education – Marketing Decoded

It was an exciting term in Bus 101 with 600 Sauder 1st year students in 4 sections having an opportunity to see all aspects of Commerce integrated. Paul Cubbon, Jeff Kroeker, Rob Jackes and I taught this highly engaging, active course together. Paul designed the course and he and Jeff ran it as a pilot last spring. The students had no texts or exams. Every class’ preparation was delivered via the website, with students prepping Harvard Business School or newspaper articles. In each 125 student class, we clicked and tweeted. The intention was to give the new Commerce entrants a ‘once over lightly’ of all the different aspects of Commerce, showing them the tension and integration between topics. How do marketing decisions affect human resources management? Does sustainability have a role in finance?

The Bus 101 students learned a lot about Commerce in their first term at b-school and got comfortable with a host of real world business tools like Twitter, clickers, blogs and business plans. Take a look at what UBC Public Affairs has to say.

We’ve been doing some fun stuff in my classes this term around creativity, trying to open up the mind channel for innovative inspiration before we dive into the hard work of case discussions. I think it’s been a fun way to start class and it’s reconnected many of the students in a small way each day to why they came to marketing in the first place: because they like to create, because they were inspired to be inventive, original and leading edge in their thinking.

Sir Ken Robinson has some interesting thoughts on how schools are killing creativity and why creativity is critical to our society. This jibes nicely with one of my favourite books: A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink. Pink puts forward the idea that we will rely less on left brain jobs in the 21st century as these jobs increasingly become outsourced and automated (yes, even lawyering and accounting work) and consider the importance of being in touch with our right brains, teaching right brain skills like creativity and empathy.