Silicon Valley immersion program

What makes an immersion useful

The visits matter less than what surrounds them. Three things decide whether anything survives the return flight:

• A question defined before departure. Not "see how they innovate", but a specific problem your leadership team is stuck on. Everything on site gets filtered through it.
• Working sessions, not presentations. Sitting through a company pitch teaches very little. Discussing a decision your hosts got wrong teaches a great deal.
• Structured debriefs, daily. The value is created in the room at the end of the day, when the group turns what it saw into something applicable at home.

How the programme runs

A typical week combines company visits in the Bay Area, working sessions with practitioners, and a facilitated debrief each evening. We work with the network Marmignon Brothers has built there over the years, including contacts developed alongside Grégory Renard (AI & Future of Work) and Joel Barbier (Digital Transformation), and around teams at Microsoft and Salesforce.

Group size stays deliberately small. Beyond a dozen participants, the working sessions turn into lectures and the debriefs stop working.

Before and after

The immersion itself is the visible part. Two less visible parts do much of the work.

Before: a preparation session frames the question the group is travelling with, and — where relevant — brings everyone's working English up to the level the week demands. There is little point flying a leadership team across the Atlantic if half of them will stay silent in the room.

After: a structured return session converts the notes into decisions with owners and dates. This is where most programmes stop and ours does not.

Who it is for

Executive committees, innovation and transformation leads, and management teams facing a strategic shift — a new market, an AI transition, a change of business model. It suits organisations that already know their question and want to test it against people who have answered a similar one.

It is a poor fit for a general-purpose motivational trip. We would rather say so at the scoping stage than afterwards.

Why Marmignon Brothers

The company was founded by Corentin and Clotaire Marmignon and built its reputation on a simple idea: people learn what holds their attention. That principle produced e-dutainment, a language method based on films and series, and it shapes how we run an immersion — participation over presentation.

Our work has been covered by Europe 1, Forbes France, M6 and RTL2. More than 50,000 learners have gone through our programmes over the past decade. Marmignon Brothers is Qualiopi-certified — the French national quality standard for training providers, which requires a full audit of our processes every three years.

Planning a programme

Dates, group size and the question you want to travel with are the three things worth settling first. Talk to us and we will build the week around them.

A typical week

Programmes are built to order, but the rhythm is consistent.

• Day one — arrival, and a working session that restates the group's question now that everyone is in the room. It almost always shifts slightly from what was written in Paris.
• Days two to four — company visits and working sessions, two per day at most. Fewer, longer conversations beat a packed itinerary; the schedule is deliberately not full.
• Each evening — a facilitated debrief. What did we see, what contradicts our assumptions, what would it cost us to try this.
• Day five — synthesis. The group leaves with a written set of decisions, not a set of impressions.

Practical matters

We handle the programme design, the introductions and the facilitation. Flights and accommodation are usually booked by your own travel function, which is simpler and cheaper than routing them through us; we advise on location and timing so the group is not spending two hours a day in traffic.

The best windows are generally spring and autumn. Major industry events can be an asset or a distraction depending on your question — we will tell you which.

Common questions

How many people should come?

Between six and twelve. Below six the discussion narrows; above twelve the working sessions become presentations.

What level of English is required?

Enough to participate, not to perform. Where a group needs it, we run preparation sessions beforehand focused on the specific situations of the week — asking a challenging question, disagreeing politely, following a fast discussion.

Can the programme be combined with a client visit?

Yes, and it often should be. Anchoring the week around a real commercial or partnership objective sharpens everything else.

What do participants take home?

A written synthesis produced by the group itself during the final session, listing decisions with owners and dates. We facilitate it; we do not write it for them, because a document nobody argued over does not get implemented.

How far in advance should we plan?

Three months is comfortable. Six weeks is feasible but restricts which companies we can secure.