Asian Academy of Management Professional Development Workshop Project Roundtable Discussion

In the 1980s with the growth of Japanese business success in world markets and growing interest in Japanese management practices, the topic of creativity became a peripheral focus among many, mostly Western-based scholars. A crude conclusion reached by some of those scholars was that Western-style creativity produced innovation while Japanese creativity was rooted in imitation. Over time this overly simplistic conclusion has been called into question while certain cultural stereotypes have persisted. The topic has never been given fully sufficient attention, partly because the fascination with Japanese management waned with a reduced dominance from the Japanese economy. In spite of many popular perceptions, however, Japan’s economy continues to be strong and influential. Japan recently announced the largest current-account surplus in world history and its economy remains a benchmark against which other high-wage industrial economies, like the United States, can measure themselves. Industrial wages in Japan are now among the world’s highest; not only are they far higher than in China (between four and fifteen times higher, depending on the region of China), they are also twenty to thirty percent higher than in the United States. Despite this, Japan’s export industries have not onl