In August 2026, eight entrepreneurial study tours organized by Huazhi International embarked on a global journey simultaneously - visiting Hefei and Hong Kong domestically, and the United States, Britain, Germany, Morocco, Spain, and other countries abroad... Their footprints covered almost all the regions where global innovation and business are most active at present.

One of the teams flew to Boston and entered the classrooms of MIT and Harvard, embarking on a five-day in-depth study.

The five-day itinerary spans four world-class universities - MIT, Harvard, Babson, and UMass Chan. It includes multiple core courses taught personally by Nobel Prize winners in Economics, the Director of the MIT Research Institute, and the Vice Dean of Harvard Business School, as well as a visit to the MassRobotics robotics innovation base and a rowing experience on the Charles River.

Eight teams are simultaneously venturing overseas, backed by Huazhi International's systematic layout of knowledge hubs in different regions.

The Boston station focuses on the intersection of technological innovation and the underlying logic of business. Here, MIT and Harvard stand side by side, and hundreds of Nobel Prize winners have emerged over the past century. However, the starting point of this course design is not simply to "enter prestigious universities to listen to lectures". In 2026, when information is exploding and AI can answer almost any question, what is truly scarce is no longer knowledge itself, but rather the understanding of "underlying logic" - where are the boundaries of technological innovation? What is the essence of business value? How does scientific discovery become a force that changes the world?

With these questions in mind, the students entered the classroom in Boston. Five days later, what each of them took away was not a pile of course materials, but a pair of spectacles for cognitive recalibration.

01. Brain Science Laboratory: When Basic Research Begins to "Rewrite" Human Health

The McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, founded in 2000, boasts over 600 researchers spanning multiple fields such as brain and cognitive science, bioengineering, and computer science. Professor Robert, the director of the institute and also an international judge of "The Strongest Brain", delivered an in-depth sharing on "Transforming Human Health through Brain Science" to the participants.

The most impressive aspect of this sharing is that it fully demonstrates the closed loop of basic scientific research transforming into clinical medicine and industry.

Feng Zhang's team developed and engineered the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology, enabling precise editing of human cell DNA. This technology has led to the first gene therapy, Casgevy, being approved by the FDA in 2023, and has spawned several cutting-edge biotech companies such as Beam Therapeutics and Editas Medicine.

Guoping Feng's team has established animal models, including mice, macaques, and marmosets, by editing the autism-related SHANK3 gene. The relevant gene therapy has been able to improve the clinical manifestations of non-human primates and has officially entered the human clinical trial phase.

Fan Wang's team discovered neurons in the amygdala that can inhibit pain. By controlling these neurons using optogenetics, pain can be blocked when they are turned on, and pain sensation intensifies when they are turned off. This neural circuit is expected to become a new alternative to opioid drugs for treating chronic pain.

What deserves more attention is that AI is becoming an accelerator for brain science research. Tools like AlphaFold are being utilized to accelerate protein engineering and targeted research and development. With the help of neuroconnectomics big data and generative AI to simulate neural networks, the research and development cycle has been significantly shortened. The machine learning model developed by John Gabrieli's team can even predict reading disorders or bipolar disorder several years in advance, and predict treatment response based on patient data.

In addressing global aging, Feng Zhang's team utilized mRNA technology to deliver key factors to the livers of elderly mice, guiding the development and maturation of immature T cells, successfully enhancing the immune system's response to vaccines.

It is worth mentioning that the McGovern Institute has sister institutes at Tsinghua University, Beijing Normal University, and Peking University in China. The path to industrialization of top-tier scientific research is not far away for Chinese entrepreneurs.

These breakthroughs send a clear signal: from gene editing to AI diagnosis, from neural circuit regulation to immune remodeling, brain science is moving from "understanding the brain" to "rewriting life". The core underlying logic behind this is that only by truly understanding the operating mechanism of the brain can we intervene and change it.

02. Nobel Laureate's "Cutting the Cake": The Fundamental Secrets of the Business World

Eric, the 2007 Nobel Laureate in Economics and a professor at Harvard, spent two class periods deconstructing two seemingly distinct propositions for the students, yet their underlying logics are in fact interconnected: mechanism design and financial crisis.

