The academic‐practitioner divide: finding time to make a difference

Purpose – To present a point of view from the marketing practitioner's standpoint on the “academic/practitioner divide” vigorously discussed by authors collected together in a Special Issue in 2004. Design/methodology/approach – Commissioned as a viewpoint, with permission to “think aloud”. Findings – Argues that marketing practitioners are likely to cite time‐poverty as their reason for not taking the initiative in reading the academic journals in the marketing management field or forging links with the business school community. They also sense that they would have to justify the use of academic sources in the preparation of strategies and plans, as distinct from what is in the “standard pool of knowledge” or the successfully popularised semi‐textbooks to be found at amazon.com or in airport executive lounges. Practical implications – Rationalisations of this kind may be a subconscious excuse for inertia, and marketing strategists should resist their power to maintain the division between themselves and their natural intellectual collaborators. Originality/value – Challenges the orthodox view that academics themselves are responsible for the failure of practitioners to engage in dialogue with them.