I think we're all aware that the world today is full of problems. We've been hearing them today and yesterday and every day for decades. Serious problems, big problems, pressing problems. Poor nutrition, access to water, climate change, deforestation, lack of skills, insecurity, not enough food, not enough healthcare, pollution. There's problem after problem, and I think what really separates this time from any time I can remember in my brief time on Earth is the awareness of these problems. We're all very aware.
我想大家都意識到 現在世界上充滿了各種問題。 我們聽到這些問題, 不論是今天還是昨天, 日復一日,已長達數十年。 嚴重的問題、大問題、急迫的問題。 營養不良、水源缺乏、 氣候變遷、森林砍伐、 技能匱乏、治安不好、食物短缺、 醫療照護不足和環境污染。 接二連三的問題, 我認為真正能突顯此時此刻 和我有記憶以來的其它日子不同的是 人們意識到這些問題, 我們都很清楚地意識到這些事。
Why are we having so much trouble dealing with these problems? That's the question I've been struggling with, coming from my very different perspective. I'm not a social problem guy. I'm a guy that works with business, helps business make money. God forbid. So why are we having so many problems with these social problems, and really is there any role for business, and if so, what is that role? I think that in order to address that question, we have to step back and think about how we've understood and pondered both the problems and the solutions to these great social challenges that we face.
那麼為什麼我們處理這些問題 會有那麼多麻煩? 這是一直以來,我嘗試用自己的不同角度 去思考解決的問題。 我不是那種解決社會問題的人, 我是和企業合作的人, 幫企業賺錢。 老天啊。 那麼為什麼我們在社會中 有這麼多問題呢? 企業可擔任什麼角色嗎? 可以的話那角色是什麼? 我認為要解決這個問題, 我們應該先往後退一步,並思考 如何了解與衡量 我們所面臨的重大社會挑戰 所帶來的問題和解決辦法。
Now, I think many have seen business as the problem, or at least one of the problems, in many of the social challenges we face. You know, think of the fast food industry, the drug industry, the banking industry. You know, this is a low point in the respect for business. Business is not seen as the solution. It's seen as the problem now, for most people. And rightly so, in many cases. There's a lot of bad actors out there that have done the wrong thing, that actually have made the problem worse. So this perspective is perhaps justified.
我想,現今有許多人把企業 視為問題,或者說至少是 我們所面臨的社會挑戰中的問題之一。 你想想速食業、 藥品業和銀行業。 你知道,社會上普遍對 企業毫無敬意可言。 企業並不被視為解決方式, 對大部分人來說,企業是問題所在, 而且在許多案例中確實如此。 外面有很多糟糕的企業, 做出許多錯誤決定, 讓問題變得更嚴重。 因此這個觀點也許情有可原。
How have we tended to see the solutions to these social problems, these many issues that we face in society? Well, we've tended to see the solutions in terms of NGOs, in terms of government, in terms of philanthropy. Indeed, the kind of unique organizational entity of this age is this tremendous rise of NGOs and social organizations. This is a unique, new organizational form that we've seen grown up. Enormous innovation, enormous energy, enormous talent now has been mobilized through this structure to try to deal with all of these challenges. And many of us here are deeply involved in that.
我們傾向如何解決 這些社會問題, 這些我們在社會中所面對的眾多爭議呢? 一直以來,我們傾向見到出面解決的 是非政府組織、 公部門 和慈善團體。 而確實,這類獨特的組織, 在這個年代崛起的是 大量的非政府組織 和社會組織。 這是一種獨特的、新型的組織形式, 是目前已發展的形式。 大幅度的革新、龐大的能源, 和無數有才能的人們都被動員來 進入這個體系, 嘗試接受這些挑戰。 在座有許多人也致力於此。
I'm a business school professor, but I've actually founded, I think, now, four nonprofits. Whenever I got interested and became aware of a societal problem, that was what I did, form a nonprofit. That was the way we've thought about how to deal with these issues. Even a business school professor has thought about it that way.
