Built to Renew
Mandai Rainforest Resort at dusk, treetops above the reservoir
Grobben × Vanhaverbeke

Don't automate.
Reinvent.

A three-day executive program on renewal in the age of AI, set inside a Singapore rainforest.

Register your interest Three full days · Cohort of 20 · Mandai, Singapore
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3
Full working days
10
Applied tools
40+
Years combined
20
Leaders per cohort
The Invitation

Your advantage is being
relocated while you optimise it.

Most transformation programs teach leaders to run the old game faster. They add a tool, automate a step, and call it strategy. The deeper shift underway is not that tasks are getting easier. It is that the systems those tasks live in are quietly losing their reason to exist, and with them the sources of advantage a business was built on.

A faster approval step is a task-level gain. A world where approval is no longer the bottleneck is a renewal question, and it demands a redesign of the process, the role, and often the org chart around it. Leaders who cannot tell the two apart spend the next decade defending a position that is already moving.

Built to Renew exists for the second question. Over three full days it moves a leadership team from a sharper diagnosis, through a defensible operating-model design, to a sequenced first move that survives contact with their own organisation.

The question is never whether AI can do a task, but whether AI makes the system that task lives in obsolete.

The Principals

Two careers that rarely sit
in the same room.

The only executive program where the person who wrote the frameworks and the person who ran the P&L teach the same three days.

WV
Prof. Dr. Wim Vanhaverbeke
The Lens · Professor, University of Antwerp

He did not study open innovation. He is one of the scholars who defined it, and who now reframes digital as strategic renewal rather than a technology upgrade.

The field
Professor of Digital Strategy and Transformation at the University of Antwerp, and co-author with Henry Chesbrough of the foundational open-innovation canon, from the 2006 paradigm to the 2024 Oxford Handbook of Open Innovation. Author of Managing Open Innovation in SMEs and Editor-in-Chief of Technovation, one of the field's leading journals.
The record
More than 37,000 scholarly citations and an h-index of 68, with recognition by IAMOT among the world's top 50 authors in technology and innovation management. His research shows how digital strategies and innovation ecosystems reshape industries, applied in healthcare, agriculture, and energy.
The reach
PhD from IESE Business School. Teaching and visiting appointments across the National University of Singapore, Zhejiang University, ESADE Business School, and Politecnico di Milano, carrying the same frameworks to leadership teams on three continents.

In the room, he is the lens: the frame that shows a leadership team where its advantage is quietly being relocated.

BG
Dr. Bert Grobben
The Build · CEO, ArrowBiome · Adjunct Associate Professor, NUS

He did not write about building ventures. He built them, and ran the operating models the frameworks predict.

The scale
A 25-year innovation career leading portfolios exceeding US$100M at P&G and Avery Dennison, and advising dozens of Fortune 500 companies on their innovation roadmaps. Over the years he has mentored hundreds of companies from startup to scale-up.
The build
Biomedical PhD and serial venture builder across biotech and deep tech, from Revivo Biosystems to Greenitio and EcoWorth Tech. Now CEO of ArrowBiome, an AI-native biotech whose AI platforms earned selection into the Google for Startups Cloud Program, where he is building a governed decision-intelligence engine that runs the company on agentic-AI operating models.
The craft
Adjunct Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore, teaching innovation, entrepreneurship, and strategic foresight, with his course rebuilt around governed agentic-AI operating models: humans setting objectives and rails, AI carrying the work.

In the room, he is the build: the operator who turns a strategy into a venture, a capital plan, and a first move.

The Program

One journey, from insight
to a first move.

Each day is a stage, and each stage ends with the room holding something it can act on.

01
Day One · Diagnose

Diagnose the shift

Diagnose whether the shift facing the business is task-level or systemic, and map where its advantage is being relocated. Reframe what the firm actually sells when data makes outcomes measurable.

02
Day Two · Design

Design the architecture

Turn the diagnosis into a defensible operating model: platform governance, partner coupling, and the agentic operating model, the rails for humans and AI agents working side by side.

03
Day Three · Ship

Take it to market

Take frontier capability to market, get investor-ready, and leave with a sequenced first move, pressure-tested with a sitting deep-tech operator and a guest founder or investor.

The Toolkit

Ten tools. One integrated system.

Not a lecture series. Each block pairs a short, expert-led reframing with a practical tool participants apply to their own business, in the room. Leave with completed artifacts, not notes to write up later.

