See what is changing.
Understand what it means.
Executive innovation study tours designed around the questions your organization needs to answer.
KNOHAO creates international learning immersions for leadership teams, executive education groups, MBA and EMBA cohorts. We connect company visits, expert conversations and local context into a coherent learning journey.
Explore the learning themes and encounters in three programs, with photographs and links to published accounts.
A robot-arm demonstration brought participants face to face with the technology. Esade’s Munich immersion with Iván Bofarull took EmprendeXXI award winners inside companies including Agile Robots and Reactive Robotics to explore the businesses behind the innovation.
AI, robotics and drug discovery at XtalPi. Cashless payments at Huifu. Conversations about doing business across borders. Rady’s China immersion connected technology and strategy with the everyday experience of a changing market.
Innovation becomes tangible when you meet the people building it. During IESE’s April 2023 visits to Google in Tel Aviv, participants explored entrepreneurship, digital business and growth with local speakers, startup founders and investors.
A new technology is only part of the story.
What matters is how companies use it, how customers respond, what changes inside the organization and whether the economics actually work.
Our executive innovation study tours take participants into the businesses, institutions and ecosystems where those questions can be examined firsthand.
Not simply:
What are they doing?
But:
Why does it work here? What made it possible? And what could we apply ourselves?
Move beyond demonstrations and examine how organizations are integrating AI into real workflows, decisions and business models.
Explore automation, industrial AI, supply chains, engineering and the economics of deploying technology at scale.
Meet founders, investors, researchers and established companies to understand how ideas become commercially viable businesses.
Examine platforms, digital services, payments, retail, mobility and other models changing how companies create and capture value.
See how technology, culture and changing expectations affect purchasing behavior, distribution, brands and customer experience.
Ask what innovation demands from leaders: new capabilities, governance, incentives, talent and ways of making decisions.
There is no standard KNOHAO itinerary.
We start with the group.
What are participants studying?
What assumptions should the program challenge?
What decisions will they face when they return home?
We then build the learning agenda around those questions.
Clarify the strategic, academic or organizational questions the group wants to investigate.
Select destinations because they illuminate those questions, not simply because they are fashionable.
Combine relevant companies, entrepreneurs, institutions, experts and market experiences.
Create space to compare what participants hear, challenge assumptions and translate observations into useful insight.
AI, robotics, EVs and digital business
Explore innovation at industrial scale across Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Beijing.
Explore China study trips ↗Technology, finance and regional strategy
Examine digital transformation, AI governance and the intersection of business and public policy.
Explore Singapore ↗Industrial AI, robotics and manufacturing
Understand how technology moves from engineering concept to dependable industrial capability.
Explore Munich ↗AI, research and strategic judgment
Connect frontier research with regulation, commercialization and leadership decisions.
Explore London & Cambridge ↗Innovation, capital and commercialization
Explore the relationship between research, entrepreneurship, investment and enterprise adoption.
Explore New York & Boston ↗Robotics and human-machine interaction
Examine automation, industrial innovation and the relationship between technology and people.
Discuss a Japan program ↗Every program is customized, but a learning journey might follow this structure.
Day 1 — Frame the question
Understand the market and establish the strategic questions participants will investigate.
Day 2 — See innovation in practice
Visit organizations applying new technologies or business models.
Day 3 — Compare approaches
Examine a contrasting company, sector or innovation model.
Day 4 — Challenge the assumptions
Meet experts, entrepreneurs or researchers and explore the barriers behind implementation.
Day 5 — Bring it home
Compare observations and turn them into implications, experiments or decisions.
A leadership team can discuss transformation for months.
Sometimes it takes seeing another organization, market or business model firsthand to make the conversation concrete.
KNOHAO designs executive immersions around the strategic questions already facing your organization.
Explore corporate executive immersions ↗We work with faculty and program directors to connect international experience with the academic objectives of the program.
Company encounters become part of a broader learning journey rather than isolated visits.
Explore programs for business schools ↗KNOHAO was founded in Shanghai in 2016, giving us an unusually close perspective on one of the world’s fastest-changing business environments.
Today we are based in Madrid and work across markets and cultures, helping participants question what they see rather than simply admire it.
People who understand the destination help interpret the companies, institutions, culture and forces shaping the market.
We design around what your participants need to understand, not around a catalogue of available visits.
An executive innovation study tour is a structured learning program in which executives or business-school participants visit companies, institutions and innovation ecosystems to examine technology, strategy and organizational change firsthand.
The purpose is learning rather than commercial meetings. A KNOHAO program is designed around specific questions and connects individual visits into a coherent learning agenda.
We work with corporate leadership teams, MBA and EMBA cohorts, executive education programs and other senior professional groups.
Yes. AI programs can examine adoption, business models, robotics, governance, organizational change or commercialization depending on the group’s objectives.
Programs can range from focused one- or two-day immersions to multi-city journeys lasting a week or longer. The duration should follow the learning objectives rather than the other way around.
Specific hosts and speakers depend on suitability, availability and approval. KNOHAO develops and confirms the program during the planning process.
We agree on the learning agenda and delivery scope with you before the program is confirmed.
Define the group profile, academic or strategic objectives, themes and available time. Choose the destination and route to fit that brief.
Develop relevant company encounters and expert conversations. Specific hosts, speakers and access are subject to confirmation during planning.
Bring in senior local partners and make room to compare observations, question assumptions and connect the experience to the group’s objectives.
Agree on responsibilities for accommodation, local transport, meals, language support and on-site coordination. The proposal sets out what is included and what is arranged separately.
We discuss your brief, clarify any fixed requirements and develop a proposed learning route and delivery scope. Your dates, group size, objectives and budget range give us a useful starting point.
Tell us about your group, your destination ideas and the questions you want to investigate. We’ll build the journey from there.
