Sail across the sea

Chapter 552: Nothing was lost.

"I mean, aren't you all a bit too self-important?"

At this moment, the liberal arts student surnamed Zhang, who had been silent until now, spoke up, his first words being a sarcastic remark.

The liberal arts student surnamed Zhang, whose real name is Zhang Yongming, is the deputy secretary in charge of Party affairs. Because he comes from a Party affairs background and doesn't understand technology, he often faces discrimination in a design institute where intellectuals abound.

Of course, the discrimination he faced did not harm him in the slightest. At the very least, he had a voice when discussing important matters concerning the entire hospital.

“You said you’d give the other party a maximum of 10%. I’d like to ask, if the institute gives you a 10% commission on business, how much business can you bring to the institute?” Zhang Yongming asked bluntly.

"You mean, this Haike Company can bring a lot of business to the institute?" Dai Shenghua retorted.

Zhang Yongming said, "As Dean Cai just mentioned, this Haike Company only appears to have no connection with Canghai Chemical. Canghai Chemical collaborated with Zeyan Institute, creating a large project with an annual revenue of several hundred million for Zeyan Institute. Canghai Chemical also collaborated with Fenglin Research Institute, a military-industrial institute. Now, Shuangye Company, a subsidiary of Fenglin Institute, was established with the help of Canghai Chemical, and its annual sales revenue is also several hundred million."

"I'd like to ask, if Haike Company can bring in several hundred million yuan worth of business for the institute, let's say 200 million yuan. We'll split the profits 50/50, with them taking 30% and leaving us with 70%, which is 70 million yuan. Would you all be interested?"

"of course!"

Everyone responded in unison.

The chemical engineering design institute has only about 500 employees, young and old. If it makes 70 million yuan in profit a year, each person would earn more than 100,000 yuan. Even if the government doesn't allow the design institute to distribute all the money and each person only gets 10%, that's still more than 10,000 yuan.

Most people's salaries are only around 400-500 yuan a month, which is about 5,000-6,000 yuan a year. If you could earn more than 10,000 yuan on the side, it would be just as good as switching jobs to a foreign company.

“Old Zhang, aren’t you exaggerating a bit?” Dai Shenghua said. “Zeyan Institute and Fenglin Institute have good foundations. Canghai Chemical just helped push them along. Doesn’t the theory of contradiction say that everything should be divided into primary and secondary contradictions? I think that when it comes to generating revenue, internal factors are the most important, and external factors are only secondary.”

"Are you saying that our Chemical Engineering Design Institute is not as good as Zeyan Institute?" Zhang Yongming asked.

"..."

Dai Shenghua was immediately speechless.

He was so focused on arguing that he didn't really think about the issue in detail.

He is a very arrogant person. Ever since he no longer needs to do scientific research himself, he has been lamenting that each generation is worse than the last, saying that today's young and middle-aged engineers are not as good as he was back then.

After hearing this repeatedly, he developed a self-suggestion that the Chemical Engineering Design Institute was a terrible, hopeless organization. It was with this mindset that he uttered his earlier comments about internal and external factors. In his opinion, the success of Zeyan Institute and Fenglin Institute was unrelated to Canghai Chemical, and that bringing Canghai Chemical into the Chemical Engineering Design Institute would be futile.

However, this implies that he believes the Zeyan Institute and Fenglin Institute are superior to the Chemical Engineering Design Institute. Fenglin Institute is one thing, after all, it is a research institute within the military industry system, and its foundation is indeed very deep, making it comparable to the Chemical Engineering Design Institute.

Keze Research Institute was just a research institute under the China Nonferrous Metals Corporation, and it was located in a remote area, so it couldn't retain top talents. When scientific research institutions held meetings, it could only sit at the end of the table, while the Chemical Engineering Design Institute sat in the first three rows.

He now says that the Chemical Engineering Design Institute is not as good as the Zeyan Institute, and he can't even convince himself of that.

Seeing Dai Shenghua, who was usually so arrogant, speechless, Zhang Yongming felt a surge of satisfaction.

"What's wrong with liberal arts students? Only liberal arts students have a keen eye for the world, unlike you bunch of STEM nerds who are out of touch with reality and have ruined such a great design institute, making it impossible for them to even get food." He ignored Dai Shenghua and instead addressed the crowd:
"Dean Cai's introduction of Haike Company as an external partner has provided our institute with a new approach to revenue generation, which can be described as entirely beneficial. Think about it, we spent so much effort in the past few years without achieving effective revenue generation. What does that mean? It means we lack experience in revenue generation."

"If you lack experience, you should learn from experienced companies. We won't go into Haike's background, but at least one thing is certain: it has market experience and is someone we can learn from. Giving up 30% of our profits is essentially paying tuition. I think this tuition is worth it."

“Old Zhang is right.” Cai Muqing was very pleased to receive support. He continued Zhang Yongming’s words, “Old Zhang’s analogy of paying tuition is excellent. If we want to learn how to generate revenue from others, we always have to pay some tuition. Think about it, when we learned chemical engineering design experience from abroad in the past, didn’t we also have to pay patent fees and licensing fees?”

Zhang Yongming said, "Moreover, the tuition fees we paid were earned for us by Haike Company. We essentially didn't spend a penny and got 70% profit for free. Why not?"

"You're talking about an ideal scenario." After recovering from the earlier embarrassment, Dai Shenghua said, "How can you be so sure that this Haike Company can help us make money? If it's just occupying a position without generating any profit, wouldn't we have been disappointed?"

“But we don’t only have one latrine!” Zhang Yongming said, then turned to Cai Muqing and asked, “Dean Cai, does our agreement with Haike Company stipulate that Haike Company can only generate revenue for our institute in the future, and we can’t do it ourselves?”

“No, not at all,” Cai Muqing said.

“Isn’t that a good solution?” Zhang Yongming said. “Everyone here, especially influential experts like Vice President Dai, can also generate revenue. This doesn’t contradict Haike Company’s efforts to help us generate revenue.”

"If Haike Company makes money, we liberal arts students with no skills will benefit and get a share of the profits. If Haike Company doesn't make money, Vice Dean Dai will still make money, so the design institute won't lose anything. Don't you all agree?"

Dai Shenghua felt another wave of embarrassment well up in his throat. He wanted to retort, but he couldn't find a reason to. They were clearly praising his abilities and his ability to make money. What could he say? That he actually lacked the ability to make money?

You can't make money, yet you're complaining about the organization that the dean found to help generate revenue. You can't stand to see everyone else doing well, can you?
Not wanting to create any further complications, Cai Muqing quickly stepped in to smooth things over:
"Haha, Lao Zhang's words are a bit biased. Everyone has their own expertise. Lao Dai's strength in chemical container design is recognized in the industry. It would be a waste to use that strength to generate revenue."

"Let's get down to business. Old Zhang made a good point earlier. Our introduction of Haike Company is not to replace our original revenue streams, but rather to add another revenue stream. We will not suffer any losses. Let's discuss whether this is feasible."

(End of this chapter)