Deep Sound Original · The author | Yalan
As they predicted, life wasn't so good.
Wang Xing of the US group once lamented that 2019 may be the worst year in the past decade, but it will be the best year in the next decade. Zhou Jintao, the "Cycle King", also asserted earlier that life is Kangbo, the year of ten thousand disasters, and the low point is far lower than everyone imagines.
Pessimists tend to be right, but optimists tend to succeed. Many great companies are "born of trouble", such as HP was born at the end of the recession in 1939, and Microsoft and Apple were born in the 70s of the United States during the economic stagnation.
Under the torrent of the increasingly "hardcore" era, what is the art of survival? Where is the opportunity hidden? Whether it is an enterprise or an individual, it is more necessary to calmly review the current business changes and find a way to break through in the future.
The hardcore era
At the WISE2021 New Economy King Summit, Li Daokui, dean of the Institute of Chinese Economic Thought and Practice at Tsinghua University, gave a detailed interpretation of the various environments currently facing enterprises. He summarized the international situation as a black swan with three gray rhinos, and the domestic situation as two historical baggage and three hard-core breakthroughs.
Black swan refers to the uncertainty of the epidemic, and the appearance of Omicron is once again a reminder of the possibility of viral mutations. The three gray rhinos are debt, industrial chain reshaping, and low carbon.
Global debt levels have risen markedly during the pandemic, hitting the middle and lower levels of income distribution most directly. After the debt crisis comes, if the epidemic ends, the developed countries will shrink their monetary policy and the dollar will appreciate. This will have a big impact on emerging markets, including South Africa and India. At the same time, the epidemic has also given developed countries an opportunity to readjust the industrial chain. Li Daokui said: "Before the epidemic, developed countries were talking about not letting so many industrial chains be carried out in China, and to prevent economic hollowing out. After the epidemic came, they felt even more deeply - ventilators, masks, vitamins, antibiotics are all produced in China. Therefore, after the epidemic, these countries will definitely find ways to redraw their industrial chains. ”
The global reshaping of the industrial chain is bound to violate the economic principle of "lowest cost", and the production cost will be further increased. In this case, the pressure to peak carbon and neutralize carbon will be greater.
In China, Li Daokui said that the main problems are in the two aspects of local debt and real estate, combined with the multi-faceted situation, it is even more necessary to shift from the traditional growth mode to the new growth mode, and find ways to release purchasing power and industrial upgrading.
"We are more than ever calling for a breakthrough in hardcore." Li Daokui said. He judged that the breakthrough in the hardcore era is mainly in three dimensions - the frontier of science and technology, the core components, and the comprehensive use of new technologies to solve pain points in the new scene application.
Such a breakthrough direction is actually in the past year's industry development has been the "Spring River Plumbing Duck Prophet" insight has clearly defined the direction of opportunity.
For example, chip semiconductors, Intel global senior vice president, China chairman Wang Rui is firmly convinced of the cornerstone of the digital world, the world's demand for semiconductors has seen unprecedented growth, and this momentum is still continuing. Ge Qun, senior vice president of Synopsys Global and Chairman of China, also mentioned that in the digital age, the application scenarios of chips will become more extensive, and developers can comprehensively consider different dimensions such as application scenarios, software, algorithms, and systems.
For example, the application of new scenes, the reason why the metaverse can quickly harvest a huge amount of communication and discussion heat, the core is that it combines the most cutting-edge technologies such as VR/AR and artificial intelligence, and creates application scenarios that maximize technical efficiency. Although it sounds a bit "virtual", the future of the metaverse definitely needs to be supported by hardcore technological advancements.
The "hardcore era" has become an established trend, so in this context, as the most dynamic enterprise in the economic blood vessel, how should it survive, and what hard-core capabilities are needed?
Technological innovation and hard power
In the face of the questions of the times, Feng Dagang, CEO of 36Kr, answered two keywords - technological innovation and social responsibility.
"Looking back at the development of the new economy in the past decade, the innovation of most enterprises mainly focuses on the innovation of business models. However, in recent years, the international environment has become increasingly complex and countries have rushed to adjust their supply chains, which requires Chinese companies to pay more attention to technological innovation – innovation in the application of existing technologies, preferably original technological inventions. Feng Dagang said: "On the other hand, macro-policy regulation and control has also pointed out the direction of high-quality development for us, and today's entrepreneurs must not only have hard-core strength, but also have hard-core responsibilities and responsibilities to enter the game." Social responsibility here includes a fairer distribution of income, more community contributions, and more active energy conservation and emission reduction. ”
36Kr CEO Feng Dagang
In fact, many Chinese companies have accumulated in terms of hard power of "technological innovation".
