Unique Contributions

A truly unique contribution: We shake things up and put the questions to YS Chi

• RELX • Season 4 • Episode 7

Share episode

In this episode, we turn the tables on our usual host YS Chi, who becomes our guest for the week. Join us as Márcia Balisciano, RELX Chief Sustainability Officer and Global Head of Corporate Responsibility, poses the questions to reveal fascinating insights from 20 years of curiosity, learning and working with great people at RELX. 

YS Chi, RELX Director of Corporate Affairs shares with Márcia what we mean by our Unique Contributions. As he celebrates two decades at RELX, YS reflects on how the company has evolved, what drives the business to focus on corporate responsibility and how we define it. He discusses responsible AI, the future of print, and his vision for the future. Along the way, YS shares advice for the next generation of future leaders and thoughts on who we are as a company. 

The video version of this episode is available at https://youtu.be/-i71SXhpBfg

YS Chi:

The Unique Contributions Podcast is brought to you by RELX. Find out more about us by visiting relx.com. We still live in a world in which too many people judge us by what we do and where we are, and I think a better measurement is how well we do what we choose to do.

Márcia Balisciano:

Welcome to the Unique Contributions podcast. My name is Márcia Balisciano, and I am head of corporate responsibility at RELX. I am really delighted to turn the tables on your usual host, YS Chi, a distinguished colleague celebrating 20 years at RELX. I wanted to start YS, with asking the question that we ask everyone, which is to introduce yourself.

YS Chi:

Hello, everyone. My name is Youngsuk Chi, and I asked to just call me YS to make it easier. It's become my professional name since about 40 years ago. I originally come from Korea, but as a child of a career diplomat, I only got to live in Korea for four years of my life during my youth. I've worked and lived in over a dozen countries across all the continents, and had the fortune of experiencing the finance sector, the IT industry, the distribution industry and now publishing industry, which then has transformed itself into a content based analytics and tools businesses that leverage the latest technology, like AI. So as you so kindly acknowledge in your email to me this weekend, I'm celebrating my 20th anniversary here at Elsevier and RELX, this week.

Márcia Balisciano:

That's wonderful, YS. I wondered, given that you have had a distinguished career at RELX and before joining us at other organisations, how have you kept motivated?

YS Chi:

I would say, what keeps me going and motivated is a combination of, on one hand, the love of being around great people. And second is the habit of asking a lot of questions because of my curiosity. When I'm around great people that are good at what they do and are curious like I am, I just seem to be learning all the time. And I have to say, even now, I've learned so much during the switching of the five industry sectors, but the pace of the learning that I do now is actually accelerating the past few years, then it is slowing down. So I would say, doesn't need a lot to be motivated when I'm around great people, and that I get to ask questions.

Márcia Balisciano:

That's quite interesting, that you think it's speeding up in terms of the learning. Why is that?

YS Chi:

I think, on the one hand, over the years, I've accumulated more kind of foundational knowledge, and I'm asking more and more questions that are relevant to those foundations. Having come from five different sectors, and being around the 40,000 people at RELX and our customers, our partners, and the technology. My goodness. I mean, the pace of change in technology is enormous, and either we get left behind or we jump on the train and make sure we don't fall behind.

Márcia Balisciano:

Yeah, I agree with that. So important. If we just take a step backwards because you decided to name this podcast Unique Contributions. And I know those of us at RELX, it's really ingrained what we mean by that. But could you define for our listeners what constitutes our unique contributions?

YS Chi:

Sure. Let me give it a try. Let's start with the purpose of the company, RELX. So we are obviously a global provider of data in and content based technology, analytics and decision tools for our customers. So we don't just give the content, we also give them the tools on top of it that makes the content so much richer and a little bit relevant to the decisions they have to make at the moment. This is the way to get our customers to get better results, meaning through productivity, right? So I believe that our purpose is to benefit our society by development of these products and services on top of the content. And it's that combination that makes it quite different from everybody else. Whether that be researchers in the scientific field, doctors and nurses in the medical field, lawyers and judges in the court of law for the fairness of legal results. Banks, finance companies, other businesses and governments that have to prevent so much fraud that's going on right now. Consumers that are getting defrauded as well. So, it goes on and on about these people needing to actually make decisions, and our being able to uniquely provide both the data set and the analytic tool around it, wrapped around it. I think that that is the positive impact that we're trying to have on the society through what we do as quote, unquote business.

