When investment promotion targets are assigned to state-owned enterprise platforms, the first thing that appears is a task list.

How many companies to engage, how many leads to generate, and how many projects to advance.

Once the targets were broken down, the team quickly got into the swing of things.

But for decision-makers, assigning targets to departments is only the first step in task deployment.

Investment promotion by state-owned enterprise platforms involves far more than just project matching.

How to determine the right industrial direction, whether to understand corporate needs, how to coordinate capital tools, and who will take over after a project is implemented—

Furthermore, how investment promotion and park operations work in tandem—every step tests the platform’s organizational capabilities.

Whether to focus on projects or on capacity-building is not a multiple-choice question.

Projects define what needs to be accomplished in the current period, while capabilities determine how the platform carries out its tasks. For decision-makers, the more critical questions are:

What stage of development the platform is currently in, whether the existing team can meet new business requirements, and where to begin building capabilities.

Since different state-owned enterprise platforms are at different stages of development and undertake different business tasks, the focus of investment promotion team development will vary accordingly.

01 Focusing on Projects and Focusing on Capabilities Are Two Sides of the Same Coin

When state-owned enterprise platforms undertake investment promotion tasks, project outcomes are naturally important.

Engagement efficiency, project quality, and implementation progress are all direct metrics for evaluating investment promotion efforts.

Decision-makers need to monitor projects and are also accountable for business outcomes.

However, in practice, some issues cannot be resolved simply by increasing the workload or making more visits to companies.

When team members lack a consistent understanding of the region’s industrial foundation, it becomes difficult to assess a project’s suitability once it is brought on board; without common standards for project screening, disagreements between departments are likely to arise; and when there is insufficient coordination between park operations and enterprise services, it becomes difficult to continuously address the development needs of companies after they have settled in.

While these issues appear to occur on the front lines of project management, their root causes lie in the platform’s positioning, organizational division of labor, and capacity allocation.

For decision-makers, managing projects and building capabilities must be integrated into a single operational framework: use project tasks to define capability requirements; based on the platform’s development stage and business plans, clarify the capabilities the team needs to develop; and then supplement these through targeted training, hands-on practice, and the accumulation of experience.

While the HR department can organize training and business departments can propose course requirements, the ultimate determination of what capabilities a state-owned enterprise platform must possess rests with the decision-makers.

This is also the distinction between diagnostic, customized training and generic training.

Tanigawa Training School does not design a separate set of “standard courses” in isolation from the state-owned enterprise platform’s missions.

Before formulating a development plan, we first gain an understanding of the platform’s business foundation, industry direction, organizational status, and project implementation challenges, and then work backward to determine the development objectives, course mix, and implementation timeline.

Nanjing Pukou Urban and Rural Construction Group, Beijing Changfa Development Group, and Nanning High-Tech Development Group exemplify three distinct diagnostic outcomes.

02 In-Depth Transformation of Urban Construction to Undertake Investment Promotion Tasks

Nanjing Pukou Urban and Rural Construction Group originally focused its operations on urban infrastructure, water services, and municipal construction.

As the platform’s investment promotion functions expanded and it began undertaking tasks related to industrial parks, the group’s business scope gradually extended from engineering construction to industrial development.

While its existing experience remains important, these new responsibilities require the team to understand the relationships between industries, enterprises, capital, and park operations.

At this stage, simply discussing project follow-up techniques is unlikely to resolve the more fundamental issues.

Basic assessments must first be established regarding which of the Group’s existing resources can be leveraged as investment promotion tools, how the team should understand regional industries, and how park development and preliminary investment promotion efforts should be aligned.

With the assistance of the Gu Chuan Training School, the investment promotion training process was implemented in phases.

The initial training focused on awareness and direction. Covering topics ranging from the macroeconomic landscape, regional industrial development, and industrial chain-based investment promotion to the pathways for state-owned urban construction enterprises to engage in industrial investment promotion and the use of fund instruments in investment promotion, the training helped the team build a basic framework for understanding industries and projects.

