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Source | Koshi Lightyear (ID: jazzyear)
Author | Match Q, Little North
Can people who see the future live to the future?
The history of the four technological revolutions is the history of the intersection of technology and commerce gradually becoming larger and deeper.
The first technological revolution with the steam engine as the core did not achieve technology companies.
The main theme of the era was colonization and colonization, and the most powerful commercial forces were the trade blocs dominated by the will of the state, such as the British East India Company. This revolution did not give birth to the large corporations surrounding the steam engine itself.
The second technological revolution with electricity and the internal combustion engine as the core, the inventors first appeared on the commercial stage.
Inventors and technologists such as Bell, Edison, and Ford founded century-old stores such as Bell Telephone Company (later AT&T), Edison Electric Light Company (later General Electric) and Ford Motor, which still dominate the industry.
With information technology as the core of the third technological revolution, "technology entrepreneurship" has become a collective wave of engineers.
This technological revolution has set off two waves of business tides: the first wave from the 1940s, IBM, Intel, Apple, Microsoft in the field of computer hardware, software has risen; the second wave began in the 90s of the last century, Amazon, Google, Facebook and other top Internet companies were born in batches, the United States thus established the advantages of electronic manufacturing, information industry and Internet industry, sitting firmly in the position of the world's boss.
China, which missed the first wave, caught the second wave, achieving big and small giants such as BATJTMD, and profoundly affecting all aspects of China's economy.
Today, the fourth technological revolution that is underway, sinking from the virtual world to the real world, has become a collective change across the two generations of new and old enterprises, one, two or three major industries.
This AI, cloud, big data-driven intelligent revolution has formed a style like Japan's "K1 Xeno Fighting Competition": companies with different backgrounds, different volumes, and different paths compete on the same stage, and players not only have large and small technology companies, but also various scenes of the three major industries of agricultural manufacturing and service industries, and all companies try to have the same label: technology companies.
However, behind the long-term prosperity of the four technological revolutions, there are many short lines of rise and fall of "making rice bowls" and "grabbing rice bowls".
Most of the time, the main body that opens the wave of technology and the main body that reaps the success of commercial use are not the same subject. In the waves of generations full of accidents and complexities, there are stories of sowers throwing air and reapers triumphant.
The following stories are about the internal combustion engine revolution, the computer revolution, the Internet revolution, and the intelligent revolution of those who started the wave, one step away from commercial success, but finally left the market.
Who says that if you see the future, you will be able to live to the future?
Sky wars at the beginning of the century
Arrogance is an unsupported dignity.
— Balzac
In the second industrial revolution, the most regrettable air thrower was the Wright brothers.
There are records of their invention of the airplane in history textbooks around the world: on December 7, 1903, the airplane built by the Wright brothers successfully flew, with a 59-second stay in the air, marking the birth of the aircraft.
In fact, the Wright brothers weren't just inventors, they wanted to commercialize technology like Bell and Edison. Beginning in 1905, his brother Wilbur Wright traveled between the United States and Europe, trying to market their aircraft.
At the end of 1909, the Wright brothers officially registered the Wright Company, but in 1915, just before the golden decade of aircraft manufacturing in World War I, his brother Orville Wright sold the company and withdrew from the aviation market.
At the same time, some of the later companies have created brilliant achievements, and some have survived to this day, such as Lockheed Martin (founded in 1912, currently the world's largest weapons manufacturer) and Boeing (founded in 1916, one of the world's two largest civil aviation aircraft oligarchies).
Looking back at the Wright brothers' entrepreneurial journey, their mistakes were a series of commercial and technical miscalculations brought about by arrogance.
The Wright brothers' first mistake was a hostile attitude toward exposure.
At the beginning of their business, the Wright brothers have always believed in "making a lot of money in a muffled voice", afraid that others will steal their technology. On that test flight in 1903, the Wright brothers did not invite the public or the media to watch, and the world knew nothing about the event except that they happened to be in the vicinity of 5 neighbors.
