Teaching innovation has come to be a critical aspect of marketing education. Inculcating creativity poses challenges unlike those experienced in other disciplines or in industry. However, the big challenge in teaching innovation to business students lies in the fundamental struggle that educators face with teaching students creativity. Creativity is best understood as a state of mind in which all of our intelligences are working together to innovate (Craft, Jeffrey, and Leibling 2001). Teaching creativity is often a daunting task and many have argued that creativity is genetically programmed (Dennet 1996; Hofstadter 1995). Others have contended that teaching creativity is matter of instructor and student aptitude (Best 1982; Tornkvist 1998). A helpful definition way of teaching creativity consists of providing a network or contexts in which a student can innovate (Jeffrey and Woods 2003; Woods 1993; Woods and Jeffrey 1996). In the context of teaching creativity in innovation, it is essential to bear in mind the fundamental premise of marketing education, which is to inculcate strategy in students. Given the educational challenge outlined above, marketing educators need to create contexts, challenges, and methods to help students innovate creatively.
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