我是商學院的教授, 但其實我現在設立了四個非營利組織。 每當我開始關注並意識到 一項社會問題時,如同我一貫的做法, 就是成立非營利組織。 那是我們大家會想到能夠解決 這些議題的方式, 即使是商學院教授都會 往這個方向思考。
But I think at this moment, we've been at this for quite a while. We've been aware of these problems for decades. We have decades of experience with our NGOs and with our government entities, and there's an awkward reality. The awkward reality is we're not making fast enough progress. We're not winning. These problems still seem very daunting and very intractable, and any solutions we're achieving are small solutions. We're making incremental progress.
但我想在此時此刻, 我們已有很長一段時間處於這種狀態, 我們意議到這些問題已經好幾十年了, 我們有數十年的經驗, 透過我們的非政府組織和公部門來處理, 但是現實慘不忍睹。 慘不忍睹的原因是我們的 進展太慢。 我們沒能戰勝。 這些問題依舊讓人洩氣、 十分棘手, 任何我們採取的解決方式 都只能用在枝微末節上。 我們只能緩慢前進。
What's the fundamental problem we have in dealing with these social problems? If we cut all the complexity away, we have the problem of scale. We can't scale. We can make progress. We can show benefits. We can show results. We can make things better. We're helping. We're doing better. We're doing good. We can't scale. We can't make a large-scale impact on these problems. Why is that? Because we don't have the resources. And that's really clear now. And that's clearer now than it's been for decades. There's simply not enough money to deal with any of these problems at scale using the current model. There's not enough tax revenue, there's not enough philanthropic donations, to deal with these problems the way we're dealing with them now. We've got to confront that reality. And the scarcity of resources for dealing with these problems is only growing, certainly in the advanced world today, with all the fiscal problems we face.
我們在處理這些社會問題時 所面臨的根本問題是什麼呢? 如果無視於這些錯綜複雜的麻煩, 就會發現我們的問題在於規模。 我們無法擴大規模。 我們能有進展,讓你看見好處, 能夠看得見結果,讓事情好轉。 我們提供協助,做得更好、更棒。 但是我們無法擴大規模, 我們無法在這些問題上 造成大規模的影響。 為什麼會這樣? 因為我們沒有資源, 而現況一目瞭然, 現況較過往數十年更清楚。 問題只在於沒有足夠的錢 使用現今的模式 來處理現當前的任何問題。 我們沒有足夠的稅收, 沒有足夠的慈善捐款, 能提供我們用目前處理 這些問題的方式來處理它們。 我們得面對現實。 缺乏足夠的資源 來處理這些問題的情況只會越來越多, 尤其是現今的先進國家 面臨的所有財政問題。
So if it's fundamentally a resource problem, where are the resources in society? How are those resources really created, the resources we're going to need to deal with all these societal challenges? Well there, I think the answer is very clear: They're in business. All wealth is actually created by business. Business creates wealth when it meets needs at a profit. That's how all wealth is created. It's meeting needs at a profit that leads to taxes and that leads to incomes and that leads to charitable donations. That's where all the resources come from. Only business can actually create resources. Other institutions can utilize them to do important work, but only business can create them. And business creates them when it's able to meet a need at a profit. The resources are overwhelmingly generated by business. The question then is, how do we tap into this? How do we tap into this? Business generates those resources when it makes a profit. That profit is that small difference between the price and the cost it takes to produce whatever solution business has created to whatever problem they're trying to solve. But that profit is the magic. Why? Because that profit allows whatever solution we've created to be infinitely scalable. Because if we can make a profit, we can do it for 10, 100, a million, 100 million, a billion. The solution becomes self-sustaining. That's what business does when it makes a profit.
