每年开年的 CES 国际消费电子展向来是洞察人类健康未来的核心棱镜。当全球顶尖科技于此交汇碰撞，我们看见的不仅是传感器与算法的持续迭代与进阶，更是东西方文明基因在健康命题下的深层共鸣与对话 —— 科技为健康构筑起坚实的防护屏障，古典智慧则为身心校准内在节奏与前行航向，二者相辅相成，方能破解当代人群的健康困境。
What we see at CES 2026 is not merely the evolution of sensors, algorithms, or devices. We are witnessing a deeper dialogue between civilizations around one fundamental question: how humans sustain themselves under accelerating pressure.
I. CES 2026 Health Tech Trends:
From Data Tracking to Closed-Loop Intervention
Over the past five years, the evolution of health technology at CES has followed a clear trajectory:
2021: Single metrics such as heart rate and blood oxygen
2023: Behavioural data integration with basic recommendations
2026: Multi-modal fusion, proactive intervention, and chronic risk prevention
The most striking shift this year is the rise of insomnia–depression comorbidity as a core focus of health technology. This is no coincidence. High-pressure populations worldwide are experiencing a mental health crisis — and it is catalyzing a non-pharmaceutical intervention revolution.
Two CES-launched products illustrate this shift.
Zero-Gravity Mental Recovery Pods
Originally developed for astronauts, zero-gravity posture technology redistributes body weight evenly, significantly reducing muscular tension and physical stress. When integrated with a specialized helmet for immersive audio and cranial vibration therapy, these systems aim to improve sleep quality and emotional regulation. Already validated in French military settings, this technology is moving rapidly into premium consumer and enterprise wellness markets — signalling a future where recovery becomes infrastructure, not a luxury.
Image source: Reconcept.fr
Non-Invasive Neurostimulation Glasses
These AI-powered wearable glasses apply 40Hz gamma-frequency light stimulation, inspired by neuroscience research exploring its potential role in supporting cognitive performance and neural regulation. Foundational studies from MIT and NIH-funded research suggest that gamma oscillations may enhance cerebral blood flow and activate brain mechanisms associated with beta-amyloid clearance — primarily demonstrated in preclinical models.
Positioned as cognitive support rather than a medical device, it represents a new wave of accessible, non-invasive consumer neurotechnology.
Image source: Hypersence.com
The unifying direction is clear: health technology is evolving toward a prevent–intervene–restore closed loop.
II. The Founder’s Blind Spot: Success Inside a Three-Way Health Storm
Founders are among the most exposed populations in this new reality.
Chronic sleep deprivation, decision overload, relentless screen exposure, and emotional isolation create a perfect storm of depression, insomnia, and visual fatigue. External success often masks internal collapse.
Perhaps most instructive is Blake Mycoskie, founder of TOMS Shoes. After building one of the most iconic mission-driven companies of the 2000s — donating millions of shoes worldwide and selling half the company for $625 million — he fell into profound depression, anxiety, and chronic insomnia.
His experience reveals a hard truth: a mission without the physiological and psychological capacity to sustain it is unsustainable.
Even as AI becomes embedded in daily workflows, founder health is not improving. A Wall Street Journal investigation found that AI startup founders exhibit significantly higher rates of sleep disorders and psychological stress due to extreme work patterns and the myth of infinite productivity.
III. “Knowing When to Stop”: The Rarest Strategic Wisdom in the AI Era
At this point, Eastern philosophy offers something technology alone cannot: meta-wisdom.
The concept of 知止 (knowing when to stop) is not about retreat. It is about strategic throttling — the ability to reset systems before they collapse.
This wisdom operates on three levels.
1. Periodic Maintenance of the Physical System
As the Dao De Jing asks: “Fame or life — which is more precious? Wealth or the body — which matters more?” Over-optimization inevitably leads to depletion.
2. Active Management of Cognitive Resources
Zhuangzi, the 4th-century BCE Chinese Daoist philosopher, warned: “Life is finite, but knowledge is infinite.” In an AI-driven information explosion, deliberate cognitive disengagement — not constant input — determines decision quality and creative insight.
3. Strategic Calibration of Business Rhythm
“One yin, one yang — this is the Dao.”
Pure acceleration violates system laws. Sustainable growth requires embedding restorative pauses (yin) into expansion and execution (yang). This balance is the foundation of anti-fragile organizations.
CES shows how tools can extend human capability — but knowing when to pause keeps those capabilities from turning against us.
The most sustainable innovators are not those who burn the brightest, but those who align body, mind, business cycles, and natural rhythms into long-term coherence.