Wang Xiang, vice president of Xiaomi Group, shared at the WISE2021 King of the New Economy Summit that Xiaomi has accumulated mobile communication 5G/4G, RF, intelligent hardware design and manufacturing, AI, big data, cloud computing and other technologies in the past 11 years, and has established more than 200 laboratories around the world.
The same is true of UBTECH, which focuses on the robotics industry. The demographic dividend is slowly decreasing, and human-computer cooperation has entered the stage of history. According to Tan Min, CMO of UBTECH, in the field of service robots, China accounts for more than one-third of the global growth market, and the industrial base is quite thick.
This thick industrial foundation is embodied in the fact that the upstream part of China's robot industry has the best supply chain system in the world; the middle part has strong technical support, including machine vision, machine learning, data middle office, Internet of Things, human-computer interactive interaction design, etc.; we do not lack application scenarios in the downstream part. Industrial robots, household robots, commercial robots, and medical robots all have a very complete industry, which makes China at the global forefront of the robot industry.
You may ask, is technological innovation only a dividend for large companies and high-tech enterprises? The answer, of course, is no. Technological innovation is the path, and industrial upgrading is the value behind it. "No matter what industry you are in in the future, the combination with the digital economy and the industrial economy must be an important hard core through the cycle." Xu Xiaojian, vice president of the JD Cloud Business Group of JD Technology Group, said that technology will definitely empower greater potential.
"Hard power" is not only "hard technology" enterprises, all kinds of enterprises have their own product business characteristics corresponding to the "hard power".
For example, Douyin, compared with the past year, the number of pan-knowledge content played on Douyin increased by 74% year-on-year. Zhi Ying, vice president of Douyin, said: "Doing a good job in content construction is hoping to create greater social value. In the final analysis, it is the user who feels that there is a gain, the author feels that there is a benefit, and the valuable content can be disseminated and developed. ”
For example, Zhihu, the reading rate of pictures and texts on Zhihu has reached 78%. Its founder, Zhou Yuan, believes that "professionalism" is the foundation of knowing content, and "sense of gain" is the yardstick for measuring the value of content. Specific to the strength iteration of the product, Zhihu 8.0 will allow users to get a better experience in the two high-frequency scenarios of community interaction and time-sensitive content.
Another example is 36Kr, from the beginning of the public's eyes of the "media" gradually expanded, transformed, the content tension applied to the deeper new economic service field, to bring increments to enterprises, customers, to accumulate influence. This is also a more refined, closer to the needs of users, more to the deep water of the hardcore exploration.
Li Daokui mentioned that in addition to the frontier of science and technology, the core components, the comprehensive use of new technology to solve the pain points of the new scene application is also a major direction of breakthrough, vibrato, zhihu constantly solve the user's content pain points, 36Kr in solving the user content pain points at the same time to further expand the outer edge, to solve the various problems of the whole life cycle of the enterprise, and this year's particularly hot new consumption, meta-universe is also the same. Without exception, they are all "one step forward" on the basis of the past to usher in the "hardcore era".
The consumer industry, seemingly simple and direct business logic, is actually moving towards deep water. As in previous years, Jiang Nanchun, founder and chairman of Focus Media, also had relevant insights at the WISE Conference - the production and supply capacity of China's consumer goods continued to rise, and the homogenization of the industry competition allowed everyone to enter the era of stock game, and the quantity and price were killed. "The business is not good, everyone engages in promotions, promotions begin to work, and then do not promote sales, promote and do not sell." So I started to do traffic again. Traffic starts out to work but immediately hits the bottleneck because that's all for cheap traffic. As soon as you want to grow, you are immediately on the verge of losing money. ”
Jiang Nanchun believes that under such circumstances, only the penetration rate of omni-channel and the specified purchase of brands can make a new consumer brand truly become a sustainable and long-term development of the consumer dominant brand.
As an application carrier combining AR, VR, MR, motion capture, holographic projection, cloud, brain-computer interface, computer vision and other new technologies, the metacosm is leading to the transformation of super digital scenes.
Jiang Nanchun, founder and chairman of Focus Media
Carbon neutral and sustainable
The energy of hard power can break through the ceiling for enterprises, and social responsibility is the bottom line that must be adhered to in this hardcore era, and it is also a new opportunity. At the WISE2021 King of the New Economy Summit, "carbon neutral" and "ESG" were high-frequency words that were constantly mentioned by the guests.
