Last weekend I joined the Schwab Foundation for Social Enterpreneurship – Shenzhen Learning Journey 2026, a three‑day immersion for social innovators hosted alongside the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of New Champions 2026. Shenzhen, China’s fast‑moving innovation hub, offered a front‑row seat to how advanced technology, green transition and domestic entrepreneurship are reshaping growth models. We visited two very different examples of “innovating at scale” – a circular furniture venture and a global ports group – and together they changed how I think about who wins in China’s race for speed and efficiency under planetary boundaries.
Saturday was Day 2 of the learning journey, and we focused on a powerful question: how do we “scale within planetary boundaries” – growing impact and competitiveness without overshooting what people and the planet can sustain? The question sounded abstract at first, but by the end of the day I had seen it play out in very concrete ways – in how we buy office furniture and in how we build ports and cities.
Our morning field immersion took us to DearTree, a Shenzhen‑based social enterprise that gives office furniture multiple lives through refurbishment, redistribution and reuse. Circular business models are quietly scaling in China’s vast consumer market. The Schwab Foundation social entrepreneurs and I witnessed DearTree’s efficiency when we walked through its warehouse, which stored ten thousand used office chairs. DearTree’s model helps companies cut both costs and emissions — avoiding up to 13 million tonnes of carbon emissions over the past 17 years. The DearTree team explained how they use AI image recognition to label incoming furniture, keep inventory to roughly three months of stock, and maintain strong positive cash flow.
Sean Wu, founder of DearTree, shared his journey – starting the venture as a solopreneur in 2009 and growing it to US$30 million in annual revenue. He built that scale by combining trusted local teams with a role in shaping national regulations and standards for refurbished furniture, connecting frontline market practice with regulation.
One question about pricing led Sean to explain how he shares savings with suppliers and customers instead of just protecting margins – a choice that keeps them loyal in a market where new, cheap furniture is always available. We felt the why in all his answers — a commitment to create value for every stakeholder in the chain — and it is this ecosystem play that keeps his venture competitive in a price‑sensitive furniture market.
As a Chinese, I admire Sean’s willpower to challenge the cultural business preference for new furniture, which are traditional symbols of elegance and success. As a Hongkonger, I thank Sean for his important work to reduce waste and landfill in the city. We are running out of landfill space in Hong Kong!
In the afternoon, we shifted from a single venture to systems‑level change with the China Merchants Foundation at the China Merchants Group History Museum in Shekou. The museum sits on the former Shekou Teleport site, which once connected the new industrial zone to Hong Kong, and its collections trace the transformation of Shekou and China Merchants Group and their roles in modern China’s industrial and economic growth. Shekou, China’s first industrial zone, began its transformation in July 1979 under Yuan Geng at China Merchants Group, laying the groundwork that Shenzhen’s “special economic zone” status later built upon.
There, the discussion turned to how a global ports and logistics ecosystem can integrate innovation, sustainability, local livelihoods and long‑term environmental considerations into large‑scale infrastructure decisions. The contrast with DearTree was striking: from one company’s circular operations to a corporate group shaping entire industrial zones over decades. There is one commonality among them — their focus on speed and efficiency. “Time is money. Efficiency is life” is Shekou’s motto. The city’s emphasis on failing fast and iterating feels deeply startup‑like. We saw the motto at the pier, hotels, tourist complexes, and the museum.
We celebrated the Day 2 journey with a group dinner at Sea World, the lively waterfront plaza built around the Minghua ship (a former French ocean liner anchored in the plaza) in Shekou. The area was filled with people, conversations, laughter and joy – and we were part of it. I am proud to be part of this learning group. The visits changed our understanding of the China market. We came away with a simple lesson: in China, entrepreneurs who can efficiently connect top‑down five‑year plans with bottom‑up customer needs are the ones who scale — DearTree is a vivid example.
I also had energizing discussions with many innovative social entrepreneurs, and we found Robotics Cats AI detection technology can reduce wildfire risk for agroforestry in South America and Africa by catching fires earlier, before they turn into systemic losses. The learning journey flowed straight into concrete collaboration discussions — “Time is money. Efficiency is life.”
I’m grateful to the Schwab Foundation team and fellow awardees for an intense, inspiring Saturday – and I’m excited to apply these insights to scaling climate‑resilient technologies in Asia and beyond – quickly, but within planetary boundaries.
