Event Report: Building a Socially Minded Business

With more than 85,000,000 people living with some form of a disability in China, only 9,000,000 of these individuals are “working.” Therefore, we decided to focus this month’s evening forum on the opportunities to build a socially minded business to create solutions to problems related to the challenges and stigmas that this segment of the population faces. Believing in the power of entrepreneu…

Read More

Event Report: Industry 4.0: AI and the Supply Chain

On Tuesday, Collective Responsibility hosted its monthly Executive Luncheon focused on Industry 4.0: AI and Impacts on Supply Chain.  This invitation-only event brought together a range of business leaders who are interested in understanding how the opportunities and challenges of transitioning to an industry 4.0 economy requires them to re-calibrate their business models. Richard Brubaker, Fou…

Read More

Event Report: Industry 4.0: AI, Entrepreneurship, and Sustainability

This week, Collective Responsibility’s evening forum on AI, Entrepreneurship and Sustainability brought together young professionals and entrepreneurs who are interested in knowing more about the opportunities and challenges they face as China enters industry 4.0. Richard Brubaker, Founder and Managing Director of Collective Responsibility (CR), opened the evening by sharing the results of a su…

Read More

“Ice Boy” and China’s Left-Behind Children

Every so often, breaking news brings China’s left-behind children to the forefront of public attention. Recent reports of left-behind child orphans being adopted and trained by martial arts clubs led to public debate over the fate of rural children growing up alone, as well as the shocking finding from a survey late last year in which 11.9% of left-behind children said that their parents working a…

Read More

Worker Wellbeing: The New Factory Audit?

Supply chains are the backbone of our global economy; they deliver the goods and services we use around the world, spanning geographic, industry and cultural boundaries. As these interconnected webs of supply and demand become more complex, how they are managed has major implications for the well-being of the workers that produce those goods, as well as society and the environment at large. Con…

Read More

Is It All Over for Humans? The Future of AI and HR

The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation in society has been hailed by some as a technological revolution set to eclipse the invention of the wheel, steam engine, automobile, or even the internet in terms disrupting human society. Optimists believe that AI will allow humans to accelerate productivity, squash inefficiencies and create a world free from want. Pessimists see the ac…

Read More

Shanghai Still Appeals to Young Migrant Workers. For Now.

This latest installment in our “Hope and Opportunity” article series, and last week's piece on Rat Tribes and Ant hills, we take a look at why young migrant workers are still drawn to Shanghai. Understanding Shanghai's Young Migrant Workers Young migrant workers born in the 1980s and 1990s now make up 60% of the total migrant population in China. Compared to their parents, the younger generation…

Read More

Upcoming Events: The Future of Productivity – Shanghai Workshop & Forum

For this month’s event series on “The Future of Productivity”, we have two events in Shanghai that will look at the role of AI inside the office, and the concerns about job losses, and how companies and people will need to adapt to the future working environment and new jobs that will come about as we head not only towards Industry 4.0, but Office 4.0 in China. To help drive depth of insights i…

Read More

Ant & Rat Tribes: China Lacks Affordable Housing

When 400 migrant workers were discovered living below an upscale apartment complex in Beijing last week, it was another sign of just how high housing costs have become in China's largest cities, and the lengths that some are driven to in finding a place called home. Known as shuzu or “rat tribes” by the locals, the discovery represents an estimated 1 million people living in a warren of Cold-Wa…

Read More

Target Hackathon Makes the Connection!

Following a two-week period of desk and field research, the Target Design an APP for left-behind children hackathon was held in Shanghai last weekend. Six student teams brainstormed for 24-hours straight to design an innovative APP that transforms the way migrant worker parents communicate with their children left behind in rural China. The outputs at the end of the 24-hour deadline were some h…

Read More

Target Hackathon | Design an APP for China’s Left Behind Children

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…

Read More

Working for Next Generation | Hope & Opportunity

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…

Read More

Looking for a Change of Scene | Hope & Opportunity

A family incident brought her to Shanghai, and she hopes to find a change of scene and some distraction that can help her out of the sadness. Back at home, she owned a small convenience store, but now in Shanghai, she’s one of the millions of migrant workers bringing prosperity to the city. It is a change of scene that did not come easy, and may not have brought the better life she had hoped fo…

Read More

The Future of China’s Left-Behind Children

This latest installment in our “Hope and Opportunity” article series discusses migrant worker trends with regards to children in rural China. When thousands of political and business leaders and experts gathered to discuss major economic, political, and social issues at China's recent Two Sessions, one of the most eye-catching and debatable topics raised was the current situation and futures of…

Read More

China’s Labor Shortage: Are Its Cities Losing Their Appeal for Migrants?

This is the latest installment in our "Hope and Opportunity" article series discussing migrant worker trends in Shanghai. While the world debates the chances of robots replacing human labor and the Trump administration promotes the idea that China's "cheap labor" have stolen American jobs, on the factory floors, the conversations are quite different. Factory managers are wondering why labor poo…

Read More