因此如果根本上是資源的問題, 那麼社會上的資源跑哪去了? 那些資源是怎麼產生的, 我們需要用那些資源來處理 這些社會挑戰? 我想答案很清楚: 資源都在企業裡, 事實上所有財富都是 靠企業創造出來的。 企業創造財富, 只要它滿足市場需求而獲利, 所有的財富都是這樣產生的。 滿足需求而獲得利潤 就能帶來稅金, 能帶來收入, 而且也能帶來慈善捐款。 這是所有資源的來源。 只有企業可以真的創造資源, 其它組織能利用資源 進行重要的工作, 但是只有企業能夠創造資源。 企業創造資源, 只要它滿足市場需求而有利可圖。 資源毫無疑問都是 由企業所創造的。 隨之而來的問題是, 我們要如何運用? 我們要如何運用? 當企業賺錢時, 就產生出那些資源。 那些利潤就是價格和 生產所需的支出之間的細微差別, 不論企業創造了什麼方式來解決 他們試圖解決的問題。 但是那樣的利潤就是魔法, 為什麼呢?因為那份利潤能讓任何 我們所創造的解決方式 變得力量無窮。 因為如果我們能獲利, 我們就能獲得十、一百、一百萬、 一億,甚至十億。 解決方式變得能夠自己自足。 當企業獲利時, 它就是這樣。
Now what does this all have to do with social problems? Well, one line of thinking is, let's take this profit and redeploy it into social problems. Business should give more. Business should be more responsible. And that's been the path that we've been on in business. But again, this path that we've been on is not getting us where we need to go.
現在我們要怎麼把它運用在 社會問題上呢? 你可以這樣思考,我們把利潤 放進社會問題中。 企業應該要付出更多, 企業應該要負擔更大的責任。 那是我們一直以來在企業中 所採取的方式。 然而同樣的,我們所採取的這個方式 並不會把我們帶到應該要去的地方。
Now, I started out as a strategy professor, and I'm still a strategy professor. I'm proud of that. But I've also, over the years, worked more and more on social issues. I've worked on healthcare, the environment, economic development, reducing poverty, and as I worked more and more in the social field, I started seeing something that had a profound impact on me and my whole life, in a way.
我以擔任策略教授起家, 至今仍是, 我以此為傲。 但是幾年來我也同樣 致力於越來越多的社會議題。 我處理健康照護、環境、 經濟發展、降低貧窮率, 當我涉足社會領域越深, 我開始看見 某樣東西以某種方式 深深地影響了我, 以及我的人生。
The conventional wisdom in economics and the view in business has historically been that actually, there's a tradeoff between social performance and economic performance. The conventional wisdom has been that business actually makes a profit by causing a social problem. The classic example is pollution. If business pollutes, it makes more money than if it tried to reduce that pollution. Reducing pollution is expensive, therefore businesses don't want to do it. It's profitable to have an unsafe working environment. It's too expensive to have a safe working environment, therefore business makes more money if they don't have a safe working environment. That's been the conventional wisdom. A lot of companies have fallen into that conventional wisdom. They resisted environmental improvement. They resisted workplace improvement. That thinking has led to, I think, much of the behavior that we have come to criticize in business, that I come to criticize in business.
經濟學傳統的思考模式, 以及在商業中的觀點都已隨著歷史 變成那樣,而事實上 社會表現和經濟表現間已取得平衡。 傳統思維認為 企業能夠獲利的原因其實是 由於它製造了社會問題, 經典的例子就是污染。 如果企業造成污染,就會賺更多的錢, 相較於降低污染的情況。 降低污染是昂貴的, 因此企業並不想這麼做。 不安全的工作環境是有利可圖的, 要有安全的工作環境成本太高, 因此企業寧可賺更多錢, 即使他們沒有安全的工作環境。 這就是傳統思維。 有許多公司都陷入這樣的傳統思維裡, 他們抗拒改善環境, 他們抗拒改善工作場所, 這樣的想法會演變成,我猜, 大部分的反應 會出現在對企業的批評, 變成了我對企業的批評。
But the more deeply I got into all these social issues, one after another, and actually, the more I tried to address them myself, personally, in a few cases, through nonprofits that I was involved with, the more I found actually that the reality is the opposite. Business does not profit from causing social problems, actually not in any fundamental sense. That's a very simplistic view. The deeper we get into these issues, the more we start to understand that actually business profits from solving from social problems. That's where the real profit comes. Let's take pollution. We've learned today that actually reducing pollution and emissions is generating profit. It saves money. It makes the business more productive and efficient. It doesn't waste resources. Having a safer working environment actually, and avoiding accidents, it makes the business more profitable, because it's a sign of good processes. Accidents are expensive and costly. Issue by issue by issue, we start to learn that actually there's no trade-off between social progress and economic efficiency in any fundamental sense. Another issue is health. I mean, what we've found is actually health of employees is something that business should treasure, because that health allows those employees to be more productive and come to work and not be absent. The deeper work, the new work, the new thinking on the interface between business and social problems is actually showing that there's a fundamental, deep synergy, particularly if you're not thinking in the very short run. In the very short run, you can sometimes fool yourself into thinking that there's fundamentally opposing goals, but in the long run, ultimately, we're learning in field after field that this is simply not true.