The entrepreneurial journey can be lonely and high-pressure, and every ounce of stress and perseverance deserves to be seen. If this resonates, I invite you to share your entrepreneurial story with me via private message. Let’s accompany each other — balancing ambition with peace of mind — as we build what truly lasts.
AI与音乐的融合，已催生出全新的行业现象。国内，AI翻唱版《大东北》全网走红，流传度甚至超过原版，倒逼原唱袁娅维等艺人“反向翻唱”AI改编旋律；海外，AI虚拟歌手 Breaking Rust 创作的《Walk My Walk》，登顶 Billboard 乡村数字单曲销售榜，歌词传递的“不屈灵魂”打动无数听众。
I. The “Good Enough” Trap is Killing Your Margins.
If your core revenue comes from “deliverables” — code, copy, design, or scoring — 2026 isn’t just another year of tech updates. It’s a survival crisis. Not because AI is extraordinary. But because “good enough” is now almost free.
II. How Musicians Responded: Stop Producing. Start Defining.
The music industry was one of the first to feel this shock. We saw AI-generated tracks, such as Breaking Rust’s “Walk My Walk,” top the Billboard charts by tapping into raw human sentiment. We saw icons like Yuan Yawei “reverse-cover” AI versions of their own songs to reclaim the narrative.
But the most instructive response wasn’t about competing with AI on output.
It came from a pioneering Chinese game-audio studio, Xiaoxu Music, which asked a far more uncomfortable question: Why do clients hire us at all? The answer was clarifying. Clients weren’t buying music. They were buying atmosphere.
The Shift: They transformed from a content shop into an Experience Architect.
They began delivering end-to-end immersive solutions for theme parks, cultural tourism projects, shopping centres, and live events — integrating:
AI-generated music and visual content
Live performers and musicians
Physical staging, lighting, and spatial design
AI didn’t replace them; it became the invisible engine inside a new, higher-value layer.
III. The “Manus” Signal: Leverage vs. Fulcrum
Many leaders still believe the solution is simple: “Teach the team AI tools.” That’s necessary — but insufficient. Tools are leverage. Direction is the fulcrum.
In late 2025, Meta acquired Manus for over $2 billion. Manus didn’t win by building the biggest LLM. They won by being the Ultimate Orchestrator. By layering models (like Alibaba’s Qwen) and focusing on the Agentic Layer — the ability to understand intent, plan complex tasks, and execute across silos — they proved that the “Moat” is no longer in the math, but in the integration of the human problem.
As the I Ching, or Book of Changes, suggests: “Ride the six dragons to steer the heavens.” The wise don’t fight the storm; they harness the wind to go where others cannot.
IV. The Question Every Decision-Maker Must Answer
In an AI-saturated world, the strategic challenge is no longer: “What can AI replace?”
The real question is: “What layer of value am I uniquely qualified to own?” Call it your “AI Fusion Layer.” AI will rapidly eliminate roles, products, and companies that refuse to redefine themselves. So don’t wait for the rules to settle. They won’t.
If you can’t beat the wave — ride it. And take it somewhere it has never been.
Are you still figuring out your AI Fusion Layer? Let’s connect to discuss where your moat lies in the age of the Agent.
We’ve reached the final days of 2025. A familiar question comes up: “If you had to summarize this year in one word, what would it be?”
In the ancient wisdom of the I Ching, the word of the year is “Ge” (革). It translates to “Revolution,” but its etymology is far more profound for decision-makers: It means stripping the fur from rawhide to create leather.
Layoffs at major tech firms, the once-unthinkable automation of elite consulting and legal work, and long-standing AI warnings suddenly becoming lived reality — what used to feel abstract now feels personal. For decision makers, this year wasn’t about curiosity. It was about survival.
In moments like this, we need perspective — one that cuts through fear, respects human nature, and helps us act with clarity.
I. The Pivot: From “Inertia” to “Architecture”
There is a line from the 2025 blockbuster De Xian Jin Zhi that haunted many executives this year: “It is what it is, and it’s already like this.”
It is the mantra of survival inertia. It is the sound of a decision-maker acknowledging that market logic has failed and deciding to simply weather the storm. But in the era of AI rule-rewriting, inertia is fatal.
In the ancient wisdom of the I Ching, each year is associated with a guiding hexagram. 2025 corresponds to the 49th hexagram, Ge (Revolution) — a symbol of profound transformation through the deliberate removal of what no longer fits.
Image: I Ching 2025 Guiding Hexagram — Ge (Revolution)
The Strategic Pattern Behind AI Winners
Look at where real breakthroughs happened this year:
The Hardware contrarians: While the world fought for GPU allocation in a brute-force arms race, Lightelligence went back to first principles. They ignored the silicon rules and bet on optical computing (photonics). They didn’t try to run faster in the old race; they changed the physics of the track.