Subsequently, the training will cover topics such as project screening, project acquisition strategies, research on the industrial foundation, and corporate due diligence, enabling the team to gradually apply their industrial insights to the stages of project identification, analysis, and acquisition.

In the next phase, the Nanjing Pukou Urban and Rural Construction Group will select artificial intelligence as its specific industrial focus, further integrating capacity-building into industrial research and corporate due diligence.

One part of the course analyzes the artificial intelligence industry chain map, core segments, key technologies, representative companies, and the resources required for project implementation.

The other part, building on the Group’s existing business foundation, explores specific pathways for AI technology to drive digital transformation in the construction industry, linking industry research to application scenarios such as smart construction and construction robots.

The team will also learn methods for mapping investment promotion landscapes and conducting industrial foundation surveys. Under the guidance of the Gu Chuan Training School, they will spend three days visiting 6 to 10 core enterprises across the upstream and downstream segments of the industrial chain to validate the key points of their industry assessment.

The diagnostic focus of this training is not merely to supplement a few investment promotion techniques, but to resolve the integration issues between new functions and existing capabilities.

03 Teamwork Capabilities: Establishing a Systematic Approach

Unlike the Nanjing Pukou Urban and Rural Construction Group, the Beijing Changfa Development Group has already established three major business segments: smart manufacturing, pharmaceuticals and healthcare, and the digital economy.

It is worth noting that the group also has a team of key personnel who have achieved tangible results in investment promotion.

With these investment attraction achievements in hand, what is management most concerned about?

For platforms that have already established business segments and possess outstanding investment promotion specialists, the focus of capacity building will not remain solely on basic investment promotion methods.

Once the team is capable of delivering results, decision-makers must consider another key issue:

whether the experience individual key personnel have accumulated in customer acquisition, deal negotiation, and project advancement can be understood, replicated, and applied on a broader scale.

During investment promotion training, the management of Beijing Changfazhan Group emphasized the need to reinforce accountability for talent development, institutionalize the “senior-mentoring-junior” mechanism, establish channels for cross-team and cross-subgroup collaboration, and replicate best practices internally.

From the perspective of senior leadership, these requirements go beyond mere individual skill development.

Different business units need to develop a common project language; the experience of top performers must be translated into methods that the team can understand; and project execution requires a basic framework that facilitates review and communication.

Based on Changfazhan’s existing business foundation and training objectives, Gu Chuan Training School focused this training on the entire project follow-up process.

This alignment is not because “project follow-up” is a generic course, but because a comprehensive project workflow connects corporate site selection, project identification, negotiation and advancement, contract signing and implementation, and post-implementation maintenance—providing a common reference point for different business segments to summarize lessons learned and discuss projects.

For Changfa Development, the value of the training lies not in equipping outstanding core staff with a few more techniques, but in providing methodological support for mentoring new employees, cross-team collaboration, and the consolidation of experience.

Moving forward, Beijing Chang Development Group also plans to continue conducting specialized training on topics such as industry cultivation, synergy between project attraction and fund investment, investment promotion for state-owned enterprises, and the systematization of communication strategies throughout the entire investment promotion process.

From this perspective, the current stage of development at Changfazhan dictates that training must extend beyond individual experience to encompass team development and organizational knowledge retention.

This is also the targeted adjustment to the course focus that Gu Chuan Training School made after diagnosing the organization’s needs.

04 Six Core Functions, Focused on Business Synergy

Nanning High-Tech Development Group, on the other hand, faces a different challenge.

In line with the reform requirements of the “small management committee + large platform” model, the Group needs to conduct business around six core functions—“investment, financing, investment promotion, construction, management, and services”—while focusing on four major industries: non-ferrous metals, new chemical materials, food, pharmaceuticals, and health, and electronic information.

Industrial direction influences project selection; fund instruments affect project attraction; park development determines capacity; and operational services directly impact the development of enterprises after they are established.

