I just read an article in Business Insider that asked the question, "Do Business Schools Actively Kill Passion And Creativity?" by forcing conformity and focusing on theory.

My answer: not really. I think that, as with everything, balance is key.

Ideally, business school students can learn concepts and theory, and absorb case studies to understand how things have been applied in the real world. And then they can go out in the world, and discover how they themselves interpret what they've learned through the filter of their own creativity and ambition. That's the whole point.

There will always be those who lack imagination and they will be the ones who turn into clones. The idea that business school will kill the spirit of those passionately inclined seems an overstatement— people with any real passion or vision can't be so easily stifled.

That said, while I don't think business schools can actively kill creativity in those passionate students, I do think they should make more of an effort to foster creativity and inventive thinking in those less inclined. But how do you teach that?

Business schools must transform. I think the era of emphasizing shareholder value above all else must come to a close. You have to introduce the concept of acceptable (fast) failure, and testing your way towards success. Through balancing the analytic (safe) and the creative (innovative), business schools could really become schools of thought. 

What do you think?

For more on this subject: Are Business & Innovation Fundamentally at Odds?

I was catching up on my magazine subscriptions the other evening when I found myself staring at the following page in Forbes:

Looks like a standard page of ads, right? But what caught my attention was how unaccustomed I was to seeing a whole page of such diverse advertisement. I spend so much time consuming content online, all I really ever see by way of display ads are banners for big brands, one, maybe two at a time.

This is important because it brings up two major issues:

One, it puts a fine point on how online marketers are still thinking narrowly. If I go to Forbes.com, the ads I see look like they were triggered by the keyword "business". They all promote business products or solutions. As if the average Forbes reader is only a business person with no other attributes or interests.

The print version takes into consideration the Forbes readers' lifestyle. Yes, they might be interested in office products, but they also might be interested in luxury vacations. The print advertisers think about who their customer is, holistically, whereas online advertisers tend to think in terms of discrete and narrow behaviors: Business product = Forbes; Luxury travel ad = Travel magazine.

Secondly, notice the businesses that are advertising in the print version. They're not huge brands. I can't remember the last time I saw a small brand advertised on Forbes.com, or any big publisher, for that matter. This tells me that the little guys are getting priced out of the market, and that is disappointing, not only for them, but for the consumer.

In a perfect world, smaller advertisers could geo-target online where their high value customer segments lived, through these big publishers. The same as they do in print.

The bottom line is that online marketers and publishers still have a way to go — and they needn't look any further for guidance than the print world.

I recently watched a keynote address by Roger Martin, speaking to designers and business leaders about how they could work together more effectively. What occurred to me was that the word 'design' (or 'designers') could be replaced with 'innovation'. When you do so, you discover one big reason why innovation in business can be so difficult and why so few companies innovate consistently or successfully.

The basic premise is that businesses, from their day-to-day process to long-term planning, are rooted in "reliability' thinking. Reliability thinking in this context means a reliance on precise past data to make future decisions or determinations. It carries with it inherent characteristics -  few variables, quantifiable measurement, and minimal bias. Martin uses the IQ test as an example of reliability thinking.

Designers on the other hand, are driven by validity. They would argue that the IQ test has little validity because it only measure a small fraction of what makes up human intelligence. Validity introduces many more variables, and as such, has no perfect case study from the past. It's unproven, it's new by very nature, and it's unquantifiable in most respects – at least based on past events.

And therein lies the conflict— designers get excited about new and different and business leaders rely on…well, reliability. The past. They eschew uncertainty. And innovation, like design, requires validity thinking.

But the problem with this disconnect is that innovation is critical to business growth; without adaptation and innovation, it becomes very difficult for businesses to sustain or grow market share.

In his book, Fixing the Game, Martin points to three companies that put customer equity over shareholder value, but I think they can also exemplify companies that balance validity with reliability – those that consistently innovate: Johnson & Johnson, Proctor & Gamble and Apple.

So, how did these companies manage to do it? And how can more businesses make that shift from pure reliability thinking to a more balanced approach?