This article is from the WeChat public account: Tencent Research Institute (ID: cyberlawrc) , author: Chen Chunhua, Photo by Tyler Lastovich on Unsplash
On November 11, 2019, on the 21st anniversary of the founding of Tencent, a new mission and vision were formally announced: “User-oriented, technology-oriented”. Professor Chen Chunhua, Dean of the BiMBA School of Business at the National Development Research Institute of Peking University, is a key player in management studies in areas such as corporate culture and organizational vitality in the digital age. He is the key person in Tencent’s third cultural upgrade. In the past six months, Professor Chen has been deeply involved in Tencent’s mission vision and cultural upgrade in the process of performing organizational culture diagnosis and upgrade for Tencent.
In a recent interview, Professor Chen answered more in-depth and detailed answers to the specific changes the Internet has made to the world, human lifestyles, and how it differs from previous technological revolutions. Based on this, Professor Chen gave clear suggestions on how technology companies practice technology for good, and how to implement technology-friendly corporate culture and values into employee behavior and specific products.
Tencent Research Institute: How to evaluate the changes that Internet products and services have brought to society in the past 20 years? What do you think is the biggest achievement and the biggest problem?
Chen Chunhua: Talking about the impact and changes brought about by Internet technology, we must return to the business perspective. Our understanding of business should be cut into its value and meaning to people. Because the core value of business is to provide solutions to life problems, not just for profit or just to promote their own development. If business can’t help people’s lives get better, it doesn’t make sense.
Looking at this logic, the technology in business actually expands people’s space. In other words, people’s life becomes more convenient and more comfortable. For example, air conditioning will improve people’s living comfort. So technology itself makes living space bigger, more comfortable and more convenient. The emergence of the Internet is also developing in accordance with this logic. It is also a technology used in commerce.
What is different from previous business technologies is that Internet technology has penetrated all lifestyles. The previous technology may only be applied to a certain aspect, a certain function or a certain dimension, such as traffic. But the peculiarity of the Internet is that it directly penetrates into all aspects of our lifestyle, and it becomes a lifestyle in itself.
In the past, when we looked at technology in business, there were three dimensions of function: one was its instrumental function, one was its business model function, and the last was its lifestyle function. That Internet may be the first time to integrate three functions of technology. It is both a technology tool, a business model, and a lifestyle. This is where it is completely different from all previous technologies.
In the past 20 years of developmentWhether it was during the Internet bubble or today, in fact, the Internet is trying to solve it, or how people’s lifestyles have fundamentally changed with the help of this technology. Of course, first it starts with communication and connection.
Tencent Research Institute: Do you think that communication and connection are the starting point for the application of Internet technology to business?
Chen Chunhua: Yes, start with communication and connection. It is not to solve the function of a certain technology itself, but to solve the communication and connection between people, how to provide a more convenient, efficient, and anytime, anywhere communication method. So from the beginning of the Internet, in a sense it has been cut in from a social attribute, not a pure technical function. In these 20 years, the Internet began by providing communication channels between people, then providing communication between people and things, things and things, people and society, and then creating possibilities for people and the future. Many of the ideas we see are actually based on the exploration of the possibility of communication between people and the future. Many of the created things in the virtual world include the meaning that you are communicating with the imagination and the future world, which is quite strange.
The reason why we have to specifically discuss the impact of technology on people today, or the impact of technology on ethics, is because it has become a member of humankind. In the past, technology may have been a subsidiary, but this time it was independent, because it has full power to play an independent role in human life. At this time, it involves ethical standards and behavioral constraints, so it is necessary to discuss how much technology will affect people’s lives and survival methods.
Tencent Research Institute: What do you think is the most fundamental change in the way people live in today’s digital technology represented by the Internet?
Chen Chunhua: All the behaviors we see today can be called “digital behaviors”. In daily research, we can clearly define the functions of all resource elements, but it is the person who plays the role of value in this process. For example, the productivity factor was equivalent to “land” in the early days, and then it was considered as “natural resources”, “funds”, etc. with the extension of expansion, and then regarded as “technical equipment”. After the emergence of digital technology represented by the Internet, you find that digital technology has also become a factor of productivity, but it is different from all other factors of productivity-the relationship between digital technology and people is not limited to close contact but also extends to depth Interaction level.
