Senior executives and entrepreneurs today operate in a world being reshaped by artificial intelligence, digital transformation, geopolitical uncertainty, and rapidly changing markets. In this environment, experience and intuition remain essential, but they must be strengthened by a rigorous research mindset: the ability to ask meaningful questions, challenge assumptions, analyze evidence, and turn insight into better decisions and sustainable competitive advantage.
This is also a golden age for research and DBA study. Advanced AI tools are empowering researchers to explore ideas, review knowledge, analyze data, and communicate findings with unprecedented breadth and depth. The HKUST DBA Program fully embraces AI as a powerful enabler of rigorous and impactful research. We encourage participants to use AI thoughtfully, creatively, and ethically, while upholding academic integrity, originality, transparency, and human judgment. AI should not replace critical thinking; it should elevate it.
The HKUST DBA Program is designed for senior leaders who aspire to make meaningful contributions to business and society through practice-driven research. Participants build a solid foundation in research methodology, engage with frontier knowledge across business disciplines, develop a research proposal under faculty guidance, and conduct thesis research grounded in real organizational and industry challenges.
HKUST Business School is an ideal home for this journey. Our internationally recognized faculty bring cutting-edge research, interdisciplinary expertise, and close supervision to help DBA participants connect relevance with rigor. Our deliberately small and diverse cohort further creates a learning community where executives, entrepreneurs, and seasoned professionals learn from one another and sharpen their ideas.
We seek participants who are curious, committed, globally minded, and motivated by lifelong learning. If you are ready to embrace evidence-based inquiry, use AI responsibly, and shape the future of business through rigorous and impactful research, I warmly invite you to join the HKUST DBA journey.
Professor Yuk-fai Fong
Associate Dean of Business and Management
Professor, Department of Economics
Academic Director of HKUST DBA Program
Academic Director, HKUST EMBA Program
Director of Center for Economic Policy
