Challenge
Start with the participant’s real assumption, question or business problem.
Interactive executive learning
Workshops designed to change the conversation.
2EA combines China, technology and business insight with highly interactive facilitation. Sessions are built around real questions, not generic content.
Core principle
Not another webinar.
Information can be delivered in a presentation. A workshop should change what participants notice, question or do.
Every 2EA session is designed around interaction, comparison and application.
01
Relevant
Built around the audience and the business question they are actually working on.
02
Interactive
Participants work, discuss and challenge — in the room and in small groups.
03
Applied
Every session ends with a useful output: questions, experiments or decisions.
Our method
Challenge → Compare → Reframe → Apply
Compare
Introduce relevant Chinese business models, technologies, behaviours or ecosystem examples.
Reframe
Separate what is driven by technology, incentives, market structure, policy, culture or organisational behaviour.
Apply
Turn the new perspective into a question, experiment, decision or next action.
Ways to work with 2EA
From a sharp perspective shift to a deeper working session
Available as standalone sessions or partner-integrated programmes.
Perspective Lab
Challenge how the room sees one important issue.
A highly interactive session that combines specialist insight, contrasting perspectives, facilitated discussion and application.
- Leadership programme guest session
- Conference or association cohort
- Innovation team
- Executive offsite
- Pre-trip preparation
Participants leave with:
Discuss a Perspective Lab
Challenged assumptions, sharper questions and a clearer perspective on the issue.
Innovation Workshop
Use a different system to rethink your own challenge.
Participants bring a live organisational or innovation question. 2EA introduces relevant China and technology comparables, then facilitates the group through Challenge → Compare → Reframe → Apply.
- A live business challenge
- AI adoption
- Technology strategy
- Business-model rethink
- Innovation portfolio
- Cross-border collaboration
Participants leave with:
Design a workshop
A reframed challenge and practical experiments, actions or decisions to test.
Embedded Learning Track
Specialist expertise inside a programme you already own.
Preparation, specialist workshops, immersion framing and follow-through integrated into an existing leadership journey, executive programme, conference, association programme or China immersion.
- Participant intake or survey
- Pre-reading or a short digital prompt
- Pre-programme online lab
- Main workshop
- China immersion framing and debrief, if relevant
- Follow-up application session
- Synthesis for the programme owner
Your programme remains yours.
For programme partners
2EA adds the specialist China / innovation layer where it creates the most value.
Topics
Different questions. One comparative lens.
Eight starting points, from technology and business models to leadership thinking. Each session is built around your group’s question, so a topic is a lens, not a syllabus.
How China Innovates Differently
Speed, experimentation, implementation, ecosystems and the assumptions behind Chinese innovation.
What would we do differently if we could experiment at Chinese speed?
- Participants compare
- Iteration cycles, pilot-to-scale paths and ecosystem roles in relevant Chinese companies versus their own.
- Likely output
- Two or three experiments the group could run within a quarter.
- Formats
- Perspective Lab · Innovation Workshop · Immersion framing
AI & Agentic Business
How organisations move from AI awareness to experimentation, workflows and new operating models — including what Western leaders can learn from Chinese adoption patterns.
Are we waiting for permission where we should be learning through controlled experimentation?
- Participants compare
- Adoption patterns, governance choices and workflow redesign across Chinese and Western organisations.
- Likely output
- A short list of use cases to test, with owners and guardrails.
- Formats
- Perspective Lab · Innovation Workshop · Embedded track
Technology Adoption
Why technically available tools still fail to become organisational capability — and how leaders reduce the gap between awareness and use.
What is really preventing adoption in our organisation?
- Participants compare
- Incentives, skills, workflows and leadership signals that make adoption stick, or stall.
- Likely output
- A diagnosis of the real blocker and one intervention to test.
- Formats
- Innovation Workshop · Embedded track
Business Models & Ecosystems
Platforms, partnerships, integrated ecosystems and different ways of structuring value.
Are we looking at the product when the competitive advantage sits in the ecosystem?