In 1905, when the Wright brothers first marketed aircraft to the U.S. Department of War (divided into the Department of the Army and the Department of the Air Force after World War II), they made a series of strict demands out of fear of technology leakage: refusing to show product photos and requiring the War Department to pay a considerable amount of deposit before test flights. Since the War Department had previously been pit by other inventors, cooperation could not be achieved.
The Wright brothers' second mistake was underestimating their competitors.
Just when the Wright brothers are making low-key and difficult sales, the pattern of the world's aircraft manufacturing industry has changed.
In 1906, the Brazilian inventor Alberto Santos-Dumont completed a public flight of more than 160 feet (49.8 meters) in France, followed by a hot flight sweep through Europe and the United States, and various air shows were held from time to time.
Wilbur Wright, however, jokingly referred to Dumont's flight as a "jump" in a letter to a friend, predicting that there was no indication that anyone else would be able to fly more than 300 feet (91.4 meters) in a few years. Wilbur was quickly punched in the face, and a few months later, Dumont flew 700 feet.
Dumont and other high-profile peers helped Wright educate the market. Realizing that controlled flight was not nonsense, the U.S. Department of War reconsidered the Wright brothers' proposal in late 1907, issued a public tender for the manufacture of aircraft, and unexpectedly received as many as 41 bids. Eventually, the more mature Wright brothers received an order from the War Department worth $25,000 in February 1908.
But it didn't take long for the good times to begin when they met their old enemy, Glenn Curtis.
In 1905, Curtis, who was an engine in the bank, wanted to provide engines for the Wright brothers. After being rejected, he switched to joining the Aerial Experiment Society (AEA), founded by telephone inventor Bell, and the two sides became competitors.
Curtis is also well versed in the benefits of open show technology. In July 1908, witnessed by more than 1,000 spectators, including journalists, cinematographers, and filmmakers, Curtis became famous flying his AEA III June Beetle, which won the Scientific American Flying Award and $2,500 in prize money for a record 1.5 kilometers (4,921 feet).
In August 1909, Curtis won the world's first International Aviation Week Award in Reims, Champagne, France, and sold his first commercial aircraft. He improved the Wright brothers' warped wings to ailerons, which sold for just $5,000, a fifth of the Wright brothers' offer the previous year.
Whether it's Dumont's test flights, 41 aircraft tenders, or Curtis, who invented the aileron, they all send a strong signal: the competition for aircraft manufacturing is becoming more and more intense, and the Wright brothers, the forerunners, can no longer sit back and relax.
Faced with the threat of competition, the Wright brothers made a third business mistake: instead of focusing on improving technology and manufacturing processes, they adopted a passive defensive posture of prosecution.
In August 1909, the same month that Curtis won the Grand Prix in France, the Wright brothers formally accused Curtis of infringing on a patent they had acquired in 1906. In fact, the Wright brothers sued not only Curtis, but also many other peers who used unbalanced lift to get the plane to take off. So much so that the defendants made up a paragraph: "As long as someone jumps into the air and waves his arm, the Wright brothers will take him to court." ”
During the dispute, Henry Ford, the auto king who was also laying out the aviation industry, reached out to Curtis, providing him with a luxurious team of lawyers for free, and Ford did not want to be clamped down by the Wright brothers' patents.
The Wright brothers eventually won in January 1914: the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that aircraft manufacturers across the United States were required to pay 20 percent of the Wright brothers' royalties for every aircraft sold.
However, seemingly overwhelming victories come at a huge cost. The Wright brothers won the case, but missed an entire era.
Due to the exhaustion of the legal process, Wright's 1911 products had lagged behind their peers, especially the complex pilot control problems that had not been solved, making "the Wright family plane the most difficult to drive" a common complaint among pilots.
In 1912, Wilbur Wright died of typhoid fever while on official business at the age of 45. He had always been the one to make up his mind, and his brother Orwell retreated and sold the company for $1.5 million in 1915.
