I’ve been reading a lot of practice theory lately - it’s a recent fashion in organization studies literature which I need to pay attention to since I am in a business school. Having come from art and design where people talk about their “practice” all the time, it’s interesting to see how a re-valuation of practices is going on elsewhere, at least in management academia (although I don’t see our MBAs talking about “my practice” any time soon). AL’s already mentioned Wanda Orlikowski from MIT; others within the broad field of management include those who view strategy as practice (including my colleague at Said, Richard Whittington, see the website for this community of scholars.  I note that at the European Academy of Management conference in Liverpool later this year has, in addition to the strategy as practice crowd, a new track which is marketing as practice. I’m currently drawing on this work, and the underlying theories of practice including Schatzki et al (2001) and Reckwitz (2002).  I’ve also recently been reading “The Design of Everyday Life” by Elisabeth Shove et al (Berg 2007) which combines theories of consumption with practice theory to look specifically at how and why people renew/refurbish/replace their kitchens so often and the practices around which they do so; digital photography and DIY. The last but one chapter covers Product Design and traces the object-focus evident in theory and practice; to different kinds of User-Centred Design; to propose a Practice-Oriented Product Design in which designers are attentive to the practices of end users. The authors’ manifesto for Practice-Oriented Product Design is here. It starts as follows…”Designers fear they are the lackeys of capitalism. Of course they are. But they are also architects of society.” Anyone who has been through an art school training whether in art or design or something else will have been taught how to look at objects and how to make objects. One of the current questions in design education is to what extent this tradition prepares designers for designing assemblages of humans and non-humans, arranged as “services” or “experiences”. Or as practices.