Márcia Balisciano:

I like that, because it's how we think about corporate responsibility at RELX, isn't it? It's not a prescriptive set of activities. It needs to be owned by all those people who are colleagues at RELX and embedded into what we do every day. I wonder if there's some specific examples that you could give. I mean, you highlighted a few, but I would be interested.

YS Chi:

Sure, to be fair, I'll try to give examples from four different segments of our businesses, right? So, Risk business, our largest business by both revenue and contribution. They provide protection to the society by helping prevent fraud. ThreatMetrix for example, reduces online fraud with 150,000 websites that apply our apps to do identification and to help recognise a trusted transaction versus a fraud transaction. Legal & Professional division of LexisNexis. They support the rule of law through their content, data and analytics using things like eyeWitness to Atrocities app, and that app gives human rights defenders to be able to use their mobile phone to document and report human rights abuse in a way that has been accepted as photos and videos and audio, as admissible evidence in the court of law. Right? That's pretty powerful. And on this Elsevier side, both on the research and medical side, we publish nearly three quarters million of peer reviewed articles just last year. And through programs like Research4Life, which we helped start 23 years ago, we provide completely or nearly free access to nearly 100 countries that are unable to afford our commercial products, and they get complete access to it like anybody else. And then finally, there's the Exhibition business, and they create communities, right? What? Nearly 300 events, 25 countries, and 40 vertical industry sectors. Our events just convene people to come together and grow their business by having face to face interaction all in one shot. So an example of their contribution is the energy show. Their energy show emphasises the low carbon energy and sustainability event that looks at all of the innovation power in both renewable, low carbon and even low carbon heating, transporting. All these elements are coming together, and we congregate them all, and I think that's what we do so uniquely well.

Márcia Balisciano:

I agree. And speaking of RX, they are putting out a first Sustainability Report before long, so we look forward to seeing that as part of their commitment to, as you're saying, net zero carbon events. Think that's an important aspect, and it's certainly been an important aspect of your career as well, in terms of partnerships, and making sure that we put our heads down, do the work within our company, but also trying to spread good practice. You have had such an impressive career, you're past president of the International Publishers Association, also past Chair of the Association of American Publishers. Can you talk a little bit about why that matters? Because certainly there's enough to do within RELX, but why should we be involved more broadly?

YS Chi:

Yeah, that's a really good question. And I would say on one hand, we have to walk the talk, and that's what we do internally. But as you know, we can't boil the entire ocean, and we do our part, but we want others to also contribute. In positions of leadership, in an industries, we can really make this an important agenda item, right? Rather than hoping that everyone will do it at their own pace. We can try to influence them to accelerate their participation with their own contribution. And I think that taking positions of leadership in these associations is really important. And you can see that in all of our leaders in the four businesses. They all take this extra effort, in addition to running their business to become industry leaders, and I think that has been a kind of a multiplying factor for us. And IPA, as you pointed out, is adopting a lot of the best practices that we have learned over the years, and are now spreading among all the members to be able to replicate and even improve from there. And I think that we make our industry that much more relevant and contributory to the sustainability of what we so enjoy today.

Márcia Balisciano:

Yeah, I agree with you. It's a kind of rising tide lifts all boats approach. And YS coming back to corporate responsibility. Why do you think that, we've had this focus? It's supported at the top of our organisation, with our board, our senior leadership, senior leaders such as yourself and all through the organisation. Why is this? Why does this need to be a focus? What's the business driver here?