Two years later, the United States entered World War I in 1917, when U.S. President Roosevelt Sr. believed that the patent status quo dragged down the overall development of the U.S. aircraft manufacturing industry, and the patent fees available to the Wright brothers were reduced from 20% to 2%, and the U.S. aircraft manufacturing industry entered a golden period of development. Curtis Aircraft and Engines became the biggest beneficiary, producing more than 7,000 Jenny fighters during World War I alone, making it the world's largest aircraft manufacturer at the time.
World War I promoted the rapid development of the aircraft manufacturing industry, and the output of aircraft in industrial countries increased significantly, and the number of fighters manufactured in the United States rose from 83 units in 1916 to 11950 units in 1918
In 1929, Wright was acquired by its old rival Curtis and reorganized into Curtis-Wright. Although Wright was the inventor of the airplane and the earliest pioneer of commercial aviation, their last name can only appear in the second place.
A quote from Three-Body III: Death's Eternal Life fits well into the battle for the skies at the beginning of the century: "Weakness and ignorance are not obstacles to survival, arrogance is." ”
Xerox Paradise Lost
People linger in their memories and also flutter in it.
- Sanmao
In 1983, the year was approaching.
In the Apple office in Cupertino, Bill Gates, who had just developed the Windows system, was surrounded by more than a dozen Apple employees, led by Steve Jobs, who angrily shouted to Gates: "You are a thief, stealing our things!" ”
Gates looked cold: "It should be said that we all have a rich neighbor named Xerox, and I broke into his house to steal the TV, but found that you had already stolen it." ”
Xerox, the world's largest manufacturer of photocopiers in the 1960s, once monopolized up to 82% of the market. Just like today's "Baidu", at that time, taking things to copy was called "Xerox".
Xerox's previous history of fortune is a textbook case of seizing a technological opportunity.
In 1938, Carlson, a clerk in the U.S. Patent Office, invented the photocopier, and due to the popularity of copy paper at that time, Carlson was rejected by more than two dozen companies, including IBM and General Electric.
In 1947, Maxima finally met Bó Lè, the predecessor of Xerox, and joseph Wilson, CEO of the photo paper company Harroyd, who recognized the real gold and bought back carlson's technology. Wilson believes that the basic law of corporate success is: success depends on profits, profits come from development, and development depends on new thinking and new technologies.
From 1947 to 1960, Harroyd invested a total of $75 million. It's a big gamble for an SME with only $20 million in annual sales.
In 1960, they succeeded. The photocopier, called Xerox 914, appeared in the offices of major companies in the United States, and Harroyd changed its name to Xerox and applied for more than 500 patents. Other companies that want to produce the same copiers must pay the patent fee first, thus building a moat of cost.
In addition to the new technology, the clever business model is also the reason for the success of the "914".
At the time, the "914" cost $2,400, but Wilson set its price at $29,500. The deep meaning is that according to the law, any product priced more than 10 times the cost will be prohibited from being sold.
When the media blamed Wilson at length and promoted the new technology, Wilson began to open a façade in major Cities in the United States and opened the business model he really envisioned: leasing. The monthly rent is $95, more than 2,000 copies, and each copy pays 4 cents per single.
The average number of copies per day for the average user is only 15-20 pages, which is obviously realistic, and also greatly expands the user base and the number of copies.
Insurmountable technical barriers and a perfect business model made Xerox the first company in U.S. history to break $1 billion in technology revenue in a decade in 1968 (the second was Apple).
When Carlson died in 1968 and Wilson handed over the CEO position to Peter McCarron, Xerox ushered in a turning point.
At this time, the growth of photocopiers had flattened, and in the face of the new market situation, Wilson once again showed his business vision, and when he left, he explained to McCarlon: "In the coming computer age, information will be processed with numbers." In 20 years, if we still want to be a great company, we must also be able to process information with numbers. ”
McCarlon also lived up to his promise and developed an "information architecture" strategy. On the one hand, entering the computer industry through acquisitions. On the other hand, the PALO Alto Research Center (Palo Alto Research Center), which was famous and later gave birth to the world's first personal computer, was established.
