Black belt in business
Queensland’s Sunshine Coast is home to the first company in the world using a smart combination of martial arts training and lectures to teach strategy, conflict management and leadership to business executives.
When Dr Jason Armstrong (pictured with Dana Buchman) took up martial arts as a teenager, he never imagined 20 years later he would be using his fighting skills and CEO level experience from the USA and Japan to teach business executives how to avoid conflict in the boardroom.
Today, Jason runs Applied Zen, a company based at the Innovation Centre at the Sunshine Coast which conducts on-site and internet-based training using principles from Sun Tzu’s famous book Art of War.
“This book which centres on achieving victory without conflict is considered the definitive text on strategy and conflict management and has been used for thousands of years in business, military, political and personal goal attainment,” he said.
Applied Zen provides corporate training and development to Australian and American companies and is focussed on the application of strategy, planning and sound decision making to life and business.
“We blend lectures with karate training and use self-defence as a learning vehicle which is fun, educational and trust-building. The physical drills are enjoyable but most importantly, they’ve been shown to boost retention rates of the coursework from 10 to 75 per cent.”
Originally from Brisbane, Jason obtained a Masters Degree in Science from the University of Queensland before taking up a NASA scholarship at the University of Kansas where he completed his PhD on the effects of spaceflight on the immune system.
“It was an amazing experience involving flights on zero gravity aircraft and studying data from astronauts and rats flown on the space shuttle.”
He later worked for US biotech tech giant Amgen and then for Mitsubishi Pharmaceutical in Japan. As well as running Applied Zen, Jason is also the CEO of Brisbane-based venture capital biotech company Bio-Layer which is developing revolutionary technology for diagnostic assays which could potentially replace the need for molecular antibodies.
Yet another example of Queensland’s recent brain gain, he was attracted back to Queensland because he saw the Sunshine Coast as offering a great lifestyle and the Innovation Centre as being the ideal corporate base.
Last reviewed 19 January 2006