Mechanism design is "reverse engineering" - traditional economics focuses on "forward prediction", explaining the outcomes produced by existing institutions; whereas mechanism design is normative, establishing desired social goals first, and then working backwards to design the institutions that can achieve them. Maskin used an example of "cutting a cake" to make this abstract theory intuitive: the mother wants to divide the cake fairly, but doesn't know what "half" means to the children. The solution is for Bob to cut and Alice to choose first. Bob will try to cut evenly so as not to lose out, while Alice chooses the piece she believes to be larger, leaving both satisfied.

Behind this seemingly simple logic lies the profound principle of "incentive compatibility": the mechanism designed must reconcile the personal interests of participants with the social goals of the designer, so that participants can achieve social optimality while pursuing the maximization of their personal interests. Vickrey auction (second-price auction), radio spectrum auction, and Nash equilibrium in public energy selection - all are extensions of the same logic in different scenarios. Maskin proved in his 1977 paper that as long as certain conditions are met, social goals can be achieved through mechanism design.

Its application areas span from international greenhouse gas emission reduction agreements, financial crisis prevention policies, to even incentive mechanisms within large enterprises.

In the analysis of financial crises, Maskin put forward a more subversive viewpoint: even if all participants are fully rational, financial crises can still occur.

The reason lies in leverage and externalities. The credit market is vastly different from the potato market - a decrease in potato production leads to an increase in price, which attracts growers to expand production and restore balance; however, the collapse of one bank can bring down other banks that lend to it, triggering a chain of failures and systemic risks, causing everyone to rationally guard against lending, resulting in a "credit crunch". Banks enjoy high returns when leveraging, but they transfer the risk of chain failures to the entire financial system, and banks do not take this "social cost" into account when making decisions.

The underlying logic of the two courses converges here: when there are "externalities" and "information asymmetry", the free market cannot spontaneously achieve optimality. It requires mechanism designers to guide rational participants to adopt behaviors that are consistent with the overall financial stability of society by setting ex ante leverage restrictions. Both ex post bailouts and ex ante regulation are indispensable.

03. From "Value Proposition" to "Smart Body Marketing": Re-understanding the Creation and Transmission of Value

Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Senior Associate Dean and Director of the MBA Program at Harvard Business School, presented his "Value Bar" model.

A value stick, with both ends determining everything: WTP (customer willingness to pay) and WTS (supplier willingness to sell). The value created equals WTP minus WTS. Value distribution is divided into three segments - customer satisfaction equals WTP minus price, corporate gross profit equals price minus cost, and employee satisfaction equals cost minus WTS.

Traditional strategic theory suggests that companies must either differentiate themselves (high cost, high WTP) or achieve cost leadership (low cost, low WTP), with those caught in the middle finding themselves in a "dilemma". However, FOG points out that companies like ZARA and Samsung have simultaneously achieved high WTP and low WTS through innovative mechanisms - this is the "dual advantage". The five insights he provided are also thought-provoking: focus on fewer projects, select the best from the best, strive for dual advantage, interrogate underlying mechanisms, and everything is within the value map.

Professor Zhang from MIT Sloan School of Management, on the other hand, provided another framework for understanding "value" from the marketing dimension

Q & A

L=A×W

L represents customer preference, A denotes product attributes, and W signifies the importance customers place on that particular attribute. The primary reason for business failure, accounting for 42%, is due to "lack of market demand" - not because the technology is not good enough, but because the company fails to understand what customers truly care about.

In 2026, marketing has fully entered the era of "intelligent agent marketing". AI intelligent agents have begun to possess autonomous decision-making capabilities, making large-scale product innovation, customer research, personalized persuasion, and even intelligent agent transactions a reality. From Nubank capturing user behavior characteristics using a base model, to Harvey generating usage scenario heatmaps by analyzing tens of thousands of lawyer inquiries, to Mastercard Agent Pay enabling programmable purchases - technology has kept businesses extremely busy at the tactical level.

However, Professor Zhang's conclusion remains clear: technology is not value, but the results delivered by technology are. The essence of all marketing changes is still to achieve deep alignment between product attributes and customer needs.

