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The history of marketing reveals an uneasy relationship between marketers and their academic counterparts. At best, they support one another’s endeavors and may even partner to develop ideas and technologies. At worst, they ignore one another and may even view their counterpart with some disdain. While the latter is not useful, this 100-year old ambivalence in marketing is in some ways quite natural and its foundational quality quite old. Aristotle, for example, distinguished thinking (theoria) from doing (praxis).

We think there is a strong case to be made for stronger interactions between the two for the betterment of marketing. Consider weaving as an analogy. Individual fibers have value separately; when combined, they can produce useful materials or beautiful tapestries. To apply the analogy to marketing, academics and practitioners operate in distinct worlds with their own styles and requirements. The result …