Huang Wenfeng is the Project Director of Shenzhen Enpai Public Welfare Organization Development Center. After many years of experience working in foreign companies and media, he finally chose the path of public welfare. He went to Germany to study non-profit organization management, and joined NPI in 2009. He is responsible for the operation of Shenzhen EnPai Public Welfare Organization Development Center, and has operated the Public Welfare Organization Incubator, the China Shenzhen Public Welfare Project Exchange and Exhibition, and other large-scale projects.

Social innovation is now receiving more and more attention, both in government and in academia.

The concept of "social innovation" was first proposed by Drucker, the master of management, in 1986, which is only 25 years ago, but the world has paid a lot of attention to this field in the past 25 years, and there are also many practices. After Barack Obama became President of the United States, he set up the Office of Social Innovation in the White House.

Social innovation is a new idea that produces results in meeting social goals, or refers to creative actions and services driven by the goal of meeting social needs and engaged in and diffused primarily by organizations with a predominantly social purpose, which is what Jeff Morgan, chairman of the Young Foundation in the United Kingdom, said. Domestic scholar He Zengke, on the other hand, proposes that social innovation is a productive and creative activity initiated and implemented by social actors such as citizens and civil society organizations that take the lead in the social field to solve social problems and meet social needs. In this concept, it can be seen more clearly that we say that social innovation is the main body of citizens or civil society organizations, it is in the social field to solve some social problems, or to meet some social needs, is such a creative activity.

Over the years, we have been talking about "society", and there are many different definitions of the concept, which can be relative to nature, or relative to the market economy, and our government has been advocating for a harmonious society, and the civil society has been promoting the civil society, etc. But when we talk about society, we are talking about the society from the point of view of nature, and the society from the point of view of civil society. But the society we are talking about is understood in the context of the relationship between government, market and society. And "innovation" also has many different meanings, or there are many synonyms, such as innovation and invention, creation, and innovation and improvement, reform, etc. There are subtle differences, but we can understand what is innovation, what is social innovation.

For example, when we talk about invention, it should be more about coming up with new knowledge, new ideas, new methods, and "innovation" may also include the action of putting these new ideas and new methods into practice. When we talk about innovation, social innovation, we mean that there is a process for this kind of behavior, which will produce certain results. Invention is a continuation, reform and improvement is the act of modifying and perfecting what already exists, and innovation is the act of seeking new solutions. With enterprise innovation, business innovation to understand may be more convenient, we talk about social innovation and business innovation, government innovation, in fact, the three are very often combined with each other, very often the first social innovation, prompting the government to do some government innovation, but also some because of the government's innovation, led to a lot of social innovation and so on.

What is the relationship between social innovation and social reform and social revolution? Social reform is usually a government-initiated action to refine and improve the existing social system, not a repudiation of the old, whereas social revolution is usually a force outside the government taking on the old social system, usually subversive and destructive, and may not necessarily build a new social system out of it. The social innovation that we are promoting now is more peaceful and rational, and it is promoted by a variety of actors, and the process of social innovation will include many different values.

Diverse Subjects of Social Innovation

Speaking of the subjects of social innovation, it may be first of all that there are some social entrepreneurs. Social entrepreneur is also a new word, civil spiritual leaders, social activists and so on, they are also the main body of social innovation. For example, social movements, environmental protection, feminism, the black movement, etc., all through social activists to call attention to a certain social issue. The new situation is that some entrepreneurs integrate a lot of social resources to solve social problems, we say they are social entrepreneurs.

For example, Mr. Zheng Weining from Shenzhen, who is a patient himself and is usually in a wheelchair, has started a charitable foundation, four social organizations, and the Handicapped Friends Group, which now employs more than 1,000 people with disabilities, and does high-end IT, software development, and animation. In general, the usual thinking is that the employment of Canyou may be more of the so-called low-end industries, such as welfare factories, simple processing industry, or massage parlors, etc., but Mr. Zheng Weining has tapped into the innate strengths of many Canyou. The biggest problem in the software industry is the brain drain, it's hard to train a software developer, he left the company, but the disabled let him go he may not be willing to go, because the successful model of Canyou Group, is the disabled management of the disabled, Canyou in this company to stay very comfortable, no discrimination, no worries about their lives, career also have a sense of honor and sense of achievement. Therefore, there are so many disabled employees in Canyou Group, none of them left the company, and this kind of talent accumulation is not to be missed. The success of such an enterprise is able to create a lot of social wealth, and all the money and earned profits are not given to Zheng Weining himself, but he set up the Zheng Weining Charitable Foundation, and he donates all the money to the foundation, and at the same time, Mr. Zheng Weining also registered a couple of private non-business non-profit organizations, so as to let the money back into the community.

But the main body of social innovation should be more social organizations than social entrepreneurs. There are a lot of concepts that need to be distinguished between social organizations in China, such as civic organizations, NGOs, non-profit organizations, public interest organizations and so on, but I won't explain them in detail here. In my opinion, social organizations are the most crucial subjects of social innovation, because as organizations, they have continuity and they can be sustainable.

