Meet: Professor Oguz A. Acar

Nearly two decades ago Professor Oguz A. Acar was working as a brand manager for an alcoholic beverage company in his native country Türkiye. A far cry from his current role at King’s Business School, perhaps, but an experience that helped shape the career path he still follows today

Oguz – or Oz as he is often called – is a Professor of Marketing and Innovation, and the latter part of his title is certainly apt. For as long as he can remember, Oz has been interested in understanding what makes creative people tick and how they bring their innovations to life.

“I remember reading a book when I was maybe eight years-old titled ‘The greatest inventions in history’, and I was so fascinated by the impact that each of the inventors had on people’s lives with their creations. It has always stuck with me,” he recalls.

It is no surprise then that while studying engineering at Istanbul Technical University, Oz came to the realisation that he wanted a job where he could exert creativity.

“I made the decision to move away from engineering and into marketing. That’s how I wound up getting the job at TarisTat - a joint venture of Koc Holding, the largest industrial conglomerate in Türkiye.”

TarisTat specialised in producing Raki – a traditional Turkish drink typically enjoyed in social settings between friends who want to relax and have meaningful conversations. However, sales were not flying as a rival brand was already dominating the market.

“We knew we needed to come up with a different way of promoting our products that would get people talking and drive interest in our brand.”

In what would be Oz’s first experience with experimental artificial intelligence (AI), the team developed a chatbot for their marketing campaign. The concept was simple; consumers did not always need to be with friends to kick back and relax with a glass of Mercan Raki – they could also indulge in a fun and engaging conversation with the video bot, named Mercan Abi.

“It was imperfect but we had a lot of fun with the technology! Don’t forget this was 18 years ago – it was a very primitive form of AI.”

The innovation behind the marketing campaign led to several national award wins for Oz and his team.

“It got me thinking more broadly about what makes something or someone creative. I’d been at the company for just over a year and decided it was time to move away from the ‘doing’ and to engage more with conceptualism.”

Oz left his role in industry to go back to university and pursue a Master’s, spending a year as a visiting student in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, where he studied how product development can be improved by connecting marketing experts with research and development professionals.

Later, he did his PhD at Rotterdam School of Management, for which he explored crowdsourcing for innovation; understanding how and why companies open up their innovation processes through digital platforms to generate novel products and ideas.

“I learned a lot about the motivational, cognitive and social processes that lead to creative outcomes – understanding the reasoning, the ‘why’, behind a person’s creativity.”

During his PhD, Oz moved further afield to the US, first securing a visiting scholar role at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), before later joining the New York University Stern School of Business.

By 2014, London was calling. After starting as a Lecturer in Marketing at King's College London in 2014, he moved to Bayes Business School (formerly Cass) in 2016 before returning to King's in 2022. Since then, Oz’s research has evolved and a large part of his work today centres around the impact that generative AI (genAI) can have on organisations and education.

“The Mercan Abi chatbot campaign may have been nearly 20 years ago but it has always been clear to me that AI was going to become an increasingly important factor for marketing and innovation.

“If an app is designed to be more autonomous what does that mean for how users might adapt their innovation? What does it mean for an individual’s creative output? Does it make them more independent by enabling them to do more on their own? Or does it mean they lose their sense of autonomy and efficacy?"

Oz is currently looking at what boundaries could make generative AI tools better, exploring when technology can enhance creativity and productivity, versus when it can be detrimental. He does this by focusing on people’s behaviours and feelings during the creative process – including his own!

As a keen semi-professional photographer, for example, Oz experiments with post-production technology, using online platforms and editing apps to see how AI might edit his images compared to how he would approach it himself.

“I use AI a lot in my personal life. I like to experiment and see how capable these tools really are and see how it makes me feel, as a creative.”

Oz has also been at the helm of developing a generative AI learning framework that is currently being piloted with students across more than 20 modules in various disciplines at King’s.

The PAIR (Problem, AI, Interaction, Reflection) framework, aims to proactively integrate AI into the University’s curricula and encourages students to view AI as a tool to augment, rather than replace, human insight, judgement and creativity.

“I think we are on the verge of a big transformation in academia when it comes to AI. The technology has so much potential but we cannot ignore the risks that come with it; it’s crucial to understand how we can help students expand their capabilities while navigating the challenges.

“I feel very proud when I see the impact my work is having – when a student gets in touch to say the PAIR framework is helping them navigate AI better, it’s so rewarding.”

Positive feedback from students is not new for Oz, though. In 2021, he was named one of the ‘World’s Top 40 Business School Professors Under 40’ by Poets & Quants after several of his students nominated him – an accolade he says is “one of his proudest achievements as it was initiated by students”.

“I strive to guide people and organisations in leveraging genAI responsibly – the technology presents incredible opportunities, but only if implemented judiciously. It is about striking the right balance, enabling people to enhance their capabilities while retaining their unique creative voices and agency.”