The Service Architects: Legal AI unicorn Harvey didn’t just build a “chatbot for lawyers.” Knowing a faster horse won’t fix a broken cart, they redesigned high-stakes legal workflows — freeing attorneys from document drudgery to focus on judgment, strategy, and client trust.
Different industries. Same pattern:
Stop chasing optimization inside a collapsing framework. Start defining a new one.
II. The Anchor: Emotional Sovereignty in a “Mocha” World
Innovation requires adrenaline, but endurance requires calm.
It is no coincidence that amidst this technological velocity, Pantone selected “Mocha Mousse” (17–1230) as the Colour of the Year for 2025, a warm, grounded, unassuming brown.
Image: The Colour of the Year 2025 Pantone Mocha Mousse
Why does this matter to a tech executive? Because the greatest risk to your company right now isn’t a competitor’s algorithm; it is your own burnout.
The cognitive load of 2025 — managing AI integration, calming investor nerves, navigating geopolitical shifts — requires a psychological anchor. “Mocha Mousse” is a reminder that high-tech requires high-touch.
The most resilient founders I worked with this year were those who protected their “offline sovereignty.” Share unhurried dinners with family. Go for walks with no purpose. These are not distractions from the work; they are the fuel for the high-stakes decision-making required.
For leaders navigating AI-driven change, emotional sustainability is now a strategic asset.
III. The Structure: The Era of the “Leaderless Dragon”
At the end of 2025, there is no need to dwell on past instability, nor to be overwhelmed by future uncertainty. Use your willpower to adapt to change.
Use your hands of creation to build new rules.
In the I Ching, Qian Gua offers a powerful image: “A group of dragons without a leader — auspicious.” When centralized authority dissolves, and old power structures fade, the roots of certainty may blur — but in that ambiguity, everyone gains the chance to rise. The true good omen is not waiting for instructions, but awakening the initiative within each person — calmly observing the situation, then acting with clarity and resolve.
2025 is a year of revolution — and also the beginning of a new order. In this once-in-a-century transformation, may you and I choose not to become floating objects carried by the waves, but architects who lay the first stones ourselves.
Let us use wisdom to break through.
Let us use warmth to protect our hearts.
Let us use creativity to keep moving forward.
History has never been written by observers. It is written by those who walk through the darkness — and still choose to light the way.
Step by step.
Ready to Shape Your 2026?
As we move from the year of “Disruption” to the year of “Reinvention,” the window for strategic positioning is narrowing. Let’s turn these insights into your competitive advantage.
For Our Valued Clients & Partners: It’s time to activate your roadmap. Please use your 2025 Value Code to schedule your exclusive 2025/2026 Year-End Strategy Session. We will dive deep into your specific “tanning process” and calibrate your operations for the distributed agency of the coming year.
For New Visionaries & Prospective Partners: If you are ready to move beyond the “raw hide” of AI and into market-ready leadership, we invite you to connect. We are currently opening a limited number of briefings on:
The 2025 Winners’ Ledger: Deconstructing the most successful case studies of the year.
The China Frontier: Vital policy updates and navigating the evolving regulatory landscape.
Strategic Collaboration Sessions: Identifying high-alpha partnerships for the 2026 cycle.
The “Mocha” Moment: An exclusive New Year’s Eve online meditation to sharpen your executive focus for the year ahead.
We’ve all felt this frustration: you lay out the perfect health plan for your parents — take the medication on time, use the monitor, follow the doctor’s instructions. The solution is clear, the reasoning is airtight. Yet what comes back is all too familiar: silence, avoidance, a gentle “I know, I know…,” or a quiet refusal.
We live in an age where AI seems to have an answer for every problem. Models analyze our decisions, devices track our vitals from miles away, and remote systems flag warning signs before symptoms arrive.
But there’s one dimension no algorithm can fully account for: the human response. People don’t move on logic alone — they move on emotion, identity, and the need to feel in control. And that’s often where the “best solution” meets quiet resistance.
Fei-Fei Li, a globally recognized AI pioneer, shares a powerful personal story about her mother that reveals this truth with heartbreaking clarity.
Part I: A Surgery That Didn’t Need to Happen
Her mother had long suffered heart issues and endured multiple surgeries. After a recent operation, the doctor emphasized one essential step for recovery: using an incentive spirometer, a simple device that helps patients strengthen their lungs and avoid complications.
