Conclusions

The world of fine arts, design and culture has a lot to offer in terms of aesthetics, appeal, and even entertainment. It is partly its nature to do so, as beauty and finesse have been intrinsic to its make-up for a long time. Nevertheless, the domains of fine arts and design also have a long track tradition of reflection, inspiration, and even action to achieve change. These have been and still are the territories of crucial battles in societal, ideological, and – of course — political terms. Our journey had the ambition to apply such a natural drive towards change to the thinking and the practices of business in general, and of brand marketing in particular. We started from the self-evident state of deep crisis in our economies and societies. It was not at all the intention to criminalize corporate management or enterprise leaders. However, we built on the assumption that contemporary business models are a clear reflection of the ways of thinking that led us to the present crisis. An ideology of pure capitalism for capitalism’s sake as seen in the five years prior to the downturn is the mother of all crises: still now, the ways we work represent an operational demonstration of such a vision. We therefore did our best to discover the context of fine arts and design from various viewpoints, in order to provoke debate and suggest alternative intellectual thinking to what is the frozen fountain of “MBA thinking.”