On January 11-14, 2022, the "Tencent Technology for Good Innovation Week" jointly sponsored by Tencent Research Institute and Tencent Sustainable Social Value Division was held. On the last day, the Night of Science and Technology for Good was held with a roundtable dialogue entitled "The Road to Corporate Value".
Panelists:
Chen Juhong is the vice president of Tencent and the head of the Sustainable Social Value Business Unit
Lu Zhenya, President of China News Weekly and President of China Philanthropist
Zhu Hengyuan is a professor at the School of Economics and Management of Tsinghua University
Li Gang, Vice President of Tencent Research Institute (Moderator)
Li Gang: Good evening, welcome to the dialogue site of the "Road to Corporate Social Value" of the Science and Technology For Good Night. Tonight, we have the honor of inviting three heavyweight guests to discuss what kind of social role companies should play in the new era, and how to play such a role well.
The term CSR first appeared in the book "The Social Responsibility of Businessmen", written by the American Harold Bowen in 1953. At that time, American society was facing environmental problems caused by labor wage imbalances and industrial pollution.
At present, there are many enterprises actively practicing and exploring the possibility of corporate social responsibility. Tencent established the Corporate Philanthropy Foundation as early as 2007, and then launched a mutual aid platform connecting charity and philanthropy, and held charity activities such as 99 Charity Day. In 2021, Tencent established the Sustainable Social Values Division, or SSV for short.
What was the first impression of the three of you when they heard the word? Please describe it in one sentence.
Chen Juhong (Vice President of Tencent, Head of Sustainable Social Value Business Unit)
Chen Juhong: For a company like Tencent that adheres to the principle of "user-oriented, technology for good", I first of all feel a great responsibility, and promoting sustainable value innovation in society has always been a challenging and extraordinary thing for Tencent.
Lv Zhenya: Because science and technology for goodness has long been part of Tencent's genes, when Tencent proposed such a move to upgrade corporate social responsibility, I think it is an inevitable move to follow the trend. After understanding the connotation of SSV, I feel that Tencent has long jumped out of the simple work iteration upgrade, but entered a new strategy, which can be said to be a new start for Tencent.
Zhu Hengyuan: I hope that SSV, while practicing sustainable corporate social value innovation in the way of Tencent's internal organizational system, can expand its public welfare scope, combine commercial innovation and social value, and develop some common models that can be used as references. I look forward to Tencent's better implementation of its due corporate responsibility in the future.
Li Gang: The establishment of SSV has greatly improved the overall sense of honor of Tencent people, and SSV has invested 100 billion yuan to systematically explore the goodness of science and technology and help the common prosperity of society, which has caused widespread repercussions in society. What useful explorations has SSV made this year, and what is the current progress?
Chen Juhong: The Sustainable Social Value Division has made positive explorations this year in three aspects: sustainable social value development, scientific research exploration and the future development and upgrading of Tencent's public welfare platform.
First of all, Tencent's first sustainable innovation plan for social value worth 50 billion yuan talked about rural revitalization, carbon neutrality and public emergency response. In the face of such a complex and systematic project of rural revitalization, Tencent chose the angle of "talent revitalization" and tried to solve the problem of "rural revitalization" with "talent revitalization". Taking the "Cultivator Plan" that everyone knows better as an example, Tencent will cooperate with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and other social forces to explore how to enhance the ability of rural governance backbones and industrial development leaders themselves, so that they can drive the countryside to achieve industrial prosperity and common prosperity of villagers, and form a good atmosphere of mutual learning and competition among these leaders. Tencent will use its technical advantages to intervene and participate in this exploration process, and play its due role. Beyond that, areas like carbon neutrality and public emergencies are explored along a path that allows a well-architected idea and a new model of practice to run at the same time, and then see what the outcome is after a while.
Secondly, for the Tencent public welfare platform, Tencent's main goal is to open up the trust of donors and beneficiaries and all parties in the entire chain, so that they can develop independently and sustainably, and Tencent can participate in solving problems by providing technical solutions and coordinating the efforts of all parties. In this process, whether it is the innovation of technology or thinking methods, it is the focus of Tencent's attention.
Li Gang: Teacher Lui, what do you think is the difference between SSV and traditional charity?