The instructions were simple, the benefit clear — “Just use it. It’s good for you,” everyone said. Yet she resisted: lifting the device only when watched, setting it aside the moment she was alone. As a result, she endured a second surgery that never should have happened.
After returning home, the mother finally revealed her truth:
“In that hospital room, my body, even my thoughts, no longer belonged to me. Doctors, nurses, even you — you were all giving me orders. I felt stripped of my dignity. I wasn’t refusing the device. I was refusing that feeling of being powerless.”
In that moment, dignity mattered more than health. She was pushing back not against the practice, but against the feeling of being arranged.
Part II: The Business Mirror — This Isn’t Just Personal — It’s Strategic
The same dynamic we see in families echoes through organizations.
A major tech company rolled out an AI management system to track productivity, optimize workflows, and automate task assignments — all in the name of “ruthless efficiency.”
The system worked, but the results were catastrophic for morale.
Employees felt they were no longer creators, but components inside a transparent, ever-watchful machine. They feared becoming adjustable, measurable, and replaceable parts.
In version 2.0, they flipped the script: AI became a co-pilot, not a commander. Teams set their own goals, shaped their workflows, and retained meaningful control. Result? A 30% sustained boost in efficiency — plus faster innovation.
Part III: Why the “Best Solution” Isn’t Enough
Across every context — health, leadership, innovation — the same principle holds:
People don’t change because a solution is brilliant. They change when they feel seen, respected, and included.
My parents weren’t rejecting breathing exercises. They were rejecting being instructed. So instead of teaching them, I practiced with them — half an hour every day. When I travelled, I recorded an audio guide so they could choose their own pace.
James Clear writes in Atomic Habits: “Repetition is the foundation of change.” But repetition requires desire, not pressure.
This applies universally:
Teams adopt AI when they feel part of the design.
Employees innovate when their pace is respected.
Partners collaborate when their autonomy is protected.
Families accept guidance when dignity is intact.
Part IV: The New Altitude of Value — Introducing the Human Quotient (HQ)
For founders and investors, this is not “soft philosophy.” It is a hard valuation principle that determines the longevity and success of your venture. We need a new metric to evaluate technology: The Human Quotient (HQ).
Traditional technology assessment focuses on precision, scale, and data: How accurate is the model? How fast is the computation?
The HQ asks the deeper question:
Does this technology expand human autonomy or shrink it?
This distinction will define the difference between enduring companies and disposable tools. The next generation of trillion-dollar companies will be those that build systems where humans feel amplified, not arranged.
Part V: What We Cannot Automate
As AI becomes more predictive and prescriptive, it’s tempting to believe the “best solution” will always win.
But humans don’t operate like code. We carry pride, fear, intuition, and dignity.
Real care — whether in families, teams, or organizations — is never: “I’ve already planned the best route for you.”
Real care is: “I understand your choices, and I’m willing to walk with you.”
In an era defined by AI and automation, the most powerful force isn’t processing speed, predictive accuracy, or algorithmic efficiency — it’s the irreducible core that no machine can replicate:
Human autonomy.
Human dignity.
Human connection.
As technology reshapes everything, remember: the future won’t be won by the smartest system, but by the one that best serves the human spirit.
Ⅰ. The Shift: From Authoring to Directing (The Strategic Signal)
The software industry is currently facing a paradoxical phenomenon: developers are spending less time writing code, yet software iteration speed is accelerating faster than ever before. This change is driven not by a new programming language, but by the AI-native paradigm known as Vibe Coding.
As former Tesla AI Director Andrej Karpathy coined the term, it provided a name for the era: humans no longer write code line by line; we transmit business intent via natural language to an AI, which automatically translates it into executable logic.
This is not merely a development tool; it’s a paradigm shift.
This transformation presents two opposed strategic pathways in the global market:
The US Path: Efficiency Maximization
The US Strategy is Efficiency-Driven, a manifestation of the Silicon Valley mandate: maximize speed and scalability. The focus is on Core Logic and Customization as the ultimate lever for competitive advantage. For instance, a top CRM platform successfully utilized AI-generated customized logic to reduce enterprise system implementation costs by over 40%. This is not a cost-cutting measure; it is a capital acceleration strategy.
The overriding goal is the strategic pursuit of efficiency maximization to secure a competitive edge through market velocity, rapid product iteration, and organizational reinvention.
The China Path: Risk-Controllability Priority
In contrast, China’s approach emphasizes system stability, auditability, and governance. The focus is on Compliance and Safety. A major state-owned bank, for example, embedded regulatory checks directly into AI-generated code, resulting in audit pass rates exceeding 98%.
The foundational goal is ensuring risk and compliance alignment so that the speed of AI does not introduce fragility into critical sectors.