About the impact of productivity factors on people ’s lifestyle, I think it can be read from the economist Peter Drucker (Peter F. Drucker) < / span> three times in human historyThe review of major technological revolutions gives some answers. Drucker pointed out that since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, all technological changes have been based on human use of knowledge. In the first revolution, human beings applied knowledge to production tools, which promoted the birth of the publishing industry and the prosperity of the industrial revolution. In other words, typography replaced the model of knowledge transfer by word of mouth, allowing more people to obtain reproducible knowledge through publications. This is what we call “knowledge applied to production tools” and it has brought about a “productive revolution”. In the second revolution, human beings applied knowledge to operational processes, which reflected a sense of promoting efficiency through the division of labor. Therefore, we called it the “efficiency revolution.” The third revolution is the application of knowledge to knowledge itself, that is, the “management revolution.” When human beings applied knowledge to production tools, work processes and knowledge at the same time, they created huge output from the 19th century to the 20th century. This is the role of knowledge. By the fourth stage, after the Internet stage, the first three stages can be declared over. At this stage, humans actually used knowledge to innovate the entire system, so I call this revolution the “knowledge revolution.”
So what is the most terrible consequence of the knowledge revolution? The first three revolutions were machine revolutions, and no adjustment was made to the identity and status of people. But the fourth knowledge revolution, while turning data into factors of productivity, also impacted the inherent social structure of humankind. The “human-computer interaction” in the previous three revolutions has all shown good purposes to assist human beings in improving their lifestyles. For example, railway means convenient transportation, and computers means improving work efficiency. Sex, it seems to be a kind of existence that can replace human beings, for example, all quantifiable parts of life or work procedures can be done by machines.
In this revolution that highlights “intelligence,” I think the most fundamental change is the change in human-machine relationships, from helping people to replacing them. Therefore, we can also call it “man-machine collaboration”. When technology is going to participate in the construction of this society, that is, when I just said that knowledge is applied to the innovation of the entire system, we have no way to avoid its constraints and values. For the companies that provide the underlying technology, they may have to clearly state their value orientation and values, that is, they must answer: what is the role of technology.
Tencent Research Institute: So what is a better “human-machine collaboration” relationship?
Chen Chunhua: No matter how technology changes, we must first accept that technology and people are inter-subjects in the Internet stage, because technology is already a kind of existence that can make a huge change in people ’s lifestyles. However, people have subjective initiative. No matter how much the Internet environment affects us, we cannot directly give life autonomy to technology, and of course we cannotGo the other way and turn a blind eye to technological change. People must fully realize their own subjective initiative, and this consciousness will determine the final result we want to achieve in this interaction between human and machine.
Mei Liang and I published an article on human-computer relations in the Harvard Business Review in 2019, mentioning four cases: the first case is “mutual benefit and symbiosis”, which is manifested as intelligent technology in itself At the same time of development, it also promotes the progress of human society; the second is “symbiotic favoritism”, that is, one side develops unilaterally, and the other does not cause any positive or negative changes; the third is “bias symbiosis” That is, one side develops and the other side suffers; the fourth situation is the most terrible, it is called “swallowing substitution”. The killer machine is a typical example of engulfing substitution, but it is not entirely negative, such as driverless technology. These four situations basically require a scientific and technological ethics, that is, there must be a common constraint on the development of machines, and we humans can play a great role in formulating this constraint.
Tencent Research Institute: Will the four human-computer relationships you mentioned have different results due to different populations? For example, will some technical elites invent and set up an algorithm or product to control or influence another group of people?
Chen Chunhua: Assuming that the carrier of this small group of people is a company, we can think about why this company lives in this world? From the perspective of economic transaction theory, if all productivity factors are given to a company, the output of this company will be huge, and it will definitely survive. But from the perspective of the enterprise, a company that can survive the fierce market competition should do four things: first, provide good products or services; second, provide employment; third, make profits; finally, achieve Values expected by society. I use these four dimensions to measure whether an enterprise can achieve sustainable development. In short, no matter how large the company is or how many employees it has, the ultimate mission to accomplish is to realize the value that society expects. When a company violates social expectations, the public will use its own choice to give a judgement. In domestic technology companies, there are already cases in this regard.
Tencent Research Institute: So for a large Internet company, how to define what the society expects from it?
Chen Chunhua: First of all, when a technology becomes a basic tool in our lives, we will expect everyone to pay for the right to use this tool at a small cost. Taking the question of “whether we charge for providing WeChat services” as an example, from a purely commercial perspective, facing hundreds of millions of users, if the company chooses to charge, it will quickly gain some profits. But because this product has become a very important part of people’s lives, then the concept of “charging” is not possible in my opinion.accept. This is the same principle as “meters cannot be too expensive”. For the basic tools that people use in our lives, we can’t charge, or can only charge a very small fee-this is probably what everyone expects of it.
