a
violin. Let's face it, being creative in a Left Bank, cold water, 5
floor, walkup, garret is easy compared to being creative in a group, to a
strategy, on a deadline, within constraints. Too often we sneer at
politics as something that is done by handlers after the fact. Why not
build it in to the moment of inspiration? (For the ethnographer this
means being as much attention to the client and the corporation as the
consumer.)
Second, Kouns cares about financial education.
This is another place that creative types are inclined to treat market,
corporate and investment realities as someone else's problem. It feels
good to sneer at these issues as somehow beneath us, but it is largely
because creatives don't "get" business, that they are marginalized in
the corporation and excluded from the C-suite (as in CEO, CIO, CMO,
etc.). Says Kouns, "it would be great to turn out students who had a
balance of creative driven brand experience as well as financial
know-how."
Third, Kouns comments on the skunk works approach to
creativity, where a group inside a corporation works according to its
own agenda, communes with its own gods. He notes the case of AXE
deodorant team which became a "renegade group" inside of Unilever. We need to know more about how skunk works are created and protected.
And
this raises an interesting problem. Some of the best "schools"of
creativity, strategy and innovation are inside the corporation. If someone were just finishing an MBA or a design program, and looking for "higher
education," he or she could do worse than to spend a year or so at a corporation that really knows what innovation is.
Graduate education in the corporate world: the good "programs"
IDEO
Axe team at Unilever
Nike
P&G
Wieden & Kennedy
Naked
Dove team at Unilever
Google
IBM (Gaven Heaton, nominating)
Cranium
Jones Soda
Motorola (in the Frost era)
[what others?]
Graduate education in the corporate world: the struggling "programs"
Motorola (in the post Frost era)?
Apple?
Microsoft
[what others?]
I would love to hear your suggestions, online or off.
Clearly, this is a job for someone with lots of time and data.
BusinessWeek rates B-schools program, and it cares about the innovation
economy. I wonder if it would take a whack at this problem, and
identify the best corporations that do what b-schools now fail to do,
teach the art and science of creativity and innovation in the branding world.
Find more on the St. Martins' program here.
Postscript:
Ville directed me to the Lockheed Martin page on Skunk Works. Here's a passage from the section "How the Skunk Works Got Its Name."
When Kelly Johnson brought together a hand-picked team of Lockheed
engineers and manufacturing people at Burbank in the wartime year of
1943, each team member was cautioned that design and production of the
new P-80 Shooting Star jet fighter must be carried out in strict
secrecy. No one was to discuss the project outside the small
organization, and team members were even warned to be careful how they
answered the telephones.
A team engineer named Irv Culver was a fan of Al Capp’s newspaper
comic strip, "Li’l Abner," in which there was a running joke about a
mysterious place deep in the forest called the "Skonk Works." There, a
strong beverage was brewed from skunks, old shoes and other strange
ingredients. Johnson’s organization operated out of a rented circus
tent next to a plastic manufacturing plant that would produce a strong
odor which permeated the tent.
One day, Culver’s phone rang and he answered it by saying "Skonk
Works, inside man Culver speaking." Fellow employees quickly adopted
the name for their mysterious part of Lockheed, where the new jet
fighter program was brewing. "Skonk Works" became "Skunk Works." The
once informal nickname is now the registered trademark of the company:
Skunk Works®.
Find more from the Lockheed Martin web here.