E-Magazine
Kathryn Penaluna
Just for a moment, lets slip back to the Victorian era and ask ourselves, where did all those great ideas come from? Innovation and inventiveness was rife, fortunes were made on a hunch and a good concept. Go forward a hundred years or more and find yourself, an ex bank manager with plenty of business acumen and academic understanding, in front of a bunch of over 100 artists and designers. You know they need you badly, you know you have plenty to offer, so you start to spout all the business knowledge you think they need. In an air of complete confidence, you know you are doing the right thing.
Within three weeks, distraught at the lack of attendance and seemingly weak levels of interest you seek help, but you get way more than you expect. I was, I now understand, running on half a brain, my left one. What I needed was some good right brain approaches to counterbalance them. I was approaching these creative minds from the ‘dark side’ and they challenged just about everything I told them.
Now, some 12 years later and following extensive research and discovery, I’m occasionally mistaken for a creative, not the business manager I really am. I’ve learned that design thinking can lead innovation and creativity, and whilst other business colleagues cling to de Bono and other works, I’ve learned to be flexible and adaptable in the classroom, responding to questions and learning alongside my students. It is not only liberating, it’s undoubtedly challenging.
So what is special about design? Well for a start transmission teaching is out. Very few teachers stand in front of the class and pass on their knowledge; instead, they create learning environments that encourage the students to develop their curiosity so that when they ask their questions, the answers respond to their needs. Not only is this intrinsically motivational for them, they learn to learn for themselves. You deliver your knowledge as and when needed, in the order they desire and tailored to their problems, because that is the other key to design education, it’s all based on problem solving. The lecturer of course, knows the planned journey, but they act as a guide and not a dictator on the path to getting there.
Design educators are invariably practitioners themselves, with business acumen that has evolved through negotiation and discussion. A product designer will still have ideas for new products; they will consider the market and audit their solutions. A graphic designer will work for a wide range of companies, having to soak in their individual characteristics and idiosyncrasies before starting to develop solutions such as communication tools on behalf of the business that has engaged them. As so aptly put to a group of Swansea students by a Saatchi and Saatchi advertising executive, “One day it’s the Territorial Army, the next it’s a dog food and the day after an international movie franchise”. What better way to get to know businesses inside out I ask?
The classroom reflects this professionalism. Alumni join the students to talk about recent experiences and changes in the marketplace. Guest lecturers are drawn from those who know their trade and can interact well with curious and challenging students. Plus of course, let's not forget that most of the staff have not been recruited because of their research profile, but because they are active participants in the marketplace (Carey and Matlay, 2007). They are not people who talk about, they are people who do!
At ISBE 2009 I tried to articulate this new understanding and being a good academic I’d interrogated the literature to see what I could find. Calls for more creativity in business are everywhere, from central government to David Rae’s discussions on ‘applied creativity’ (which is as a good a term for design as any others I’ve heard). Moreover, as Leadbeater (2000) points out, educators appear to be preoccupied with knowledge delivery when we feel students need it, whilst our students are active ‘knowledge harvesters’, who go and get what they need as and when they need it. Leadbeater also points out that with so much knowledge being available these days; by comparison we have never been more ignorant!
Design educators have a real handle on this. They develop incrementally challenging problem solving situations where the students learn through experience (Simon in Lau, 2009). The learning environments encourage deep questioning and lead to rich understandings. Moreover, they understand the left brain / right brain developmental challenges (Kirby, 2003) and, as described in terms of cognitive neurology at ISBE (Penaluna, Coates and Penaluna, 2009), incorporate brain functionality understandings into delivery and assessment strategies.
Conversely, Business School thinking still dominates the enterprise agenda. It is positivistic and outcome led – everything has to be predicted so that comparative assessment can take place; but when was the last time you predicted a good idea? Graphic design educators for example, do not predict a new logo solution, but they do assess the way the student got there. Design assessment is ‘constructively aligned’ (Biggs, 2003); it is ‘fit for purpose’ and uses measurement tools that evaluate performance in contexts. When I asked about examinations I was immediately asked as to what knowledge retention activities I had planned and what time constrained activities would I be testing?
Finally, I turned my attention to business growth rates and once again the results were significant. Design is the most dynamic and diverse aspect of the creative industries (Cunningham, 2005) and the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report (2001 -2) highlighted a distinct correlation between design intensity and competitiveness. DCMS (2008/9) note that design has grown at twice the rate of the economy as a whole and even Price Waterhouse Coopers note that the highest performing enterprises see design as a strategic asset, whilst less successful give it a lower level of importance.
On a personal level, as a business educator I am learning that this is a good way to go. I wholeheartedly agree with Sir George Cox, who when asked by the treasury to contribute to the UK competitiveness debate, pointed the finger directly toward design (Cox, 2005).
My original perception was that as a business professional I had a lot to offer the creative designer. I do, but I now know that design pedagogies can be tracked back to the Victorian era and with an ever-increasing level of success and engagement in my own university, I use them to captivate and encourage my own MBA and business undergraduates.
Maybe this is just another argument to break down the silos of expertise that have evolved in our universities; maybe it’s a wake up call? Design educators already subvert traditional business education because in their opinion it doesn’t work (Kellet, 2007, NESTA, 2009). The evidence suggests that there is much to be gained by considering their approaches, but is anyone listening?
Kathryn Penaluna's Biography
Kathryn Penaluna is the Enterprise Manager and lectures in the Business School at Swansea Metropolitan University. She has co-authored extensively with Andy Penaluna on the theme of paradigm ‘einstellung’ within business education. Kathryn is an IEEP fellow and a member of the Higher Education Academy’s steering group for entrepreneurial learning within the Business Management Accountancy and Finance Subject Centre. She can be contacted at kathryn.penaluna@smu.ac.uk