Marketing as Designing: Design Methods in Marketing Education – Introduction to DesignCommunication

Life-long learning is an evidence for today’s leaders and designers. If leaders would approach emerging problems like designers, many products, services and procedures would become more functional, and would be able to create long-lasting values for the organization and society. Such an approach has to be learned and steadily trained. The act of authentic learning takes place by only leaving one’s comfort zone. Participant reflections on designcommunication that took place in an educational training setting in a regional development project is presented. The authors’ argumentation is supported by participant narratives (n=171). Findings show that solving design tasks for marketing students, help opening up new perspectives, give a new point of view of leadership, and increase self-knowledge. Designcommunication facilitates the solution of ill structured problems.