Visionary CVC Wang Haicheng: New Consulting Propositions in the New Era, Globalization, Localization and AI Disruption | WISE2024 Business King Conference
The environment is constantly changing, and the times are always evolving. The "Business Kings" follow the trend of the times, insist on creation, and seek new driving forces. Based on the current great transformation of the Chinese economy, the WISE2024 Business Kings Conference aims to discover the truly resilient "Business Kings" and explore the "right things" in the Chinese business wave.
From November 28 to 29, the two-day 36Kr WISE2024 Business Kings Conference was grandly held in Beijing. As an all-star event in the Chinese business field, the WISE Conference has now reached its twelfth edition, witnessing the resilience and potential of Chinese business in an ever-changing era.
2024 is a year that is somewhat ambiguous and with more changes than stability. Compared to the past decade, people's pace is slowing down, and development is becoming more rational. 2024 is also a year to seek new economic momentum, and the new industrial changes have put forward higher requirements for the adaptability of each subject. This year's WISE Conference takes Hard But Right Thing as the theme. In 2024, what is the right thing has become a topic we want to discuss more.
In this digital age, the wave of globalization is reshaping the world economic landscape. In this process, the consulting industry is also facing new propositions. How to find a balance between globalization and localization? How will the rapid development of AI technology subvert the traditional consulting model?
On that day, Wang Haicheng, CEO of Vision CVC, brought a theme sharing of "New Propositions of Consulting in the New Era: Globalization, Localization and AI Disruption".
Wang Haicheng, CEO of Vision CVC
The following is the speech content, edited and sorted out by 36Kr:
Wang Haicheng: Hello everyone! I am Wang Haicheng, CEO of Vision CVC. Today, I want to talk to you about a somewhat different topic. I want to discuss the consulting industry, especially the management consulting industry. As a consultant, we don't often talk about our industry in the spotlight. We mostly help clients do difficult but right things, so that our clients can share on the stage how they achieve these things and their successful experiences.
But why do I want to talk about the management consulting industry today? Because we have seen that now, when we enter the era of artificial intelligence, it has brought new propositions and new opportunities to such a traditional, yet not so traditional industry as management consulting.
So today, I want to talk about the management consulting industry. This is a traditional industry. Although many people do not agree, I want to first talk about the history of the management consulting industry to see if this industry is really very traditional.
Nowadays, new energy vehicles are everywhere on the streets. Let's make a comparison with the automotive industry. When was the first modern car invented? In 1885. And one year later, the first professional consulting company ADL was born in the United States. For the automotive industry, the first mass-production automotive production line was not invented until 1913. That is to say, after 1913, large-scale production of automobiles, represented by Ford's production line, became possible. Similarly coincidentally, one year later, in 1914, the first management consulting company was born in the United States. It seems very coincidental. Why do these two completely unrelated industries, the consulting industry and the automotive industry, have such a strong correlation in time? In fact, this is an inevitable trend of the times. The background of the birth of the consulting industry is actually the specialization of the division of labor in all walks of life brought about by the Second Industrial Revolution, the wave of specialization.
We know that a very significant feature of the Second Industrial Revolution is to promote large-scale industrial production, represented by the Ford production line. Large-scale industrial production has given rise to corresponding institutional changes, and institutional changes require someone, such as a third party, to be a disseminator and preacher. This is the biggest historical background for the birth of management consulting in the Second Industrial Revolution and its development as an independent industry. Because the management consulting industry is such a preacher. It can spread the advanced experience of various industries from the leading enterprises in the industry to more enterprises in the industry, and from an advanced industry to a relatively backward industry, thereby promoting the rapid development of the entire industry.
In fact, there is another very important background for the birth of management consulting at that time, the promotion of the US national strategy. The Great Depression began in 1929. We know that there was the Roosevelt New Deal, and the most important goal is reform. Of course, the reform is initiated by the government. But in fact, why did the depression occur? Because capital naturally resists change. At this time, the US government or the US national strategy at that time found a way out in management consulting. Therefore, it promoted a number of legislations to allow management consulting to exist as an independent industry, and to allow it to serve as an independent third party to evaluate the business model of enterprises and the national development strategy to ensure that the relevant reforms are smooth, correct, and carried out on the track of policies.
Therefore, McKinsey was established in 1926 and also developed rapidly in accordance with this series of US legislations after the Great Depression. Soon after, World War II broke out. As the largest military-industrial complex in the world at that time, the United States also used the management consulting industry to help it improve efficiency and support the development of its huge military-industrial complex. A very typical example is the CMP consulting company. This consulting company was directly involved in the Hoover Commission led by US President Truman and led by former President Hoover.
Everyone also knows DOGE, the dog emoji that Musk particularly likes. This topic was very popular at that time. This department is similar to the Hoover Commission in 1947. To make an analogy, the management consulting at that time directly participated in a department role similar to DOGE that Musk is playing now, helping the US government optimize the overall operational efficiency. Therefore, the early development of the entire management consulting is inseparable from the promotion of the US national strategy at that time, including the promotion of a series of historical, political and economic conditions at that time.