但是當我越深入這些社會議題, 一個接一個, 實際上,當我嘗試 親自解決更多案例, 透過我參與的非營利組織, 其實就會發現越多與事實 相反的情況。 企業的利潤 並不是從製造社會問題中獲得, 事實上完全不是這回事。 那是非常簡化的觀點。 當我越深入探究這些議題, 我就越能了解 實際上企業的利潤 是從解決社會問題中獲得。 那才是真正的利潤來源。 以污染的問題來說吧, 我們可以從當今的情況中發現,其實 減少污染源 就能獲利, 能夠省錢。 能讓企業生產更多、更有效率, 而且不會浪費資源。 其實還能有更安全的工作環境, 避免意外發生, 讓企業更容易獲利, 因為這是良好流程的證明。 發生意外要花很多錢,代價很高。 接二連三的問題讓我們開始學習, 其實並沒有所謂的平衡 存在於社會進步 和經濟效率之間, 不論是從哪個基礎觀點來看。 另一項議題是健康, 我的意思是,其實我們發現 員工的健康 應該是企業要珍惜的一項資產, 因為員工身體健康就能 更有生產力,就會來上班, 不請假。 更深入的工作、新的工作和新的思維 存在企業和社會問題之間, 事實上這顯示了有一種重要、 密切的合作, 尤其是當你並不是從短期來思考。 從短期來看,有時候你可以 騙自己 有一項重要的相反目標, 但是以長期來看,最終我們會 在不同領域中學到,這並非事實。
So how could we tap into the power of business to address the fundamental problems that we face? Imagine if we could do that, because if we could do it, we could scale. We could tap into this enormous resource pool and this organizational capacity.
因此,我們要怎麼運用 企業的力量 來解決我們當前所面臨的 根本問題? 想像也許我們可以這麼做, 因為如果可以的話, 我們就能全面運用了。 我們可以運用無盡資源, 以及這個組織的能力。
And guess what? That's happening now, finally, partly because of people like you who have raised these issues now for year after year and decade after decade. We see organizations like Dow Chemical leading the revolution away from trans fat and saturated fat with innovative new products. This is an example of Jain Irrigation. This is a company that's brought drip irrigation technology to thousands and millions of farmers, reducing substantially the use of water. We see companies like the Brazilian forestry company Fibria that's figured out how to avoid tearing down old growth forest and using eucalyptus and getting much more yield per hectare of pulp and making much more paper than you could make by cutting down those old trees. You see companies like Cisco that are training so far four million people in I.T. skills to actually, yes, be responsible, but help expand the opportunity to disseminate I.T. technology and grow the whole business. There's a fundamental opportunity for business today to impact and address these social problems, and this opportunity is the largest business opportunity we see in business.
