Eleven weeks
that change the
conversation.
Shortlisted teams join a structured, mentored programme between June and September. It is the part of GQC alumni talk about most. The aim is not to win the competition; it is to leave knowing how to do this kind of work for the rest of your career.
Week by week.
Workshops on problem statements, stakeholder mapping and ethics review. Teams produce a one-page brief that is critiqued line-by-line by their assigned mentor.
Methods clinics led by academics from HKUST, Imperial and NYU. Teams run interviews, build short surveys, and audit existing literature. The deliverable is an evidence pack — fifteen to twenty pages of sources, transcripts and field notes.
For Digital & AI teams: prototype sprints in small studios with industry engineers. For Brand & Communication teams: campaign labs with senior planners and creative directors. Both tracks share the same review days so teams see each other’s work.
Pitch rehearsals with the mentor pool, including a mock jury made up of senior judges from previous cycles. Every team receives a written rehearsal critique addressing argument structure, slide craft and live Q&A.
Teams travel to their host city for the public showcase: a three-day event with jury sessions, a public exhibition floor and a closing ceremony. Costs are covered by GQC and the host university.
Small, peer-heavy, written-down.
We deliberately limit class size to twelve teams per cohort. Each cohort meets twice weekly: once in a live masterclass with an external lecturer, once in a smaller peer-review clinic where teams critique one another’s drafts under their mentor’s supervision.
Cohorts are mixed across cities. A Hong Kong team and a London team can sit in the same clinic — the difference in context is part of the point. Most material is delivered in English; live translation is provided where teams request it.
Lectures are recorded and indexed; written notes are returned within forty-eight hours of every clinic. We think the most useful artefact is the paper trail, not the lecture itself.
Who you’ll work with.
Leads the methods clinics in Hong Kong. Previously head of insight at a Pan-Asian consumer health company.
Runs the prototype sprints for Digital & AI in London. Built triage software for the NHS before academia.
Faculty director in New York. Author of two books on early-stage venture pedagogy.
Mentors the Invitational Track teams. Sits on the Global Final jury.
Leads the campaign labs for Brand & Communication teams in London.
Convenes the cross-city showcase programme and the Impact Prize jury.
Clinics, paper trail, no pitch theatre until the end.
A typical week in July: one 75-minute masterclass (methods, ethics, prototype craft, or campaign measurement) with twelve teams on the call; one 90-minute peer clinic in which two teams put a draft in front of the others; asynchronous comments from the assigned mentor within forty-eight hours. Recordings are indexed. The paper trail — briefs, transcripts, critique forms — is the artefact we care about more than the lecture.
What good looks like by week 5 is not a deck. It is a problem statement that has survived line-by-line critique, a set of interviews or field notes a second reader can follow, and a list of what you still do not know. By week 8 Digital & AI teams should have something a juror can launch; Brand teams should have an artefact in the world (a poster series that actually went up, a service script that was tried with users). Weeks 9–10 are the first time we care about slides.
FAQs from last year’s cohort: Can we miss a clinic for exams? Yes, if you watch the recording and file a two-paragraph note; two unexcused misses put the place at risk. Can we change the problem in July? Yes, once, in writing, with the mentor’s sign-off — late pivots rarely help. Is English the only language in clinics? Delivery is English; interpretation is arranged when requested at shortlist. Do Invitational teams sit in the same clinics? They have a compressed version in the autumn, not the June–August open-round cohort.
Travel to the city showcase is a programme week, not a holiday. Jury day is closed; Saturday exhibit is public. Costs are covered as described on Eligibility. Bring the prototype, not a spare personality. The six-minute defence plus questions is where the Learning Experience is tested in public.