Cultivate leadership contagion: a speculative grounded theory knowledge for future change agents

“Changing paradigma” can be defined as a sudden outbreak in the accepted social norm, a fundamental change in the way of thinking and a change of paradigm. Society and culture are two strongly intertwined realities. Every society is, therefore, the bearer of its own legacy and contagious. Today’s Cultural and Creative Industries’ education market is facing a rapidly mutating academic scenario. The revolutionary change of the society and the increasingly sense of Cultural and disciplinary “contagious” request our universities to rethink their philosophies towards critical and creative education. In what ways is the industry’s uncertain future challenging the traditional pedagogy? In what forms could the creative leader curriculum be evolved to prepare future talents for this new paradigm? ( V.U.C.A Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity ) By exploring one particular international “conversation in action", this paper investigates the implementation practice of embedding adaptive leadership in the internationalized creative curriculum. The researchers explain the mutated role of the creative educator from the ‘instructor,’ who delivers the educational content to the students, to the ‘coach,’ who constructs the learning process for the future expert designers. By empowering the future talents through training, practiced skills, and personal experiences, to cultivate their interpersonal competency. In conclusion, the authors indicate that future thinking for creative leadership needs to consider three factors: firstly, leadership thinking is not necessarily accessible for all expert designers; secondly, leadership signifies projecting the potentiality of taking responsibilities and develop critical thinking; lastly, the study implies that when facing the uncertainty of the organizational system, creative leaders should anticipate and induce, rather than simply react to the changing following the contagious.