YS Chi:

Yeah, that's the billion dollar question, isn't it? Yeah. And we do this because we actually deeply believe that these unique contributions give us a identifiable, long term and sustainable competitive advantage. That's why we do it. The exercise of these principles and guidance do inspire confidence in our stakeholders, including our customers. They provide almost a license to operate in communities in which we live and work, with trust in us. We're earning trust because of how we behave. And please remember that unique contributions is not a program or prescriptive set of initiatives, right? It's rather a how we conduct ourselves and the business on a daily basis. Whether that had sourced from bottom up by thousands of our people, you know, wanting to do it that that way, or whether our leaders helped pull that up. I really can't tell you the history of that, but what I can say is that it's been an amazing combination of the two. As you noticed, you just said a few minutes ago, leaders have really been upfront, emphasising the importance and thousands and thousands and thousands of our people did the hard work. Every day they do the hard work, the right way. Therefore, you can call this an ingrained responsibility of corporate culture. It's a corporate guidance. And what we, what I've observed, especially these last 15 years under the leadership of Erik Engstrom, RELX's CEO, we've been driving actual performance through our culture and nurturing that talent of people who have that culture. It's the supporting working environment and the inspiring people, they'll do the right thing, and then eventually that will contribute to the society. So, in the mindset of making unique contributions is really resulted in the culture that we represent in our businesses, constantly innovating to differentiate our contribution. To give you one example, some of our businesses could have remained a publisher. Why not? That's a great, noble business, and nearly all of our competitors have remained a publisher. Well, instead, our business leaders have decided to invest in digital solutions and on a continual basis. And the latest example, that is perhaps the most visible is the transformation of our Legal business at LexisNexis, which embraced Gen AI instantly. They launched way ahead of any competitors, a thoroughly advanced AI enabled tools that today legal professionals tell us, save enormous amount of time and add completeness to their work. You can see that in the number of customers that have now signed up to go from LexisNexis advance to LexisNexis advance +AI. So, I think it's been great combination for us. On one hand, the talented people from bottom up and the leaders from the top down, moving in unison together. Today, I think unique contribution is just our culture.

Márcia Balisciano:

You have alluded to how the company has changed over time. Certainly from the one that you joined and you mentioned about AI in particular. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the importance for us of responsible AI, because this is a kind of adjunct from, you know what we look at in terms of our corporate responsibilities, making sure that the content is accurate and factual and is really driving those performance improvements for our customers. But maybe just a top line on how you see responsible AI?

YS Chi:

Sure. Almost immediately after I joined Elsevier, I had an opportunity to attend an important forum in Kyoto called STS, Science and Technology in Society. At the first meeting, I learned the expression about the light and the shadow of advancement, or light and shadow of scientific discovery. That everything we do to discover, to enhance our humanity can be abused and misused to be the dark side. It's the responsibility of us to ensure that we steer the use of such advancement in light manner, not the dark manner. I think that our responsible code for AI, the use of AI responsibly, is that light for RELX. We have to use such discovery and such advancement in the way in which it actually brings light to our humanity, rather than making it, hoard it into the few, who can then misuse that power to actually bring unfairness to everybody else. I think that that is one of the things that I think, you and your team and throughout the four businesses have done extraordinarily well and in advance. Well ahead of people, by putting those responsible codes in place before even things like OpenAI became a fad. Well well before that, right? And this is what makes me so proud, that RELX's unique contribution concept is not a program. That it is embedded DNA.

Márcia Balisciano:

Agreed. YS, when you joined the business, we had over 50 percent of our revenue from print. And as someone with a strong background in printed material. In 2024 print only accounted in terms of our formats, about 4 percent. I'm curious to know what you think is the future of print. Is there still a place for it?

YS Chi:

Yeah, I'm not sure that print should disappear completely, because it does have its unique contribution to the society, right? There's generational stuff, which is that many of us grew up in paper, and some of the habits of paper will not disappear. But as that diminishes, there are also additional factors, such as paper being a better medium than any other medium for certain purposes. I think that we should not be dismissive of the paper as a problem, but as a unique player within the spectrum of medium. Most of which is becoming digital, and most of which is becoming small enough to fit in one device like this. But just like we are debating between this device and a pad device versus a laptop device versus a large screen like the one I'm looking at right now. We should have multiple options. But do I see a day in which paper will actually overtake digital again? Not in my lifetime, unless we lose all electricity, we lose all memories. And that would have far bigger consequence than paper versus digital.

