In the digital age, Internet consumption has become the norm, in China electronic payment has replaced cash transactions, WeChat sweep mobile phone payment, car calling, online shopping, etc. Alibaba's Taobao shopping platform reached $17.8 billion in online transactions in 24 hours during its annual promotion ("Double Eleven") in 2016, an incredible figure that surpassed Brazil's total e-commerce turnover for the whole year, according to Forbes.
It can be seen that China has achieved innovative results ahead of the world in some areas. For example, electronic payment, e-commerce, electric vehicles, drones and the sharing economy, these innovations in the management model of the development of the Internet economy have become models for the world.
Annika. Dr. Steiber (an international authority on management in the digital age) has conducted a year-long study of five Chinese companies (Haier, Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, Xiaomi), and his book "Can China Surpass Silicon Valley" will give us a glimpse into the picture of Chinese enterprise management innovation.
The book is also prefaced and recommended by the famous entrepreneur Zhang Ruimin, the famous management scholar Chen Chunhua, and the scholar Shi Stan of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Let's take a look at "Silicon Valley Culture" first.
Silicon Valley, an important electronics industry base in the United States. 20% of the world's 100 high-tech companies are headquartered in Silicon Valley.
Annika. In his previous monograph", "Silicon Valley Secrets: The Genes of Entrepreneurial Success", Dr. Steiber identified the key characteristics of the new management models of leading companies such as Google, Facebook, and Tesla: encouraging individual innovation, developing the ultimate product, creating new needs and other "Silicon Valley culture", creating a brilliant position in Silicon Valley, these companies, even if they are huge, still maintain adaptability, rapid action and innovation as the goal of organization and management. But in the new era, we also face very big challenges. The Silicon Valley Index 2020 shows that in recent years, the absolute advantage of Silicon Valley is gradually weakening, and the innovation potential of a large number of talents has been wasted because it has not been activated.
Let's look at China's reforms and policy innovations
China's GDP per capita rose from $348 in 1980 to $6,894 in July 2017 (estimated). During this period, more than 800 million people in China were lifted out of poverty.
Starting from the policy of opening up the country and foreign trade, China's production capacity and export-oriented economy have developed rapidly.
At the beginning of China's gradual construction of its own innovation capabilities, due to its inception, its experience in technology management is very limited, and it needs to learn from Western companies with rich experience. Chinese companies' path to innovation goes from imitation to incremental, and then adapts products and services to their own markets.
There are 10 main types of innovation activities of Chinese enterprises:
More focus on local needs and customers
Accept good enough standards
Incremental rather than radical innovation
Willingness to meet special needs
Deploy a large number of employees
Make employees work harder
A faster, less formal process
Quick trial and error
More intervention by the owner
Closer ties with the government
China pays attention to education, and the transformation of the top leaders of enterprises into young, well-educated, and highly autonomous in business also reflects the "people-oriented" approach; the trial and error space of Chinese enterprises is large, and new project research is initiated by enterprise leaders and promoted informally by smaller teams, with horizontal flexibility higher than that of trans-american companies in the United States. For example, the development time of one of Tencent's core products is not more than 3 months.
The authors argue that China is innovating at an exponential pace. Chinese enterprise management is even more flexible and efficient than Silicon Valley enterprises, which makes other innovations such as technological innovation and product innovation more possible.
Innovation is not to surpass anyone, but to meet a better tomorrow!
After the precipitation of time, Chinese companies have begun to change from "imitation" to "originality", and the road to innovation never stops, if you want to understand these changes, this is undoubtedly a book worth savoring.
