In this episode of #AsktheCollective, I answer questions from university students about following their sustainable dreams, design, and waste. As always, we hope you find these questions and answers useful, gain some new insights, and possibly help catalyze you to take your next step! #Timestamps 00:34 - I want to get into sustainable design, but my professors say that is impractical a…
In this episode of AsktheCollective, we answer two questions from one of our first interns, about innovation, developing leadership mindsets, empowered millennials, and the role of MNCs in developing Chinese talent. As always, we hope you find these questions and answers useful, gain some new insights, and possibly help catalyse you to take your next step, and if they do, please remember to Sub…
Following on from our Beijing session last week, on May 23rd we hosted 25 communications, PR, and sustainability professionals in Shanghai to a workshop titled Telling Your Sustainability Story to help them better understand and anticipate how to better build social capital with their stakeholders. The session was led by presentations from PT Black, Senior Director of Brand Experience and Plannin…
When speaking to firms about starting to develop their sustainability strategy, we push firms to start with having a much deeper understanding of the challenges that their customer, communities, and wider stakeholders face. The recent Starbucks announcement launching the “Starbucks China Parent Care Program,” which will provide insurance for the elder parents up to 10,000 employees, for us is a…
Last Saturday, we kicked off the first phase of our upcoming Target hackathon this June 2-3 where five student teams from leading Chinese, and one from the US, will spend 24 hours working to design an APP that will help migrant worker parents to stay better connected to their left-behind children. These training sessions act to engage the students in the challenge and to get them thinking more…
In this episode of AskTheCollective, we answered a question about the role of SME in China's circular economy, how they can play a part in the circular economy and the opportunities that present to them. As always, we hope you find these questions and answers useful, possibly gain some new insights, and feel compelled or inspired to ask questions of your own! Enjoy Episode 011 below, check out…
While firms are successfully developing sustainability initiatives in China, the "telling of their sustainability story", which is the communication of these initiatives – whether internally or externally – is often overlooked. And yet these stories can lead to a culture of volunteerism, encourage innovation, build a brand, and drive market share. The purpose of the May 18th executive workshop…
On 5-6 May 2017 , Vincci Group launched "The Educational Hub of Tomorrow" hackathon in Chengdu. Within 24 hours, six student teams from Sichuan University, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Southwest Jiaotong University, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu University of Technology and Chengdu University successfully completed the following challenge and presented thei…
Social enterprises can face a tough task when trying to build their business and sell a vision and values to companies. While around the world attitudes are changing, in China such business models have experienced slower uptake. At a recent workshop hosted by Green Initiatives, we engaged a group of MBA students from Suffolk University on the topic of social enterprises and how they see the indust…
In the process leading to the 2016 Foreign NGO and 2016 China Charity laws, a lot of the articles were focused on the macro issues of what this meant for the development of civil society in China. On the ground though, the questions were more practical, with the most recent being focused on donating money to China as a foreign foundation. In part, this was due to the language of both laws lacki…
Last Saturday, Vincci Group and Collective Responsibility jointly held a training session in Chengdu for the upcoming real estate hackathon, where students design “The Educational Hub of Tomorrow”. Together with their mentors, six student teams from Sichuan University, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Southwest Jiaotong University, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu…
We are excited to announce our next hackathon, hosted by Target Corporation on June 2-3 in Shanghai, will bring student teams will work with executives from leading technology and design communities to create a mobile app that helps connect migrant workers parents and their left-behind children. Of the 277 million rural laborers who migrate hundreds of miles away from home to China’s cities in…
This video is of our August 4, 2017 presentation at the Asia Value Advisors Sustainability Trends and the Role of Social Entrepreneurship in Asia event in Hong Kong. In it, I speak about the environmental, social, and economic challenges that will be faced by the region over the next 25 years, and the opportunities for (social) entrepreneurs to build businesses built on solving these challenge…
As you may have noticed by now, we at Collective Responsibility have a special place in our hearts for migrants. Be it through our reports, blog posts, or profiles, we are devoted to understanding this population of people in large part because “they” are the mega trend that will test the limits of our systems and it is “they” that we need to be planning for when we look at how cities are built, f…
For our regular readers, you will know that we have been spending last several months looking deep into how waste is managed in China, with a specific focus on how recycled waste is collected, sorted, and processed in Shanghai. This is driven in part by the belief that Shanghai has, and will, serve as a model for city development in China going forward. It is a city that not only has experience…
