The problem with 'Practitioners' & 'Professors'.

I am borrowing from the legendary Theodore Levitt to present the 'problem'.

'Nothing in business is so remarkable as the conflicting variety of success formulas offered by its numerous practitioners and professors. And if, in the case of practitioners, they're not exactly "formulas", they are explanations of "how we did it," implying with firm control over any fleeting tendencies toward modesty that "that's how you ought to do it." Practitioners, filled with pride and money, turn themselves into prescriptive philosophers, filled mostly with hot air.

Professors, on the other hand, know better than to deal merely in explanations. We traffic instead in higher goods, like "analysis", "concepts" and "theories'. In short, "truth". Filled with self-importance, we turn ourselves hopefully into wanted advisers, consultants filled with woolly congestion.

I do not wish to disparage either, but only to suggest that these two legitimately different and respectable professions usually diminish rather than enhance their reputations when intruding too much or with too little thought on each other's turf.

How often have we heard executives of venerable age and high repute or entrepreneurs flushed with recent wealth pronounce with lofty certainty and imperial rectitude exactly what produces business success? All they really tell, however, in cleaned-up retrospection, is the story of how they themselves happen to have done it. Listen to ten, and generally you will get ten different pieces of advice.

Listen to ten professors, and you'll generally get advice by some multiple of ten. The difference is not that professors believe more firmly in abundance. Rather, besides teaching, professors are also paid to think. hence, lacking direct experience, each is likely to think up several different ways to get to the same place.'

You can read more on marketing and consumers at my blog, 'Buyer Behaviour'. My books are available here and here.

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