Inside China’s Innovation Ecosystem: A Shenzhen Immersion

China has become a distinctive innovation system where AI, digital platforms, robotics, advanced manufacturing and entrepreneurial intensity reinforce one another at scale.

For C-suite leaders and board members, the question isn’t whether China’s model can be copied. It’s what it reveals about how competitive advantage is being built, and what leaders elsewhere must reconsider about their own strategy, technology choices, operating models and organizational capabilities.

IMD’s Inside China’s Innovation Ecosystem immersion is an intensive executive learning journey in Shenzhen, one of the world’s most dynamic centers of technology and innovation.

Drawing on IMD research, the program combines executive dialogue, faculty-led strategic framing, and visits to leading companies such as Lenovo, UBTech, SF Express and Ping An*. You’ll explore the forces shaping China’s speed, scale and capacity for commercialization – and what they mean for your organization.

By the end of the experience, you’ll leave with a focused agenda for action: clear priorities, decisions to explore, and assumptions to revisit.

*Company visits are illustrative and subject to confirmation.

Understand how AI, advanced manufacturing, digital platforms, robotics and large-scale deployment reinforce one-another, and where China’s innovation system is actually heading.

Engage directly with leaders at the companies you visit, each engagement built around a clear executive question and followed by a facilitated debrief on what it means for you.

Take on the open questions about AI, ecosystems, competition and organizational capabilities that boards and executive teams can no longer avoid.

Leave with clear priorities, decisions to explore and assumptions to revisit, informed by four days inside one of the world’s most dynamic innovation environments.