On December 10, 2020, a year-end special article, “Management style unlocking the future: returning to the basics of management during the COVID-19 pandemic”, written by Professor Takamasa Fujioka, Director of Sasin Japan Center (SJC), was featured in ArayZ, a Bangkok-based Japanese magazine with a distribution of over 20,000 copies every month. This year-end article has been an annual feature in ArayZ since 2012. Spanning twelve pages including the cover, Dr Fujioka’s article starts with a brief look at the history of pandemics. He explains how humans have coped with pandemics in the past and the fact that some major inventions (or innovations) have occurred during pandemics – he cited examples such as Newton’s law of universal gravitation, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and others. He notes that crisis and opportunity exist side by side and shows how we can get through pandemics by correctly understanding its impacts on our society. He also mentions some key concepts such as, “the side effects of globalization”, “growing income gap in a country”, and “losing social capital”, all of which have been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. In conclusion, he suggests returning to a human-oriented management style by rethinking the structure of stakeholders and optimizing “collective value”.