Both classes point to the same principle: no matter how dazzling the technology is or how ingenious the strategy is, ultimately, it all comes back to the fundamental question of "what value have we created for our customers?".

04. From classroom to the field: How researchers turn into entrepreneurs

The director of Babson College's Erro program posed a soul-stirring question: Can researchers become entrepreneurs?

His answer was straightforward: scholars fall in love with problems, while entrepreneurs fall in love with solutions.

Subsequently, a systematic "Ten-Step Method for Scientists to Transition into Entrepreneurship" is presented - ranging from value proposition (Start with WHY) to product technology, from product-market fit to competitive analysis, from regulatory path to intellectual property, from business model and financing to team management, and ultimately to exit mechanism.

Each step emphasizes practical application: intellectual property should be built with high barriers to enhance company valuation, the team should be a trinity of "clinical providers + engineers + entrepreneurs", and the regulatory path should be transformed into a competitive advantage.

He also specifically warned about the "AI gap" in the field of medical AI: an algorithm with an accuracy AUC of 0.99 does not equate to clinical effectiveness. An algorithm that cannot improve actual clinical outcomes is of no value. The biggest barrier to implementation is not the technology itself, but rather the resistance of medical institutions to change. The solution is to collaborate with frontline medical staff as early as possible to develop fully automated and seamlessly integrated clinical workflows.

Beyond the classroom, the students entered the MassRobotics Robotics Innovation Base.

Executive directors shared their industry insights on-site, and multiple innovative products were demonstrated through hands-on practice.

This is not just about looking at display boards; it's about experiencing firsthand the other side of Boston as an "incubator for turning academia into industry." Every step on this journey, from the laboratory to the market, is filled with challenges but also opportunities.

05. Museums and Rowing: Cognition is not limited to one posture

At the end of the itinerary, the focus shifted from rigorous classroom learning to humanities and physical fitness.

In the morning, I walked into the MFA Art Museum. The specially invited senior scholar, Mr. Chen, and his wife provided an in-depth guided tour throughout, dissecting the artistic context of the collection and bringing professional and vivid cultural interpretation. Beyond business lies humanity, and beyond rationality lies aesthetics. An entrepreneur who only understands business and not humanity will not go far in the end.

In the afternoon, all participants were allowed to experience the CRI rowing competition, a unique project featuring the characteristics of Boston. On the Charles River, everyone immersed themselves in water training, braving the wind and waves and sweating profusely. They gained a unique pleasure from collaborative racing, and still felt unfulfilled after the end.

Rowing and business management are strikingly similar. They share the same direction, synchronize in pace, require everyone's contribution, and none can be dispensed with. Everyone on the boat is both an oarman and a navigator. Some insights are not found in the classroom, but rather in the undulations of the water as the oars rise and fall.

Let's get back to the main topic of the past few days.

From gene editing in the Brain Science Lab at MIT, to the Nobel Laureate's "cake-cutting" analogy and financial crisis, from Harvard's "value stick" to MIT's "agent marketing", from Babson's ten-step entrepreneurial method to MassRobotics' robotics field, from the cultural accumulation in art museums to the rowing collaboration on the Charles River, each stop is answering the same question: What is the true underlying logic?

The underlying logic of neuroscience is to understand the mechanisms of the brain in order to rewrite human health. The underlying logic of marketing is to understand customer needs in order to create value. The underlying logic of mechanism design is to understand incentives in order to design effective systems. The underlying logic of strategy is to understand the willingness to pay and the willingness to sell in order to find a dual advantage. The underlying logic of entrepreneurship is to understand the leap from problem to solution in order to turn scientific research into business.

If there is anything that brings this group of Chinese entrepreneurs together in Boston, it is the thirst for knowledge in the face of an uncertain future. If there is anything that can help businesses see direction in an increasingly complex world, it is the ability to constantly return to the starting point and understand the underlying logic.

Huazhi International brought Chinese entrepreneurs to Boston not for the purpose of "gilding" or "clocking in", but to recalibrate cognitive coordinates in the world's top brain classroom.

Only by returning to the starting point can we see the direction clearly and go further.