Asia Start: AI + Digital China Expedition

I’m very happy with the program. I don’t see many better ways to extract information and the feeling of the Asian markets in one week. The professors are extremely experienced — you feel they’re from the business, not only academic — and the cohort is excellent: you make friends for life.

Based in India, the perspective you get of China isn’t unfiltered. These perspectives are quite unique from what we read or get influenced by from Silicon Valley.

After meeting top leaders at ToJoy, JD.com, Tencent and BYD, I’m leaving the program very satisfied, very inspired — and with a clear message: I have to come back here every year to stay future-ready.

China is now the global reference for how to implement AI and bring real return on investment within company processes. It was an excellent program to get inside these companies, their mindset, and how they get a return.

Seeing Unitree and what they’re doing with robotics will help me innovate how we use robotics to improve operating-room efficiency — preparing for and executing procedures, to improve patient outcomes.

Asia Start is unique. We meet companies like Alibaba and the automotive brands, and their perspective is totally different from Europe — the scale, the implementation, the cost. I can’t find anything comparable in Europe.

We’ve been buying fabrics from China for many years, and I came to get to know my suppliers better and feel where Chinese culture is now. It has been a wonderful experience — I’m really impressed by what’s going on here, and I now know how to deal with my suppliers a lot better.

For someone like me, who’s been living abroad for a long time and lost connection with China, this short program is the perfect way to reconnect — to catch up on the latest technology, the politics, and what’s really going on, from different angles and different places.

I’m fascinated by AI’s impact on organizations, and right now, if you want to understand AI, you have to understand AI in China. I’m very happy to be here, witnessing change at a tremendous pace.

It’s one thing to read about China, another to watch it on television — and a completely different thing to experience it. Asia Start gives you that real-life experience, with professors who are involved in China’s biggest companies and bring real business examples into the lectures.

There’s no substitute for seeing things with your own eyes. Going to Unitree, Tencent, Alibaba and BYD, meeting the executives and asking the tough questions — I can now talk about it with so much more authority.

The professors are very sophisticated and outstanding, and they teach through real case studies — how Chinese companies tackle challenges in the global arena. For any overseas business that wants to come to China, knowing how to satisfy Chinese regulations and demand is essential.

This was my first multicultural program, and it’s wonderful — you understand the perspective of people from very different cultural worlds. It also helped me eliminate some stereotypes I had. Diversity is always a plus.

Having attended Harvard and Johns Hopkins, I have extremely high expectations of academic presentation. The teaching component of this program far exceeded my expectations and was fully in line with my previous educational experience.

What made Asia Start special is that it wasn’t only academic — it was a truly immersive experience. It gave me an understanding of how companies in Asia are quickly adapting to the AI era.

The program is very diverse — a high-tech EV factory, vertical farming, a medical-devices company, huge e-commerce businesses. Something different every hour, every day. It gives you a real, huge perspective.

I’m amazed by the suite of company visits. Some of these top companies are very hard to access, so I was impressed by CKGSB’s network in giving us back-of-house tours. Hearing directly from top management is priceless — you can’t get it from reading or a TV interview.

Compared to all the other universities I’ve attended for executive education, this is excellent — one of the best. The professors are very well prepared, with strong real-world experience.

What I enjoyed most is the combination of lectures and seeing it in practice when we visit the companies. We also meet representatives at dinners in more informal settings. The whole mix makes this program very valuable to me.

The cohort itself was very inspiring — it was great to have a week with all those people. And the connections with the companies were enlightening — being inside Tencent and JD.com. That was the best part.