There have been a large number of innovative social organizations in China in the past few years, such as the Shanghai I-Pai Community Welfare Image Development Center. In their community, there used to be interest groups, and the street office often organized activities to care for widows and orphans, etc. However, these young people did not do the traditional work of helping the elderly, and they thought of this through the means of images, at first, they were shot by themselves, and then the community was allowed to shoot by themselves, and then it was used as an exhibition after shooting, and then everyone came together to discuss it. Residents of the community together to find interesting things in the community, record it, and then share it together, this process will have a lot of civic participation, can build more inclusive, enhance the new understanding of the community, and ultimately achieve the purpose of community integration, promote the cultural development of the community, which is the same new ways and means to solve the existing social problems, such as human indifference to the community, the poor neighborly relations and so on.

In fact, social innovation is all-encompassing, including scientific research, culture and education, health care, disaster relief, construction of public welfare facilities, poverty alleviation, environmental protection, community services, and advocacy for the rights of disadvantaged groups. Here I will talk about another case, fair trade.

There are also good cases in cities. For example, Shanghai Pudong Hand in Hand Life Care Development Center. His founder, Wang Weiping, used to be an entrepreneur, opened several companies, ran to the disaster area to provide relief during the 5-12 earthquake, and experienced life and death directly, including several people died in his arms. He was thinking about how to pay attention to the issue of life and death, in fact, this is a taboo issue in China, but no one can avoid this issue. As a matter of fact, we can also see that many people are in great pain and fear when they are dying, and they are actually the ones who need our help the most. Their families, and even the nurses and doctors who take care of these patients in the hospitals are under a lot of pressure. When he went back, he slowly set up the organization, mainly for patients in advanced stages. What these advanced patients need most is not to be subjected to physical torture; cancer patients may be in great pain when they reach advanced stages, and various ways can be used to alleviate their physical pain, but the most important thing is to ease their minds, so that they can leave in peace and have no fear of death. There is a great social need for this, and they have seen this social need and have come up with many more ways to help them.

In the process of doing this, they found that there were family members of patients who were still grieving and brooding a year or two after the patient died. These family members also needed stress reduction and grief counseling. Slowly they found that health care workers also have such a need, to the point that now the Shanghai Municipal Civil Affairs Bureau procurement of their services, so that they go to the Shanghai Cancer Hospital, to help those people, the government paid for them to do these things.

It just started with one person, and then it grew into an organization that provided these services, and those services were eventually valued by the government, and the government procured their services, and it created a virtuous development. Their model can certainly be replicated in other places. At first, it was done in hospitals, but now it is slowly expanding into the community. In fact, there are many patients to advanced stages, the hospital is not admitted, beds are too tight, the doctor judged not to be able to go home, back home then the community will have some services? These are in the discovery of such social problems or needs, into the inside to find creative solutions.

Value Principles for Social Innovation

Further, social innovation actually contains many value principles, such as cooperation, social innovation involves a wide range of fields, and the same field in solving social problems requires multiple interventions, and almost all of them need to be done in a multi-party cooperation way.

Then there is participation, and the women in the villages, as mentioned earlier, they have to participate and decide for themselves. The women in the villages were helped and slowly developed, and then I remember it was during the earthquake in Haiti, and the women that were helped by that fair trade organization donated 10 dollars each to donate to those in need. They went from being the helpers to the helpers, and it was because they had such a participation, and they had such a heightened awareness, that they thought, "I want to be a part of this," and the sense of citizenship was slowly developed in this process.

Social Innovation Nurturing

There's a lot that can be done by all parties if we want to promote social innovation and nurture it. The government, for example, has a lot to offer in at least four areas, first as an advocate, then as a facilitator, funder, and regulator. For example, the first government-purchased services in Shanghai were community services, and then more and more, and in Shenzhen there are some services purchased through the Community Chest, and there are also many social workers who are funded by financial allocations. These are all services purchased by the government. In fact, the government also has to play the role of regulator, the whole industry can develop healthily, and promote the standardized operation of public welfare organizations.

And the company itself has done a lot of corporate innovation, which can promote social innovation, such as Intel's public interest core world project, which is to use IT technology to promote the development of grassroots organizations. Enterprises have corporate social responsibility, in fact, a lot of things the idea is not complicated, and the operation is also very easy. I have talked about foreign examples here, Oxfam and Marks & Spencer, people who donate unused clothes to Oxfam can get a shopping coupon, more than 1.5 million Marks & Spencer customers participate in it, more than 5 million pieces, 2,500 tons of unused clothes are saved from being discarded, and Oxfam has successfully financed more than 3 million pounds through the project. Social innovation doesn't have to be an amazing idea, it's about being able to implement it when you have one. Social innovation must be a process that has a good outcome at the same time.

Foundations are also very important, they provide funding, and there is a lot of advanced experience that can contribute. But unfortunately, our foundations are now more of an operational type. Foundation can be divided into two categories, one is the funding type, the foundation does not directly operate the project, is the funding of public welfare organizations to do, I give money to public welfare organizations, you to do these projects. There are also operational foundations that do some projects on their own, such as the Love Parcel made by the Poverty Alleviation Foundation, which does some things directly, but it also cooperates with some NGOs. We hope that there will be more grant-making foundations, which can provide a lot of resources needed for the development of grassroots organizations.

What is particularly needed in this area of social innovation is also the power of the academia and the media, which has a very strong power to do all this dissemination, including being able to advocate for it, including being able to sit here today and share with you about social innovation, which is also a very good example. Social innovation, a process, and a result