About this blog
Signals from China is about what Chinese companies are building in AI, robotics and new energy, and what European executives can do with it.
Most of what Europe reads about China is written from Europe. I write from the factory floor, the showroom and the conference hall, after talking to the people who build, sell and use the technology. The posts are short, concrete and aimed at people who decide where their company places its technology bets.
Who I Am
I am Michael Imstepf, Senior AI Consultant at CSP in Zurich. I work with executives, boards and business leaders who set their company’s course on the technologies that are reshaping their industries, AI first among them: which bets to make, which to skip, and when. The questions are rarely about the technology itself. They are about what it does to the business model, what it does to the business models of their customers and therefore to demand, and which competitors it brings into the market that nobody has on the radar yet. Every week someone shows them a demo, a headline or a vendor deck, and they have to tell substance from noise without the time to become experts. That is where I come in. I help them see the whole picture, set a direction and make the calls, and then hand over to the people who build.
In 2024 I made a bet: that China would matter as much as the US for the technology my clients will run on, and that almost nobody in Europe was watching it first hand. I started learning Chinese and began spending one to two months a year in China, in the factories, labs and showrooms where the technology is made. Today I run the China AI Executive Delegation, which takes European executives to China to meet the companies and thought leaders behind the headlines. This blog is what I bring back.
The judgement I bring to this comes from twenty years at the intersection of business, technology and innovation: strategy consulting, CTO roles, and large digital transformations across several continents for one of the world’s biggest software companies, serving clients such as Nestlé, Allianz and Henkel as well as major retailers and banks in Asia Pacific. I have built and run software myself, which is useful when a vendor claims something a demo cannot show. I studied business at the University of St. Gallen and international business at the University of Sydney.
I photograph and film the trips I write about. The pictures on this site are mine unless stated otherwise.
Get in touch
I post on LinkedIn and read every reply and direct message. If you are planning to deploy disruptive technology to transform your business, that is the place to find me.
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