WEF's 'Top 3 Skills for 2027' are All Components of Critical Thinking: 80% Missing in Japanese Corporate Training

The top three skills that will become most important by 2027, as identified by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in its 'Future of Jobs Report (2023)'—'Analytical Thinking (1st),' 'Creative Thinking (2nd),' and 'Critical Thinking (3rd)'—may seem distinct at first glance. However, academically, they are all components of the 6 core skills and 16 sub-skills of Critical Thinking defined by the Facione (1990) APA Delphi Report.

In other words, the top three skills positioned as 'most important' by the WEF are all encompassed within the framework of Critical Thinking (CT). 'Logical Thinking (LT),' which is mainstream in the Japanese corporate training market, covers only a mere 2 to 3 skills (13-19%) of these 16 sub-skills of comprehensive CT.

As the academic evidence above shows, the Top 3 skills selected by the WEF are comprehensively encompassed within Facione's (1990) CT framework.

Analytical Thinking corresponds directly to CT's 'Analysis,' 'Evaluation,' 'Inference,' and 'Interpretation.' Sternberg's (1986) analytical intelligence and Halpern's (2014) CT ability model substantiate this correspondence.

Creative Thinking corresponds to the sub-skill 'Conjecturing Alternatives' under CT's 'Inference,' 'Categorization' (reclassifying in a new framework) under 'Interpretation,' and 'Self-examination and self-correction' under 'Self-Regulation' (where new ideas are born from critically re-examining existing premises).

Bailin (2002) demonstrated that CT and creative thinking are interdependent, and Lipman (2003) formulated the integration of both as 'higher-order thinking.' In fact, even in LT, among the core thinking techniques for structuring such as 'causality' and 'MECE' (Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive), thinking in a MECE way is difficult solely with the 'attitude' of trying to think without omissions or duplications; it is necessary to delve into a finer granularity, such as the sub-skills of inference like conjecturing alternatives, self-examination, and self-correction.

Hidetsugu Yamanaka, Managing Partner at GTF:

'The reason the WEF ranked Analytical Thinking, Creative Thinking, and Critical Thinking separately is a classification based on common names in the business world. Academically, however, both analytical power and creative power are core elements of critical thinking. Facione's 6 core skills precisely and comprehensively cover these three. If Japanese companies believe that "we are covering CT because we are taking logical thinking training," that is a dangerous misunderstanding.'

* Calculation of coverage rate: Using the 16 sub-skills of the Facione (1990) APA Delphi Report as a baseline, the number of sub-skills 'explicitly taught' by each training program was used as the numerator. The coverage range of LT is based on an analysis of the learning objectives of major Japanese LT training texts (5 representative companies). GTF's coverage range is the sum of the learning objectives of the GTF Thinking Academy CT Training 4 Modules + AI Thinking Design Training + Prescriptive 6 Mini-Modules.

In short, the current situation where the Japanese corporate training market invests in 'logical thinking' means that it covers only 13 to 19% of the Top 3 skills required by the WEF. The remaining 81 to 87%—Interpretation, Evaluation, Inference-Conjecturing, and Self-Regulation—are structurally missing.

What is even more serious is that even in companies that have introduced CT (Critical Thinking) training, its content does not sufficiently cover Facione's (1990) 16 sub-skills.

Many CT training programs, in reality, are merely thinking-based training programs on the extension of LT, called CT. Analyzing 30 major corporate training providers in Japan, 14 companies offer LT and CT clearly as separate courses, 5 offer CT as the main thinking product encompassing LT, and 9 offer only LT. While the CT inclusion ratio is 19 out of 28 classified companies (67.9%), the vast majority of this 'CT' only covers parts of Analysis and Inference among Facione's 6 core skills; it is difficult to find programs that systematically and rigorously teach Interpretation, Evaluation, and Self-Regulation.

Analysis Criteria
Facione, P.A. (1990). Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert Consensus for Purposes of Educational Assessment and Instruction (APA Delphi Report). ERIC Doc. ED315423. The 6 core skills and 16 sub-skills of critical thinking defined by the report are used as an evaluation framework.

Evaluation Method
Based on curriculum information published on the websites of each company (course overview, theme for each session, learning objectives, achievement goals, etc.), it was determined whether each sub-skill is systematically taught within the training (◎), partially covered in related exercises/content (○), touched upon indirectly accompanying the teaching of other skills (△), or cannot be confirmed on the curriculum (×).

Premises and Limitations
(1) This analysis is based on publicly available information from each company and does not reflect the content of non-public internal materials, customized training, or additional content for individual companies. (2) For both Company A and Company B, the flagship course with CT (critical thinking) as its main subject was analyzed. (3) The evaluation judgments are original analyses by GTF and are not the official views of each company. (4) Based on public information as of May 2026.