Xerox hired Bob Taylor, the director of the Information Processing Technology Division of ARPA (U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) "2" who was highly prestigious in the computer industry at that time and was preparing to build ARPANET "1".
At his call, PARC became the paradise to which computer geniuses aspired. Here is 4500 kilometers from the company's headquarters, close to Stanford, surrounded by green trees, in order to meet the quirks of geniuses, the company has placed many lazy sofas and rocking chairs, they can wear pajamas, shorts to work, there is no fixed workstation, everything depends on the mood.
The gifted otaku are in a meeting
Taylor has revealed that 76 of the top 100 computer scientists in the United States are at PARC.
It was in this environment that in 1973, the world's first personal computer, the Alto, was born. Using graphical interface technology (GUI), Ethernet, a display and a three-button mouse, Alto laid the foundation for the prototype of the modern computer.
High
Looking back today, this was xerlique's dream of a second "money-printing" photocopier.
But Xerox failed to "copy" the success of the photocopier.
The existence of PARC and the birth of Alto did not attract the attention they deserved, but instead divided the company into two gangs, on the one hand is a business kingdom that lies and earns money, on the other hand is a technological utopia, the "Photocopier Gang" believes that the complex things studied by the "West Coast Gang" cannot help the company make money, and the "West Coast Gang" regards the "Photocopier Gang" as an old antique that is lagging behind the trend of the world.
At that time, the customers who dealt with Xerox were surrounded by IBM mainframes and DEC minicomputers, and the huge dream of PCs for hundreds of millions of ordinary users could not be outlined in the minds of Xerox executives. Alto is priced at $50,000, while laser printers cost $200,000, which naturally becomes Xerox's new direction. In the end, Alto only sold 2,000 units.
The dramatic scene that Xerox regrets the most may be allowing Jobs to visit PARC.
In 1979, Jobs was 24 years old, two years old Apple had just emerged with the Apple II, and the young and vigorous man had long admired PARC and clamored to come to visit, in exchange for selling Xerox $1 million in Apple stock at a low price. At that time, Apple was planning to go public. If successfully listed, Xerox will reap great rewards. 「3」
One day in November, Jobs arrived here as he wished, and when he saw Alto, he jumped around like a monkey excitedly, "Why don't you do something with this?" These things are amazing! It will be revolutionary! ”
"It was as if the gauze that had blinded me had been lifted," Jobs later recalled, "and I saw the future of the computer industry." ”
One of Jobs's most concerned was graphical interface technology (GUI), when computers used Bill Gates' DOS, compared to DOS, GUI made computer operation simple and intuitive.
DOS (left) and GUI (right)
After returning to the company, Jobs vigorously developed a computer carrying a GUI, and specially asked engineers to improve the three-button mouse, so that its cost was reduced from $300 to $15. In 1983 and 1984, Apple introduced the Apple Lisa and Macintosh, which, although not commercially profitable, laid the foundation for the success of the iMac in the future.
In this round of drumming, the real success at the time was Bill Gates. In 1981, Jobs wanted to find someone to design a matching application for Lisa's computer, and he looked for the least suitable person- Bill Gates.
Gates, who also has a keen sense of business, also saw the future of GUI at a glance, secretly developing the Windows operating system in 1983, and after Jobs knew about it, the opening scene occurred.
Whether it's a misjudgment of business trends or a visit by Jobs, Xerox's great technologies end up being the wedding dress for others, brushing shoulders with some of the greatest successes in the computer industry.
Apple and Microsoft have been in the computer industry for nearly half a century, Xerox continues to struggle with the printing press, and in 2018 came the news that it was about to be acquired by Fujifilm. PARC spun off from Xerox in 2002 and operated independently.
"If Xerox realized the value of Alto and seized the opportunity, there would be no Apple, Microsoft, IBM or anything else." It may now be as big as IBM Microsoft combined. Jobs later said in an interview with The New Yorker.
How much is Xerox's "contempt" worth? Today, Xerox is worth $7.2 billion; Apple, IBM, and Microsoft are worth $1.8 trillion combined.