Then, in the information age, the Third Industrial Revolution has brought a very big change and development to management consulting. In 1958, a very symbolic event in the information technology age is the invention of the integrated circuit. In the following 10 - 20 years, it is another astonishing coincidence that the second wave of the development of management consulting has also ushered in a climax, and this pattern has not changed since the 1980s until now. The consulting competitive pattern dominated by MBD has not changed, let alone in China. After the foreign consulting entered China after 1990, until now, its pattern is still dominated by foreign consulting and big-name consulting such as MBD. But have they really served the management consulting needs of our China, or all our enterprises? In fact, we don't think so. More than 85% of the management consulting market in China is occupied by foreign capital, and more than 80% of it goes to the world's top 500 famous enterprises, especially foreign famous enterprises. Then we will ask, do the remaining enterprises not need management consulting? Or why can't the remaining enterprises get good management consulting services? There is a piece of data that I have not presented. It is also a piece of data that made me quite touched when I heard Teacher Da sharing yesterday. That is, more than 80% of the current investment in China is actually driven by state-owned capital. The investment driven by this 80% state-owned capital will inevitably lead the high-speed industrial development in China at present or in the future for a period of time. Naturally, the high-speed industrial development needs the support of consulting, and this demand is obviously not well met now.
Therefore, when we have entered another new technological revolution, with the release of ChatGPT and our entry into the era of Artificial Intelligence 2.0, we have seen such a difficult but right thing. We are doing a difficult but right thing, that is, to build a new generation of management consulting brand in China, and we are facing such a historical opportunity to build such a management consulting brand. Of course, this is a very difficult thing. Because I myself came out of a foreign consulting company. My former employer, McKinsey, and all foreign consulting companies have brands that have accumulated for many years, and they have hired many elites from prestigious schools, and they have also served many Fortune 500 companies. Therefore, there has been no change in the past 50 years or in the past 30 or 40 years since they entered China. So this thing must be very difficult.
But let's think about it. Does this consulting service really have to be done by a brand, or must it be done by elites from prestigious schools? Or, if we break down the essence of consulting, is it so out of reach? We think that with the current development of the times and the development of artificial intelligence, many of the tasks that are carried out in traditional industries such as the consulting industry can be greatly optimized and replaced.
Therefore, our answer is the brand like Vision CVC. Because we believe, so we see. Vision CVC is a collection of the leading domestic information and expert consulting platform. Vision, we want to embrace the era of AI. Many people think that management consulting sounds very high-end, as if it is a group of very elite consultants helping clients solve many very top-level business problems. At the same time, it is also a very labor-intensive industry. Many of our tasks are actually in some very basic information sorting and information integration, which are very labor-intensive tasks. Everyone jokes that management consulting is the Jianguo's robot. Now with AI, we can greatly improve efficiency. We can make management consulting more civilian, efficient, and cost-effective, so that it can better serve the needs of more local enterprises in China. This is our Vision.
Consulting, professional, independent, safe, and adhering to the highest professional standards. The brand we build is one that understands China and is down-to-earth. At present, China and the world are facing a great change unseen in a century. Under this great change, the consulting needs of Chinese enterprises have not been well met. A very big bottleneck is that the current consulting services are not efficient enough and not cost-effective enough. Through technological changes, through our own strong information base capacity and the information integration and knowledge creation capacity supported by technology, we can become a consulting company that understands China, is down-to-earth, and serves Chinese enterprises well.
Second, we see the world, and we are stylish enough. We are jointly incubated by several central and state-owned enterprises. Our information and expert network has more than 1.5 million experts worldwide. Behind this is the wisdom and knowledge of the expert brain. We use global knowledge and global experience, coupled with the efficiency improvement of artificial intelligence, to gather national experience. At the same time, we also have globally renowned universities and top consulting companies, and we hire our consulting team. On this basis, technology + people, let technology play the value of technology, let people play the value of people, better gather global wisdom to serve China, and also let Chinese wisdom influence the world.
We also know everything, and we are intelligent enough. The base is information, the middle layer is the integration of information and the creation of knowledge, and the upper layer is the creation of customer value. When we have such a strong information base and our self-developed AI large model, our consulting advisors can focus on the value creation of customers.
Finally, our consulting brand also adheres to the bottom line and is safe enough. In recent years, there have been many chaos in the consulting industry, which also warns us that there is no small matter in national security. Therefore, we also use technology to build a full-link security system with the highest security standards before, during and after the event. And we mentioned that it is an industry that the US government focuses on supporting in order to maintain the independence of professional third parties. Therefore, it itself has a very strong security attribute and the attribute of customer confidentiality and customer compliance. So this point must be very important, and this is also the original intention of the consulting industry.
Finally, we still want to return to the essence of management consulting to see why we can do difficult but right things. The base of consulting is information. Good solutions come from the accumulation and refinement of a large amount of information and knowledge. The value of consulting lies in internalizing external solutions and providing long-term value to customers. We are carrying out full-link empowerment, gathering the richest information base in the world. We have an efficient and intelligent information processing, integration, and self-trained large model. It is a large model trained with the entire consulting professional corpus, which can help us improve efficiency rapidly and enable our consulting advisors to focus on value creation.
Finally, I would like to ask everyone to imagine with me. This is a difficult but right thing, but it is a very exciting thing. Just like when the first car was invented more than a hundred years ago, no one thought that today's new energy vehicles would subvert the traditional automotive industry. And today, we are standing at the window of this historical opportunity in the era of Artificial Intelligence 2.0. We think this thing is worth investing a lot of energy to build. This exciting thing also comes from my very simple wish as a consultant. That is, when I just graduated and joined McKinsey, I was thinking that China should have a local management consulting company, so that future Chinese young students can be proud to join it. And this is our mission.
Thank you all!