Lv Zhenya: The biggest difference between SSV and traditional charity is that Tencent will reinterpret new ideas and strategies for charity with the blessing of its own technology and Internet attributes, and accelerate the comprehensive upgrading of the traditional charity model. At present, the digital foundation of the traditional charity industry is relatively weak, and Tencent's entry can provide it with the help of new technologies and new models, so as to digitally empower traditional charity and expand the operational efficiency and social participation and influence of the industry.
Lv Zhenya (President of China News Weekly, President of China Philanthropist)
Li Gang: Just now, from the perspective of corporate social value innovation, Ju Hong talked about some methods and ideas of Tencent SSV when exploring different fields. Teacher Zhu, what practical significance do you think is in this regard?
Zhu Hengyuan: First of all, it is a recognized fact that new digital technologies can help enterprises better fulfill their social responsibilities and promote comprehensive innovation and transformation of society. In turn, the development and progress of society can create a good market environment for enterprises, thereby helping enterprises to better develop and practice corporate social responsibility, which is a benign interaction process between the two.
Secondly, Tencent SSV's experience in helping public welfare and philanthropy technology and funds can be spread to all aspects of society, such as the application of digital technology in education. Using its own technology to actively interact with the existing social structure, in this process, short-term business value is only an accessory, while social transformation to upgrade industrial value is a long-term and continuous process.
Li Gang: General Manager Ju Hong, as a leader at the forefront of SSV, how do you think about the future of SSV? In which areas will SSV have some major breakthroughs in the future?
Chen Juhong: First of all, in the practice of SSV and social value, we need to practice it, communicate and practice our ideas more with everyone, and the future of SSV development can start from a direct social demand, and seek the greatest possibility of social value innovation in the process of mutual testing of theory and practice inside and outside the enterprise.
Second, when it comes to digital operations of nonprofits and organizations, we find that the long-term impact on society is the ultimate thinking of these nonprofits. These ultimate thinking in turn makes the public welfare institutions think a lot about the short-term impact and results, Tencent as an Internet company, in terms of input, output and computing advantages into the public welfare institutions, the use of public welfare methods to enhance social value and commercial value, which is a process of multi-party reasonable co-construction, mutual reference and interaction.
In 2022, we look forward to starting with this kindness to help public welfare and find more like-minded partners on the right path, but it is not enough to have kindness, and the matching methods and practices allow us to hear and contact the most realistic and grounded people and things from scientific research, education, agriculture and other fields, and in this process, find their most urgent social needs.
Li Gang: I feel that this is like a quiet business revolution, please ask Ju Hong, does SSV have profit pressure, necessary investment plans and other performance pressures?
Chen Juhong: Our biggest pressure and task is that after the company gave us a task, its ultimate thinking direction was right. As Teacher Zhu said before, if there is a way or method that has its own development sustainability, runs through business logic, and can realize social value, it is the best.
Lv Zhenya: My understanding is that Tencent will definitely not use a purely commercial assessment system to evaluate this department and this project, but will consider more about the sustainable social value it brings and its impact on social innovation and change. Tencent, as a trailblazer, will benefit from it, because we have to consider that its own foothold is no longer a commercial project, but a strategic thinking.
Zhu Hengyuan: Here I think that the commercial means are a means of how to promote innovation more effectively and efficiently, so in this sense, when using commercial means to evaluate the performance of the department, it will be more strategic to assess whether you have proposed an effective and useful way to solve a problem, rather than directly reflecting on the profit and return.
ZHU Hengyuan (Professor, School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University)
Li Gang: Continuous social value innovation needs a certain amount of capital and enterprise scale to support, Tencent as a relatively good business enterprise is naturally not a problem, so for some small and medium-sized enterprises with smaller scale and poor profitability, what is the significance of social value innovation to them?
Lv Zhenya: The pursuit of social value is not something to do after making a profit, but the idea of contributing to social value at the beginning of the establishment of a business is regarded as a corporate goal. For some small and medium-sized enterprises, it is not necessary to be too strict about whether their goals are ambitious and whether their coverage is extensive, but they only need to try their best in their own fields. Therefore, from this perspective, the pursuit of social value innovation will never have the problem of doing or not because of the different types, scales and profitability of enterprises.
Zhu Hengyuan: First of all, an enterprise itself has two characteristics of commercial attributes and social attributes, and in different time periods, enterprises focus on these two attributes differently.