- Participants compare
- How value is captured and shared in Chinese ecosystem patterns versus product-centred models.
- Likely output
- A reframed view of where the group’s advantage really sits.
- Formats
- Perspective Lab · Innovation Workshop
Working Across Systems
Chinese and Western assumptions around decisions, trust, communication, incentives and collaboration.
Why can two rational teams look at the same opportunity and reach different conclusions?
- Participants compare
- Decision logic, trust-building and negotiation behaviour on both sides of a real collaboration.
- Likely output
- Practical adjustments to how the group prepares, meets and follows up.
- Formats
- Perspective Lab · Pre-trip preparation · Immersion framing
Leadership Through the Chinese Classics
Thinking and behavioural frameworks from Chinese strategic and philosophical traditions, read as practical lenses on leadership today.
Which of our leadership reflexes would a Chinese strategist read completely differently?
- Participants compare
- Classical Chinese frameworks on strategy, timing, hierarchy and trust against the leadership models the group grew up with.
- Likely output
- A reframed reading of one real leadership situation and the behaviour to try next.
- Formats
- Perspective Lab · Executive offsite · Leadership programme module
How Chinese Organisations Operate
Operating models inside Chinese companies: speed, hierarchy, incentives, founder-led execution and the interplay between state and private players.
What would our organisation have to change to decide and execute at that pace?
- Participants compare
- Decision rights, incentive design and execution rhythm in relevant Chinese companies versus the group’s own operating model.
- Likely output
- One operating-model experiment the group is willing to run.
- Formats
- Innovation Workshop · Embedded track · Immersion framing
Emerging Industry Deep Dives
Robotics, energy, biomedical, manufacturing and other fast-moving sectors used as live contexts for the workshop.
What does this sector reveal about how innovation is actually moving?
- Participants compare
- Sector-specific technology, business-model and policy signals against the group’s own industry.
- Likely output
- Signals to verify and implications for the group’s own roadmap.
- Formats
- Perspective Lab · Immersion thematic day
Energy, robotics, biomedical and AI demonstrate depth. They are contexts for a session, not separate practices.
Sample session
What a session looks like
Two example flows. Timing and sequence are adapted to the group; treat these as illustrations, not a fixed agenda.
| 10 min | Framing: the question on the table |
| 20 min | Contrasting perspective and cases |
| 30 min | Facilitated discussion |
| 20 min | Small-group or individual exercise |
| 20 min | Reframe and implications |
| 10 min | Commitments and closing |
- 1
Challenge the current framing
Surface the assumption behind the live question.
- 2
Introduce contrasting examples
Relevant China and technology comparables.
- 3
Work in groups
Pull the comparison apart: what transfers, what does not, and why.
- 4
Reframe the problem
Agree the sharper version of the question.
- 5
Build practical experiments or actions
Small, testable, owned.
- 6
Share and pressure-test
Peers and facilitators challenge each plan.
In practice
Read the case
What participants take away
A global consumer-goods leadership cohort used China as a lens on AI-enabled commerce. The value was not another company visit: it was a different set of questions about experimentation, local capabilities and what to adapt at home.
Organisations Johnny and Nil have advised, trained, worked for or worked alongside over two decades. Logos reflect the partners’ individual track records.
Workshops, panels, keynotes and delegation sessions in Beijing, Shanghai and beyond. Click a photo to enlarge.
What participants and clients say
Thank you for the impressive workshop yesterday! It was truly fruitful, and we are delighted to see our key talents shift their mindset and set actionable goals to leverage AI tools in the appropriate areas.
Customisation
Built around four things
We ask about these in the first conversation. They decide the format, the examples and the exercises.
Audience
Seniority, sector, prior China exposure and group size.
Challenge
The live question or assumption the group wants to test.
Context
Standalone, inside a programme, at a conference or during an immersion.
Format
Online, in person or blended; 90 minutes to a full day.
Ready to design a session?
Tell us the audience and the question. We will propose the simplest format that can create value.