你猜結果如何?現在終於成真了。 有一部分是因為大家,像你一樣的人 他們早已提出當前的這些問題, 日復一日,年復一年。 我們看見一些組織,像是陶氏化學 (Dow Chemical) 引領革命遠離反式脂肪和飽和脂肪, 並且開發創新產品。 這是耆那灌溉系統 (Jain Irrigation) 的例子。 這間公司引進滴灌技術 給成千上萬的農民使用, 能夠有效地節省用水。 我們看到像是巴西的 菲普利亞 (Fibria) 林業公司, 設計出避免 摧毀原始樹林、 使用桉樹和儘可能 讓每公頃生產更多的紙漿、 製作更多紙張的方式,產量遠多於 砍伐那些老樹來生產。 你可以看到像思科這樣的公司 到目前為止已經訓練了 四百萬人學習運用資訊科技, 能夠真正的負責, 並且協助擴展機會來 傳播資訊科技, 發展整個區域的商業。 現在有許多重要的機會讓企業 可以影響、解決這些社會問題, 而這個機會 是我們在商業中見到 最大的商機。
And the question is, how can we get business thinking to adapt this issue of shared value? This is what I call shared value: addressing a social issue with a business model. That's shared value. Shared value is capitalism, but it's a higher kind of capitalism. It's capitalism as it was ultimately meant to be, meeting important needs, not incrementally competing for trivial differences in product attributes and market share. Shared value is when we can create social value and economic value simultaneously. It's finding those opportunities that will unleash the greatest possibility we have to actually address these social problems because we can scale. We can address shared value at multiple levels. It's real. It's happening.
問題是,我們要怎麼讓 企業的思維改變為認同 這個共享價值 (shared value)? 我稱為共享價值的是: 用商業模式來解決社會問題。 那就是共享價值。 共享價值就是資本主義, 但那是更高層次的資本主義。 這個資本主義的終極目標是 滿足重要需求, 而非不斷地競爭 只有細微差異的產品 和市場佔有率。 共享價值即是我們能夠 同步地建立社會價值 和經濟價值。 找尋這些機會 就能釋放我們所擁有的最大機會, 來真正地解決這些社會問題, 因為我們能夠大規模運作。 我們能夠在各種層級上運用共享價值。 這是真的,也正在發生。
But in order to get this solution working, we have to now change how business sees itself, and this is thankfully underway. Businesses got trapped into the conventional wisdom that they shouldn't worry about social problems, that this was sort of something on the side, that somebody else was doing it. We're now seeing companies embrace this idea. But we also have to recognize business is not going to do this as effectively as if we have NGOs and government working in partnership with business. The new NGOs that are really moving the needle are the ones that have found these partnerships, that have found these ways to collaborate. The governments that are making the most progress are the governments that have found ways to enable shared value in business rather than see government as the only player that has to call the shots. And government has many ways in which it could impact the willingness and the ability of companies to compete in this way.
但是為了讓這個解決方式實現, 我們必須讓企業改變看待自身的方式, 讓人欣慰的是這件事正在發生。 企業過去陷於傳統思維, 認為他們不該操心社會問題, 就像某些東西放在一旁, 別人會去做。 現在,我們可以見到許多公司 接受這個想法。 但是我們也必須承認企業 不會投入太多的資源, 如同非政府組織或是公部門 和企業建立夥伴關係那樣積極。 新興非政府組織中真正造成重大影響的, 就是那些已發起了這種夥伴關係, 找到了這種合作形式的組織。 各級政府中進展最快的 就是那些已找到方法 促使企業採納共享價值, 而非只是政府部門單打獨鬥, 孤軍奮戰。 政府有許多方式能影響 公司的意願和能力, 讓它們用這個方式完成目標。
I think if we can get business seeing itself differently, and if we can get others seeing business differently, we can change the world. I know it. I'm seeing it. I'm feeling it. Young people, I think, my Harvard Business School students, are getting it. If we can break down this sort of divide, this unease, this tension, this sense that we're not fundamentally collaborating here in driving these social problems, we can break this down, and we finally, I think, can have solutions.
我認為如果我們可以 讓企業用不同的方式看自己, 如果我們可以讓大家 用不同的方式看企業, 我們就能改變世界。 我相信,也樂觀其成。 我感覺得到。 年輕人,我想 我在哈佛商學院就讀的學生都了解。 如果我們可以打破這道藩籬, 這種讓人不安、緊張的關係, 我們的本意並非 在此合作 來製造社會問題, 我們可以破除這個思維, 最終,我們 就能擁有解決方式。
Thank you.
謝謝!
(Applause)
(掌聲)