AThe Renewal DiagnosticWim
BThe Capability Migration MapWim
CThe Outcome Translation TableJoint
DThe Business Model Twist MatrixWim
EThe Ecosystem Governance CanvasWim
FThe Agent-Mesh Design SprintBert
GThe Coupling Readiness DiagnosticBert
HThe Frontier-to-Market RoadmapBert
IThe Investor-Readiness ScorecardBert
JThe Sequencing & Decision-Rights MapJoint
The Return

Not a folder of slides.
An architecture you can act on.

01

A reframed strategic question

The renewal lens applied to their own industry, and a clear read on whether the change they face is task-level or systemic.

02

A map of where value is migrating

Their three strongest advantages plotted against where digital technology is reinforcing, eroding or relocating each one.

03

A designed operating-model response

An agentic operating model, a governance and coupling design, and a business-model twist scored against real internal inertia.

04

A path from capability to revenue

For those with a venture in play, a commercialization roadmap and an investor-readiness read from someone who has raised and shipped.

05

A sequenced first move

The first four steps in order, decision rights assigned, pressure-tested with two people who have built it before.

Who It's For

Two starting points.
One shared advantage.

Established companies

Leaders reshaping the core

Executives, transformation leaders, senior teams

Corporate executives, transformation leaders and senior management teams come to sharpen their AI strategy and rethink how their organisation must change. They learn to diagnose where AI can create strategic value, redesign the processes and structures needed to capture it, and move from transformation plans to concrete AI-enabled initiatives.

Founders & ventures

Builders scaling the new

Founders, venture builders, corporate venturing

Start-up founders, venture builders and corporate-venturing teams come to accelerate the commercialisation and scaling of AI and deep-tech ventures. They learn how to strengthen their business model, attract resources and partners, and build a defensible strategic position as their venture grows.

Why both in one room

Established companies and ventures approach AI from different starting points, and each holds what the other lacks. Corporate leaders know how to transform complex organisations but often struggle to turn strategy into new business. Founders build quickly but need the structure to scale. Three days in the same room closes both gaps.

Mandai Rainforest Resort suites amid the forest canopy at sunset
The Setting

Where the room is as considered as the curriculum.

Set within the Mandai Wildlife Reserve and overlooking the Upper Seletar Reservoir, Mandai Rainforest Resort by Banyan Tree places the cohort inside a living rainforest, minutes from the city yet a world away from it. The setting is not a backdrop. It is part of the method: a place designed for the kind of thinking that does not happen in a downtown ballroom.

A private canopy boardroom
For the cohort alone
Rainforest immersion
Inside the wildlife reserve
A signature group dinner
Included in tuition
The Investment

An investment in a scarce room.

A top-tier executive program, priced for what it is: three days with two principals who wrote the frameworks and ran the P&L, a cohort capped at 20, and a rainforest resort that becomes part of the method. Tuition covers the teaching, all daytime food and beverage, the complete ten-tool system, and one signature group dinner.

Early BirdTime-limited
US$9,500

The full program at a rate held open until 45 days before the session. Register 46 days or more ahead to secure it. Same three days, same two principals, same ten-tool system. Our way of recognising leaders who commit early. Group rates are available when one company sends several participants.

RegularThe full seat
US$12,000

Two principals teaching the same three days, a cohort capped at 20, the complete applied toolkit, and a rainforest resort that becomes part of the method. Group rates are available when one company sends several participants.

Principal's tablePremium
US$14,500

Everything in the program, plus up to eight hours of the principals' direct time in the two months after it ends. Bring the decisions that surface once your first moves meet the market: pressure-test the operating model against real resistance, adapt the toolkit to what you are actually seeing, and turn the three days into a live plan with the two people who built it. Booked as one-hour working sessions across the window. Deeper implementation is scoped separately. Availability by arrangement, conditions apply.

  • Three full days of teaching with both principals
  • The complete ten-tool applied system
  • All daytime food, beverage and coffee service
  • One signature group dinner
  • A private canopy boardroom for the cohort
  • Completed artifacts, not notes to write up

Rooms are booked directly by each participant at a preferential cohort rate, not included in tuition. Optional add-ons include a welcome dinner and a Night Safari group dinner. Figures in US dollars, excluding applicable taxes.

To register your interest or ask about group rates, email us at [email protected]

Aerial view of the reservoir and rainforest surrounding the resort
Register Your Interest

The first cohort is forming now.

Built to Renew runs as a small, deliberately capped cohort. The first session is set for 1 to 3 December 2026, Tuesday to Thursday. The dates are held mid-week on purpose, so the program does not cross a weekend and take your team's personal time. The session confirms once a minimum of fifteen participants is reached. Register your interest to hold a place.

Format
Three full days, in person
Venue
Mandai Rainforest Resort
Cohort
Capped at 20 leaders
Dates
1–3 December 2026 · Tue–Thu

To register your interest, email us at [email protected]