If any of these links are advanced in isolation, it may disrupt business coordination within the platform. Therefore, Nanning High-Tech Development Group set forth clear requirements for this training.

The training, aligned with the Group’s six core functions, aims to help the team develop an industry-oriented mindset; grounded in its identity as a state-owned enterprise platform and in accordance with the “small management committee + large platform” reform requirements, it clarifies the platform’s investment promotion pathways and key priorities for park operations; regarding project attraction, it must closely align with the four major industries to address how to evaluate projects, how to serve enterprises, and how to ensure seamless coordination during the establishment phase.

Based on this, the Gu Chuan Training School developed a course outline and designed a customized training program for investment promotion.

We believe this is not simply a matter of “selecting courses.” Nanning High-Tech Development Group provided the business targets, reform context, and industrial direction that the platform is tasked with achieving.

Kawagawa Training School’s task is to further break down these requirements into the competencies the team must possess, and then adjust and refine the existing curriculum accordingly.

In response to these requirements, we first conducted preliminary research and internal analysis of Nanning’s industrial foundation, industrial quality, development direction, and park infrastructure conditions.

Regarding industrial structure, there is still room for improvement in the supporting capacity of the secondary sector; from the perspective of the manufacturing enterprise structure, the role of mid-stream links in the industrial chain and the leading role of high-quality enterprises need to be further strengthened; while aligning with overarching strategies, industrial direction must also integrate local industrial foundations and the competitive landscape of industrial parks, continuing to focus on niche sectors with stronger potential for development.

The supply of facilities, factory specifications, and park design also need to be studied in conjunction with the actual needs of target industries and enterprises.

These preliminary conclusions did not remain at the level of industrial analysis but were used to design training content through a reverse-engineering approach.

To foster an industrial mindset, the curriculum cannot merely provide a general overview of investment promotion along the industrial chain.

The team must first learn to assess the current situation through industrial data and regional SWOT analysis, understanding the scale of existing industries, enterprise structure, resource conditions, and park facilities, and then determine which industrial segments have a solid foundation, which require reinforcement, and which directions warrant further careful evaluation.

Once key industries such as non-ferrous metals, new chemical materials, food, pharmaceuticals, and health, and electronic information are identified, the relatively broad industrial directions must be further refined to examine critical links in the industrial chain, characteristics of target enterprises, project eligibility criteria, and facility requirements.

Ultimately, industrial assessments must be grounded in the six core functions: “investment, financing, recruitment, construction, management, and services.”

“Investment and financing” require determining how to allocate resources based on the identified industrial directions; “business recruitment” requires establishing criteria for screening target enterprises and projects accordingly; “construction and management” require matching facilities and operational models to enterprise needs; and “services” must address the development needs of projects after they are implemented.

Only when these six functions are grounded in a unified framework of industrial assessment can investment promotion achieve seamless operational integration with investment, construction, management, and services.

In Conclusion

Focusing on projects and building capabilities are not mutually exclusive.

For decision-makers at state-owned enterprise platforms, the key is to align capacity-building with the platform’s stage of development and its operational objectives.

When discussing “customization” in investment promotion training, it is often misunderstood as simply swapping out a few case studies or tweaking a few course modules.

The diagnostic customization emphasized by Gu Chuan Training School involves assessing the specific tasks currently being undertaken by the trainees.

Has the platform just added investment promotion functions, or has it already established a mature team?

Is the current focus on building a new park, promoting industrial investment attraction, or achieving synergy between capital and investment attraction?

Do management issues stem from perceptions, methods, processes, or interdepartmental coordination?

Without clarifying these issues, the more courses there are, the harder it becomes to establish clear training objectives.

For decision-makers at state-owned enterprise platforms, the most critical factors to identify are the tasks the platform must currently accomplish, where project work is stalled, and what capabilities the organization needs to develop.

The more specific the problem diagnosis, the better the training program will align with investment promotion operations.