Creative thinking attitudes are closely related to collaborative creative problem solving. The interaction of personal traits and group behavior may affect creative thinking attitudes. However, these relationships have not been studied together. Therefore, using a group task with a sample of 259 Japanese university students, we focused on personality, critical thinking attitude, and team learning behavior, and explored factors influencing creative thinking attitudes in a collective situation. Interaction with others did not necessarily improve an individual’s creative thinking attitude. Therefore, it may be necessary for groups to select appropriate relationships taking into account personality and thinking characteristics.

Environmental jolts are defined as “transient perturbations whose occurrences are difficult to foresee and whose impacts on organizations are disruptive and potentially inimical.” Environmental jolts are noteworthy because they: 1) expose critical linkages, 2) test leader and organization integrity and resilience, 3) surface values, and 4) reveal mindsets undergirding adaptive responses. They give rise to unconventional behaviors and afford latitude for experimentation. Jolts provide a unique and challenging context within which to develop global leaders and foster competences associated with global leadership.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global environmental jolt posing challenges for global leaders. The jolt exerts impact on multiple fronts. It includes a strong negative affective element. Established social support networks, both work/career-related and personal/social, have been curtailed, leading to greater challenge in maintaining psychological health. The suddenness and severity of the jolt quickly absorbed slack resources and forced many organizations to substantially curtail major portions of their business operations as well as furlough or cut back work hours for a sizable percentage of their workforce.

Three challenges emerge: 1) focused development on integrative roles and competences, 2) a need for innovation in development approaches, and 3) recognizing the jolt’s on openness to learn and grow.

This paper reviews the challenges that executive education programs in business schools faced in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the general nature of their responses to it. To better understand the internal dynamics of such responses, a clinical case study of one business school’s executive education program’s successful response to the pandemic is reported and analyzed. Reasons for its success are delineated, and unforeseen pedagogical innovations derived from the experience are discussed. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for the future design of executive education curriculum.

Business schools have historically followed an educational model more similar to academic disciplines in the “hard sciences,” such as physics and biology. However, close reflection suggests business schools could learn valuable lessons from the clinical education model used in such disciplines as the health professions, for example, where strong emphasis is placed on developing future practitioners through applied and skills-oriented instruction under the supervision of skilled practitioners. The implications of such a change are significant, and would require that business schools carefully rethink their teaching pedagogy and the competency models built into their curricula, as well as the way doctoral programs train and prepare future business school professors. Although many traditions and institutional norms presently impede the ability to deliver a strong applied and clinical business education, there are nevertheless reasons for optimism through examples of best practices in other academic disciplines. With the right guidance, motivation and encouragement, the transition to a vibrant and successful model of clinical education lies within the reach of business school educators and their students.

Japan was trying to find out innovative and creative ways to increase its economic performance and to get rid of lingering concerns over the stagnation set in the past several decades after the collapse of “bubble economy” which ended in the early 1990s. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) started the plan to develop industrial clusters in 2001, and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) started the plan to develop intellectual knowledge clusters in 2002. However, these two types of cluster creation projects were forced to end due to the change of the ruling political party in the year of 2009.

In the United States, universities and their affiliated people are considered as key resource drivers to start up new venture businesses for innovations. However, by comparison, research related to the field of industrial and knowledge clusters in Japan has been concentrated traditionally in-house within large keiretsu companies or government initiative concerns despite the recent working environmental changes caused by the emerging IoT age (Internet of things). This research tries to theoretically review the two projects of “Industrial Clusters,” and “Knowledge Clusters,” which were initiated and budgeted by the Central Government of METT and MEXT respectively in order to identify existing issues and to indicate a constructive proposal for leading to the creation of successful industrial and knowledge cluster models in Japan.