Márcia Balisciano:

Given the fact that RELX has been on the forefront of the evolution of our sector. When you look ahead into the future, what do you see in terms of what comes next, in terms of how we will continue to drive the business forward as it relates to technology?

YS Chi:

Well, I think that these are probably much better answered by our tech colleagues who are much closer to the matters and are more experts. But from the position that I'm sitting in as a user of technology, I would say that this journey of AI will continue on for a quite a long time. Now, AI is just a nomination, right? It's just a label. I mean, we used to call AI, what data analytics. That's all it is. Big data, data analytics. And now the fancier word is AI. But what it means is that there is a need for enormous amount of trustable and sizable data sets that have to inform those data analytic tools, which is, guess what? What we do. We produce those constant data sets, we gather them, we massage them to make sure they're consistently structured and organised and accessible. We create enormous amount of new knowledge through Lexis, through Elsevier, and we create enormous behavioral pattern, even in things like exhibition. Where people, we know what kind of transaction happens under what circumstances within our exhibitions. So, I think that the journey ahead is very exciting, and it's going to be a while. Is it generative AI? Is it, another form of AI? People say spatial AI, predictive AI. I mean, we can label them, whatever we want to, but it will be the analytic capability of large, large, large and ever growing size of data sets to inform our decisions, to make sure that we get the most out of what we can. And every step of the way, Márcia, I think that we need to remember the responsible use of it, so that not the very few will misuse it in the darkness.

Márcia Balisciano:

YS, I wanted to come back, a bit more personally to your experience at RELX and previous. In the time that you worked for the business, what made you stay? Surely, you would have had lots of opportunities to do other things. Why did you? What was it about being here that made you stay the course?

YS Chi:

Yes, you are absolutely right. I could have dropped my handicap probably 10 strokes if I had walked away sooner from working. But no, seriously. I think there's only one thing that really kept me here, and that's people. I tell people who do not know what I do.... I mean, who do not know what I do. And they ask me, you know, what is so exciting about where you are? I say, I'm really excited every day to be working with my colleagues. I'm excited to work with my customers because they are smart people that are really trying to make a difference. I even like my competitors in our industries, because they're decent people. They are innovative people themselves, and we learned through competition. So it's just one thing, Marcia, it's the people. I cannot imagine going to another company where I could wake up every morning and know that I'm going to encounter really, really great people. They're going to teach me something valuable every day. And so long as I feel that way, I think I'll be around.

Márcia Balisciano:

That rather trite expression of being a glass half empty or half full kind of person. You're definitely, YS a glass half full. Are there ever times when you're feeling less optimistic? You know what keeps you up at night?

YS Chi:

Yeah, I think I've been asked that question more often these days than before. I think what keeps me up at night these days is that more people seem to be not listening to each other, but too busy talking at one another. Our listening, analysing and absorbing power is not being harvested as well as we should. I wish we could get to a point where we respect listening to each other more and talking less.

Márcia Balisciano:

But I wonder if you think that being that positive, optimistic leader that you are, do you have to be born that way? Or is that a skill that can be learned?

YS Chi:

Of course, I believe that it is learned and not born. If you know my story, which actually you do, but you know our audience doesn't? I always say that I'm the luckiest person you'll ever meet in your life. When you have a life like that, then of course, I believe it's learned. I learned to think positively, because my glass may be half full, but I have the optimism that I can fill it up. I've had people along my life that have helped me fill up my cup. They're great mentors, they were great colleagues, they're great friends. I think that having been exposed to and live with these people, these 40 some years that I've been in workforce, it's really made me trust that others do want me to be better. That it is not a zero sum game, that we can all rise together. And so yes, I am a PMA person, positive mental attitude will always guide me, and that I do believe it is learned.

Márcia Balisciano:

That's good. There's hope for the rest of us. YS, what advice would you have for young people who are interested in our sector? You do so much work, as it relates to academia, both for us as a business, but then personally, as a mentor for so many and a sponsor for many. What is your advice for the next, generation of future leaders?