These two different attributes in the business process of the enterprise can be seamlessly connected, the enterprise in the business stage may think about how to make a product well, how to invite more powerful employees, create higher profits and value, invisibly, these based on the consideration of business attributes of the decision will create more labor employment for the society, promote innovation in a certain field, improve people's level of life happiness, so as to achieve the social attributes of the enterprise.
Therefore, no matter how large or small an enterprise is, how much it contributes, even if it is a small restaurant, as long as it allows customers to eat well and do a good job in food safety, it can create sustainable social value while satisfying its own commercial attributes.
Chen Juhong: Teacher Zhu is very right, I think that in the process of commercial civilization, business ethics is an important part. Tencent has always adhered to the user-oriented, the value of the enterprise is from the care of the user, the gene of the enterprise to be good is derived from this.
Li Gang: It is undeniable that some problems cannot be solved by enterprises by commercial means, and for this reason, some people have proposed that some things should be left to public services or space to solve. So is there a clear line between business services and public services? Or is the line between the two actually blurred, and we can walk on both sides?
Li Gang (Vice President of Tencent Research Institute)
Chen Juhong: As I said before, in the field of public issues, business methods, technical capabilities and the original intention of goodness should be considered together, which means that in the field of social value realization, it is not possible to rely on the strength of one party alone, it needs to be assisted by multiple parties.
From my actual feelings for 8 months, this is really something that can't be done behind closed doors, no matter which party can't do behind closed doors, so it will have pain points, it will have breakpoints.
The reality is that in some fields, some enterprises may have the advantage of technology and experience, then they can act as the main force to accelerate the process of social value innovation in this field, but they are always only participants and promoters, not leaders.
Therefore, on the road to realizing social value innovation, it is necessary for multiple parties to participate in collaborative solutions, we may solve some breakpoint problems at some pain points, and other innovation participants will intervene at the right time, continue to follow up, and finally complete a social value innovation goal by multiple parties.
Lv Zhenya: From the perspective of comprehensive social governance, when maximizing the value of a public welfare project, it is bound to involve the coordinated participation of multiple forces, and these "forces" are a complex under the paradigm of comprehensive governance, and there is no such thing as any party unilaterally completing all task objectives.
In fact, the ultimate value of many public welfare projects, or the ultimate goal they want to achieve, is to gather the forces of many aspects of society to explore a thinking or method that can solve similar problems. Finally, from the level of the overall social situation, we should consider how to complete it and develop it, and this process also needs to be explored by everyone.
Therefore, it is impossible to draw a line, it is a comprehensive ecosystem governance system.
As several teachers just said, from the perspective of the industry, we will look forward to the future of the entire social environment, such as the rule of law environment, policy environment and social ideological environment can be an innovative upgrade, so as to bring fresher air and soil for the value innovation of the whole society.
Li Gang: Today's topic of our conversation ranges from the relationship and integration of new business civilization and social innovation value, to the strategic planning and practice of Tencent SSV, and then to the practice of business innovation and social value in various fields. Ask each of the three teachers to make a short summary.
Zhu Hengyuan: I hope that in the process of interacting with society and creating social value, enterprises must master a moderate rhythm and control the corresponding scope, and minimize conflicts with the existing social structure.
Lv Zhenya: Tencent uses scientific and technological innovation methods to help public welfare pursue better social values and sustainable development of society, which is a very rare original intention. From this point of view, Tencent's practice of forming a special business group to engage in this work can be described as having a long-term strategic vision, and I hope that in the future, Tencent can continue to rely on its own advantages to help the digital development of the field of charity and public welfare, so as to truly realize the beautiful vision of the whole society to do public welfare together, which is my most sincere expectation.
Chen Juhong: After listening to the speeches of the two of you, my heart was greatly encouraged. I would like to say three words: good, upward, forward.
"Towards goodness" is because when we create sustainable development value for society, we need a lot of like-minded and have the same original intentions to solve the problem together, and I hope that more friends will join us.
"Upward" is because this continuous innovation of the whole society has no precedent before, which requires us to actively explore the situation and promote social progress based on co-creation with other small partners. A long wait is bound to wait for the arrival of flowers, and waiting for the flowers to bloom is an upward process.
"Forward" means that in the long-term process of achieving endgame thinking, we will inevitably encounter such and such problems, and it is reasonable that people may continue to join and withdraw. We hope that more businesses or individuals can stick with us and wait for the wonderful moment when the flowers bloom.