We're going to have to be pretty smart to escape the cleverness of our past.
The fall of the bellwether
The first generation of private entrepreneurs who are willing to make a comeback and the second generation of private entrepreneurs who want to be undefeated, please install a curve of economic trends in your heart before going on the road.
--He Xuelin
In October 1997, Dalian Jinzhou Stadium, the sixth impact of the national football team failed to impact the World Cup, and countless fans ended in disappointment. Two days later, Wang Juntao (Lao Rong), a Fuzhou man obsessed with football, wrote an article at the sports salon of Sitong Lifang (the predecessor of Sina): "Dalian Jinzhou Does Not Believe in Tears.".
This article spread all over the country overnight, and it can be called an ancient explosive article on the Internet.
Two years later, Lao Rong came to Beijing from Fuzhou, relied on Lianbang Software Company to found China's first B2C e-commerce website 8848, and three months after its establishment, he received a joint investment of $1 million from IDG Lin Dongliang, SoftBank Sun Zhengyi, Yahoo Yang Jerry and Xue Manzi.
In the era of network barbarism at that time, 8848 established a complete set of e-commerce operation system on the basis of Lianbang's perfect supply chain, product circulation channels, and invoicing and inventory information system, which was divided into online supermarkets, information systems, electronic settlement systems, and national distribution systems.
Everything is ready, only the east wind is owed. In September 1999, 8848 sponsored a 72-hour online survival test, one of the most sensational shows in the history of the Chinese Internet.
The content of the test is that the organizer will lock the tester in a room, send each person 1500 yuan in cash and 1500 yuan in electronic money, and can not rely on any external forces within 72 hours, and can only use the computer to contact the outside world to see if they can survive in the end. It is not difficult to see from the word "survival" that people had doubts about the Internet at that time.
At that time, there were only two websites that could really buy things, one was the newly established 8848, and the other was Yonghe soy milk, which was specially opened before the start of the network survival test.
This incident made 8848 famous in one fell swoop, and the business volume surged. At the beginning of 2000, the sales category of 8848 expanded to 16 categories and tens of thousands of species, and the monthly sales exceeded the 10 million mark.
Some honors confirmed the prosperity of 8848 at that time: in November 1999, Intel President Barrett visited China and called 8848 "China's e-commerce leader"; in February 2000, Time Magazine called 8848 the "hottest e-commerce site in China"; in July 2000, 8848 was listed by Forbes magazine as one of the top ten websites in China.
Without the dot-com bubble of the time, perhaps 8848 could have gone even further. Or, if 8848 is a little bit luckier, it can go public before the dot-com bubble.
The listing operation of 8848 is not later than the three major portals, but due to the complicated capital force behind 8848 (Wang Juntao later revealed that the shareholding structure of 8848 needs to be written clearly on six pages), after several layers of divestiture and restructuring, 8848 was approved by the China Securities Regulatory Commission in July 2000. But by this time, Nasdaq was bleeding profusely and in mourning.
Since then, the operation of 8848, under the dual wrapping of capital and historical waves, has entered a place of no return.
Just one step away from the listing, 8848 is unwilling. They found an imaginary straw – B2B. To get a higher IPO price, it would have to cater to wall Street investors' tastes and package the 8848 into a B2B model.
In 2001, 8848 was split into two. Some of them were listed separately under the B2B concept; Wang Juntao insisted on doing B2C and set up a company called my8848.
The 8848 does not have the advantage of operating AB2B. Since then, the old 8848 has tried B2B, e-commerce solutions, system integration and other businesses in just one year, but has not been successful. In the end, in the process of merging with the e-commerce data company, there was constant friction, and finally the same was silent.
Wang Juntao clearly knows that B2C is the core competitiveness of 8848, "In China, if there is a business in e-commerce that will take the lead in success, it is B2C, and 8848 is the first of B2C without a doubt." "But unfortunately, my8848 also encountered shareholder disputes, and even made trouble with the arbitration committee." Wang Juntao, who is also the chairman of 8848 and my8848, was embarrassed and simply resigned from both positions at the same time.