This difference—speed-focused optimization versus stability-focused governance—is an important signal for global tech executives.
II. The Evolution of Code: Where U.S. and China Diverge Strategically
Vibe Coding did not appear overnight. It is the natural continuation of decades of shifts in how software is produced. Yet beneath this evolution lies a deeper truth: U.S. and Chinese enterprises made fundamentally different choices at each stage, and these choices now shape their Vibe Coding trajectories.
1. The Syntax Era (pre-2020): Repetition Reveals Two Philosophies
For over a decade, developers in both markets were weighed down by repetitive, low-value tasks — from Java interface plumbing to iOS compatibility debugging. But how each ecosystem responded foreshadowed today’s strategic split.
The U.S. doubled down on individual leverage.
Developers relied more on personal expertise and community-driven resources such as cheat sheets, “developer roadmap” repositories, and decentralized best-practice guides. The design assumption leaned toward individual autonomy in workflow decisions.
China prioritized collective efficiency.
As early as 2018, Alibaba open-sourced the P3C plugin to enforce unified coding conventions across teams. By eliminating style inconsistencies and common anti-patterns, P3C dramatically reduced avoidable defects. It became an early symbol of China’s preference for organizational consistency over individual preference.
These early choices — individual ability vs. collective efficiency — laid the strategic foundation for the next decade.
2. The Pattern Era (2020–2023): General Intelligence vs. Vertical Precision
As AI-assisted coding entered the mainstream, both markets again made opposite bets.
The U.S. pursued generalized innovation.
GitHub Copilot scaled to tens of millions of developers by 2023, accelerating coding through pattern prediction across the global open-source corpus. GitHub’s research showed an average 18% productivity gain, with a significantly higher impact for tasks that involve boilerplate code. YC mentors even called Copilot an “MVP accelerator” for early-stage teams.
The underlying belief: If a tool enhances individual capability, innovation will propagate organically.
China focused on deep vertical optimization.
Chinese companies built domain-specific templates tied tightly to real business logic—such as complex “618 promotion rules + inventory deduction” workflows—allowing developers to input intent and instantly generate compliant code. Many teams reported that generic AI outputs required heavy rework, while business-bound templates delivered predictable, ready-to-ship results.
This produced a second divergence:
The U.S. bets on general-purpose intelligence spreading across industries.
China bets on execution certainty through domain-specific depth.
3. The Intent Era (2023–2025): Capital Acceleration vs. Compliance Firewalls
As natural-language development became feasible, the two markets moved even further apart.
The U.S.: Innovation accelerated by capital.
Sequoia’s State of AI 2024 highlighted a structural shift: “Developers are moving from writing code to describing behaviour.” Tools like Cursor—capable of generating multi-tenant SaaS systems from natural language—became new VC darlings. The investment thesis was simple:
Chinese enterprises reinforced governance frameworks to manage uncertainty in AI-generated code. Alibaba, Huawei, and major financial institutions embedded code-security reviews, audit trails, and permissions controls into the development pipeline. Startups entering large enterprise supply chains reported significant compliance investment as table stakes.
Here, the divergence becomes structural』: The U.S. chases the speed threshold where innovation compounds. 『China builds a compliance framework where innovation aligns with system stability. These differing priorities reflect variations in regulatory environments, industry structures, and investment incentives.
4. The Vibe Era (2025– ): Organizational Reinvention vs. Execution Intensification
In 2025, Vibe Coding enters its fourth stage.
The U.S. path: “Small teams, larger output.”
Sub-5-person teams now ship products that previously required dozens of engineers and months of work.
The definition of “technical leverage” is being rewritten:
The unit of innovation is no longer the team, but the individual amplified by AI.
The China path: Scaling operational throughput.
Large enterprises use Vibe Coding workflows to enhance existing systems at scale.
Examples include:
Alibaba’s “Luban,” which reduces design cycles by 70%.
SHEIN’s AI-optimized supply-chain logic is improving turnover speed.
The logic:
The U.S. uses AI for new-market creation and product velocity.
China uses AI for system-level refinement and execution density.
Both strategies are rational, and both create competitive advantages.
III. Closing: The Strategic Commandment
Vibe Coding is accelerating a global shift in software development, where the U.S. focuses on universal development paradigms while China emphasizes domain-specific precision and governance. These differences stem from structural market conditions rather than cultural characterization.
A classical strategic principle applies here:
Sun Tzu’s The Art of War states:
“势者，因利而制权。” In modern business terms: “True leverage is not inherent; it is manufactured by recognizing and exploiting current market advantages.”
