After spending over two decades working between China and the UK in education and innovation, and more recently focused on the life sciences sector, I’ve started to see a quiet gap — one that affects many entrepreneurs with international ambition. This piece is a reflection on that gap, and why I believe new forms of support are needed in the AI era. By Lily Lin, Co-founder of EFEC and long-term UK–China innovation practitioner.
Why I Believe Human Intelligence Needs New Support in the AI Era
After many years working between the UK and China, and now especially in life sciences and innovation, I often feel something quite simple but hard to describe: our ambition grows faster than our environment can hold it. I don’t mean this in a negative way. It’s just a reality I see among entrepreneurs who want to do things globally—not only locally.
Recently, I came across Rose Luckin’s idea of interwoven intelligence — and it stayed with me. She talks about three kinds of human intelligence: academic, social, and meta. For me, this framework makes sense, especially when I think about entrepreneurship today in life sciences.
- Academic intelligence is not only about science or knowledge, but about understanding regulation, clinical needs, markets, and now data and AI.
- Social intelligence is about how we build trust, communicate across cultures, and work with very different systems and expectations.
- Meta-intelligence is the reflective layer — knowing how to connect ideas, judge situations, learn from others, and decide when to use AI or when not to.
In my early career, I believed these abilities would grow naturally through experience and hard work. But over time, I realised that individual effort is not enough — especially when someone wants to build across borders.
The AI era has made the gap more visible
AI is creating many new opportunities in life sciences — faster discovery, new tools, new ways to collaborate. But at the same time, it is also exposing how uneven our human development is. It is not that people are not capable. It is that the systems around us are too local, too fragmented, or too narrow to help us grow in the way the world now demands.
For example:
- A founder in Cambridge may have amazing research connections but limited exposure to large-scale clinical application.
- Someone in Shanghai may understand regulation and manufacturing but not how NHS adoption works.
- People with strong technical backgrounds may not have the reflective space to integrate AI with judgment and ethics.
These are not personal weaknesses — they are structural limits.
Intelligence doesn’t grow well in isolation
I’ve seen many talented entrepreneurs who feel “almost there” but cannot make the jump to the next stage. It’s not because of lack of skill or motivation, but because there is no bigger system helping them develop the intelligence needed to operate globally.
When we talk about “bridges” between ecosystems like the UK and China, it often sounds technical—trade missions, partnerships, agreements. But in reality, what is missing is not only market access or funding. What is missing is a learning environment where human intelligence can stretch across contexts, not just stay local.
My own work is still early and unfinished — and that’s fine
With the UK–China life sciences innovation hub and CognateUK, I am not trying to build something perfect or ready to promote. I see it more like an exploration: is it possible to create conditions where entrepreneurs can develop their academic, social, and meta-intelligence in a more global and supported way?
I don’t think we have the full answer yet. But I do believe the question is important.
A final thought
If interwoven intelligence is real — and I believe it is — then we need to stop assuming that ambition plus effort is enough. The AI era is not replacing human intelligence. It is simply showing us, more clearly, where our current systems are too small, too separate, or too slow.
For people like us, who want to operate across cultures and industries, the real challenge is this:
Where can we go to grow the kind of intelligence that global work now requires?
Until we take that question seriously, many good ideas — and good people — will continue to be limited not by their potential, but by the environments around them.