In short, the symbiotic relationship depends on this value orientation. If a company charges a basic life tool that violates social expectations, it will not only lose users, but the company will lose its existence. In addition, due to the “transparency” of the data itself, we will also expect companies to focus on data privacy and data security issues.
Tencent Research Institute: Do you think there is an inevitable correlation between company size and social value practices?
Chen Chunhua: A company’s huge influence does not depend on its size, but on whether it can promote the progress of the whole society and improve people’s lifestyle. In other words, value is the foundation of a business. A look at the history of global business development reveals that companies that have existed for hundreds of years do not win by scale. When a company blindly pursues expansion, it is easy to ignore the construction of cultural value. In contrast, those companies that practice social values with a low profile will continue to operate for a longer period of time. Because it is focused on practicing this value, it happens to be a small number of users who like it. Then these users will become loyal friends and move forward with the enterprise.
Tencent Research Institute: For large Internet companies, how can corporate culture be implemented into specific products and services?
Chen Chunhua: Whether it’s Apple, Microsoft, or Tencent, Ali, when we evaluate these companies, they will eventually fall into the level of values. Corporate culture is not fictional, it focuses on employee behavior and product characteristics. For example, in terms of product characteristics, Apple always adheres to the cultural values of simplicity, comfort, beauty, and leadership. Earlier, Apple had difficulty operating due to its system being too closed, but it still insisted on a closed system to implement its concise and leading values. The difference is that it began to open the system to partners.
The core value of Microsoft’s culture is “I want to show people a window into the world”. Before that, Microsoft first provided an object for viewing the world, so it led to “Everyone should have computer”. However, Microsoft actually provides only an operating system, and the matching hardware comes from other companies. In other words, Microsoft is empowering everyone, so it began to convey the meaning of the Microsoft system to the public very early. Therefore, when it designs products in this direction, if you can let everyone feel the energy, then this is the corporate culture.
As far as domestic products are concerned, the earliest one that made me feel Tencent’s “technology for good” was actually Tencent 99 public welfare projects. Before the emergence of Internet public welfare platforms, public welfare actions were mainly practiced by rich people, and ordinary people were more difficult to participate in public welfare. However, the goodness of the human heart is not in the amount of donations, but in a spirit of giving. With Internet technology and public welfare platforms, the threshold for ordinary people to participate in public welfare has been greatly reduced. Every ordinary person can use this platform to solve many problems that he could not solve before.
Let’s take game products as an example. What kind of cultural philosophy should we follow when designing? Is it to let users learn to get along with this world through games, and then build a better connection with this world? Or let them have the tendency to be violent, or to live in the virtual world and reject the real world. Looking further, in fact, many of our studies in the future will be promoted by means of games. Can we start from now and invest energy in this direction to develop the content of learning in many primary and secondary schools by gamification to promote their learning. In fact, these are some of the directions for how technology is good in products. The true manifestation of corporate culture will end up in two places, one is the product and the other is the employee.
Tencent Research Institute: For a company with a large number of employees, how to prevent the dilution and variation of corporate culture?
Chen Chunhua: It requires an enterprise to understand its structure and culture in an all-round way. This includes all aspects of product design and system design. Corporate culture needs to penetrate into the behavior of each employee, and needs to be passed on to the daily work of employees. For companies with large employees, it is important to prevent the dilution and variation of corporate culture.
To do this, first of all, the company’s values need to be clear. What to advocate and what to oppose need to be clear-cut. Secondly, corporate culture must be reflected in the system and in the rules. Therefore, the company needs to fully reflect the corporate culture and the core values of the company in the construction of the system and the establishment of the rules. behavior. Next, there needs to be a good example that can be established. Culture needs to be passed on and manifested positively. By giving employees the power of example, employees have a real direction. This is what your values are and what your culture is when you are making decisions. In fact, it is very clear and not at all.
Tencent Research Institute: Will the corporate culture and values of “technology for good” conflict with the fierce competition in the industry? Do you think “science and technology for good” can become the new competitiveness of the technology industry?
Chen Chunhua: There is no conflict. The two are accompanied by each other. They are not opposites at all. If companies are not competitive, culture loses the ground for discussion;If an enterprise does not have a good culture, it loses an important competitiveness. Of course, we might say that inspiring good is more difficult than inspiring evil. But I think that companies are like people. If they want to develop and progress, they must first learn to do something difficult.
(The above content is a simplified version of [Technology for Goodness], please look forward to the “Technology for Goodness White Paper 2020”]