YS Chi:

I want to just repeat what I said earlier, that it's not about what, where, even when. But it's about who. It has to be who in all the decisions that we make. Who we surround with is what's going to shape us. Whether they are parents or friends or colleagues. Remember all the teachers we had, all the teachers we do have today around us. I think it's really about who. Once we make a good decision about who the next, most important thing, in my view, is how well one does. We still live in a world in which too many people judge us by what we do and where we are, and I think that the better measurement is how well we do what we choose to do. I grew up in a society where it was all about what school you attended, what rank you achieved, and those were good prepositions for judging someone in the old days. But in today's world, that's not what really matters. What matters is, no matter what you choose to do, how well one does. I think that we are increasingly going toward the world in which we are less judgmental about the past and more appreciative of what we deliver day to day, for the benefit of you and those around you. I think that would be the two pieces of advice that I would share with them. First, who, and number two, how well.

Márcia Balisciano:

In terms of attracting talent, because we do have competitors, and it is a race to get the best people to come and work for RELX. There's a few things that you've said, which would make a lot of sense for why someone who's looking to develop a career in our sector, come to work for us. You talked about the people, the excellence of our products and services, the potential for the future. What else? Can you think of anything else that, why should they come to us as opposed to going elsewhere?

YS Chi:

The more they know about the culture of this place, the harder it is for them to not join us. I think that we have to do a good job, really, during the process of interacting with the candidates to impart not just what we do, but how we do things. And that way, once we're good in lucky enough to have them join us, that they will not leave. They will stay and thrive through their own contribution to the innovation, and that then reinforces the culture, right? So, I would hope that we do a good job imparting to people outside whether they're customers or potential future member of our team. It's the culture that matters. But we all know, right Marcia, that not everybody thinks that's the factor that is most important to them. And for those people, we wish them well wherever they are, but they probably don't fit us very neatly.

Márcia Balisciano:

Stakeholders matter. Obviously, we're talking about employees, current, future employees. How is the perception? What is the perception by other stakeholders do you think, for government, investors, non-governmental organisations when they when they look at us in terms of our unique contributions? How do you see that play out?

YS Chi:

I would say that we are, in general, as a company, quite modest about telling the world what we do, how well we do what we do, and how we do them. And as such, those who know us on the surface may not be able to distinguish us from the rest, other than the more standard measurement, like revenue or earnings growth or profitability. But it's those who actually go layer below that, that come to appreciate what we're made up of. And for those, whether they're investors or government partners or non profit, I mean, non-governmental organisation. When they dig even third level below, they really become our deep partners, and they don't want to leave us as our partners and vice versa, of course. It's a question of whether someone looks at us from layer one, layer two, layer three, and so on and so forth. The more we can welcome them to know us in a deeper layer, the more respect we earn. The more trust we have earned. I think that will continue to be the case, but we are not going to do a lot of self promotion. That's just not us either.

Márcia Balisciano:

So, YS, I know your drive and energy, that there's a lot more you would like to do within RELX. Can you highlight what's on your own list for the future?

YS Chi:

Oh, that's a really tough question Márcia. If I said more of the same, I would sound very boring, but I think that's really what it is. I think when we look at what we have been able to collectively achieve over the past 15, 20 years. I think it should be more of the same. More innovation, more respect for each other, more fair implementation of our products and services, more global reach, right? I think it's more and more and more of this earning of the trust through both innovative use of our content and technology, but also the kind of people we want to bring into our organisation. The attitude with which we treat others around us. Man, I think that if it's been working. Hey, I'm optimistic that it's going to work even better.

Márcia Balisciano:

Thank you for that. And YS, thank you for allowing me to be on the side of the microphone where I get to interview you, but I am going to say thank you so much for sharing your insights with us. It's been really fascinating to talk to you, and you'll be back at the microphone before long with our next interesting guest.

YS Chi:

Well, no, thank you so much for taking the time. As I said earlier, in the beginning, I was a bit nervous as to whether I would be able to answer as well as I can ask, but this has been fun. Thank you very much for taking the time.