Zhang Yuanxian, general manager of the zero-carbon strategy of Envision Technology Group, laid out a cruel reality - before the human industrial revolution, the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere was about 100 PPM, and now this value has reached 410 PPM. "The next 30 years will be 30 years for the community of human destiny to sprint towards carbon neutrality. This is the greatest challenge facing all of humanity so far, and it also contains great opportunities. ”
In addition to energy opportunities, the new "energy transmission co-ordination model" is also expected. "When wind power, photovoltaics, and energy storage replace coal as the new coal, and power batteries and hydrogen become the new oil, a smart Internet of Things is needed to become the new grid." The combination of Decarbonization and Digitalization will be the biggest point of opportunity in the future of humanity's sprint toward carbon neutrality. Zhang Yuan said.
Zheng Xuanle, founder of Light Source Capital, further explained the value transfer logic under the background of "carbon neutrality" and "ESG" - on the energy supply side, clean energy replaces fossil energy; in the energy consumption chain, realize electric drive, if it cannot be electro-flooded, replace high-carbon terminal with low-carbon terminal; carbon emissions are treated with storage technologies such as carbon capture. The core reason why this field is full of opportunities is that in the past era of energy as a resource industry, energy companies dominated, and in the current new energy era dominated by advanced manufacturing, many technical links need high investment, and the participation of entrepreneurship and capital is required.
"Carbon neutrality" has developed from a single energy production link into a pan-industrial cluster, from the development and application of wind power photovoltaic energy to the current energy production, energy consumption, operation and other technologies, a very large industrial cluster, covering all aspects of economic production and life. This is a concept far greater than the new energy industry mentioned in the past 20 years.
In the big carbon-neutral track, there are opportunities everywhere, and the water is big and the fish are big. Energy saving and consumption reduction for enterprises is a win-win route that not only adjusts costs but also realizes social responsibility, and "double carbon" is a challenge and an outlet to jump out of the current bottleneck of economic and social development.
Zheng Xuanle said that its core investment logic lies in "key technologies with industrialization value" and "technology-driven and benefit-leading industrial applications". The former includes power generation, energy storage technology, power batteries, hydrogen energy, carbon capture, storage and other aspects, and the latter is the industrial end of large-scale applications driven by technologies such as distributed photovoltaics.
It is worth noting that carbon neutrality or ESG is not a newly created industry, but a systemic undertaking that transforms the old world. For example, in the field of architecture, if you want to build a zero-carbon building today, it needs to make a breakthrough in intelligent control systems, energy-saving materials, and the entire process of green electricity use. It is precisely because the combination with industry is too close, so each of its technologies needs to land in industrial scenarios, and it needs a long period of trial and error and experimentation - "This will be much slower than the products of the Internet." Zhang Tian, CEO/managing partner of Shenshi Holdings, said.
Walking with the times
Fast and slow are changing, logic is changing, the way of doing business is changing, when everything is in change, only "adapting to change" is the unchanging ability. At this moment, another opportunity has surfaced - as a fellow traveler, accompanying, to help enterprises grasp the pulse of the times, reduce costs and increase efficiency, and enhance hard power.
At the beginning of this year, the SaaS industry came out of a wave of upward market, behind which is the enthusiasm of enterprises for digital operation and the need to reduce costs and increase efficiency in the hardcore era.
Feishu walked into Siasun's production workshop and turned all the information points and process transformation points of concern into an online mode. It is an effective way to use tools to shape corporate behavior, promote the overall iteration of the enterprise, and promote changes in organizational form.
SparkX, focusing on helping China's e-commerce and branding enterprises to better go to sea, helps everyone break through the bottleneck of marketing in the European and American markets through big data-driven marketing.
36Kr has developed from the media into a "new economy service platform", providing effective information, establishing key links, and providing full-cycle services to participants in the new economy field, including financing, product publicity, consulting, customer acquisition, government-enterprise docking, industrial park landing, going to sea, IPO, secondary market and so on. Just like this conference, the head "brain" in the business field is brought together, just to be able to output more valuable insights, to help enterprises grasp the "information difference", remove the false and save the truth, and win the opportunity in this foggy cycle.
In the past two years, enterprise value-added services have accounted for an increasingly high proportion of 36Kr's three major business sectors, linking enterprises and government services in smart cities; using 800,000+ enterprise resources to incubate enterprise service review platforms, and seeking development space in the trillion-scale enterprise software market. These are the blessings of "peers" to the industry, and they will also get the most direct feedback from the development of the industry.
Every era has the opportunities and challenges of each era, when the low-hanging fruit is picked, the challenge of the hardcore era lies in the higher requirements for technological innovation, the deep excavation of the business model, and the greater test of the refinement and efficiency of enterprise operations.
But it is also because of the "gifts" of these times that truly hard-core enterprises will forge strength and tension. Open roads in every mountain, build bridges in water, and stand out in the hardcore era.