When the heavens and the earth work together, the heroes are not free. The "father of China's e-commerce" withdrew from the stage of 8848, and 8848 also went to a complete collapse.
In 2003, Taobao was established. Since then, only Ma Yun has been known in the jianghu, and there is no longer a strong wave.
In May 1999, Wang Juntao proposed the "three mountains" of e-commerce: first, there were only 4 million Chinese netizens at that time, which determined that e-commerce business opportunities were limited; second, distribution problems; third, the biggest difficulties, that is, online payment problems and long-distance purchase trust crises.
But he knew that these were not the reasons for the decline of 8848, because these difficulties were later overcome by Dangdang, Excellence, and Ali.
In a 2015 interview, Wang Juntao confessed:
The reason for the failure of 8848 today is actually very simple and clear: there is only one reason, that is, investors do not stick to the core business of 8848, they do something else.
Investors of 8848 are well aware that the main business of 8848 is B2C, but at this time, they are eager to cash out 8848, and they can't take care of so much, and they have to build a B2B concept for 8848 at all costs, but the original resources of 8848 are consumed.
If 8848 had not been split under the short-sightedness of capital interests at that time, but slowly crossed the three mountains by itself, perhaps today's e-commerce carnival would have opened on August 8.
The next airsaver
Imagining without discernment is the most terrible thing in the world.
- Goethe
In the current year of 2019, the race for the next wave continues to play out.
Katy Huberty, head of hardware industry research at Morgan Stanley Technology, said: "For the first time in decades, we have seen spending on IT and manufacturing going up at the same time; arguably, they are in a parallel upward cycle. ”
Unlike the wave of Internet innovation that reached white-hot competition in the past two years, innovations in the direction of AI, big data, 5G, industrial robots, new materials, biotechnology and other technologies are bringing changes to the real physical world, and simultaneously affecting the first, second, and third industries.
On the one hand, the innovator group has gained unprecedented potential energy; on the other hand, the deep transformation of the physical world and existing industries is destined to be more difficult, heavier, more dangerous, more expensive, empty or successful, and it takes more time and capital costs to falsify or confirm.
In the next wave that rolls in, different tracks present different narratives.
Some tracks, the pounce and the Reaper have begun to appear.
In the intelligent voice competition of the giants, the former rivals Microsoft, Apple, and Google, which is known for its black technology reserves, all got up early and caught up late.
In 2009, Microsoft integrated voice functions into the Win7 operating system; in 2010, Google launched google voice search (Google Voice Search); in 2011, Apple released Siri, but these products did not really open the market, reduced to chicken ribs.
On the contrary, Amazon, which was a latecomer, found a breakthrough in the landing of intelligent voice through the new AI category released at the end of 2014 - the smart speaker Echo, and opened the future "hundred box war". Google, Apple, JD.com, iFLYTEK, Xiaomi, Ali, Tencent and other large companies have entered the game, startups are also eager to try, in 2015, China alone has more than 50 teams in the simultaneous development of smart speakers.
Today, the global smart speaker market has seen a clear ladder: Amazon is still in the first place, its sales in 2018 was 29.7 million units, the market share of 34.5%, followed by Google also more than 30%, the two divided the global market of more than 60%.
In China, Alibaba, Xiaomi, Baidu, Dingdong (jointly launched by JD.com and iFLYTEK) four players sold a total of 20 million smart speakers last year, accounting for 91% of China's total sales, including Tencent other players accounted for only 9%, entrepreneurs the data is dismal.
The data comes from Statista
https://www.statista.com/statistics/792598/worldwide-smart-speaker-unit-shipment/
Behind smart speakers, the bigger competition is the intelligent voice platform that provides technical support. Amazon relies on the advantage of speakers to enhance the strength of its platform Alexa, at the end of 2018, Alexa has more than 70,000 skills, access to 28,000 devices from 4,500 third parties, the number of 6 times more than the beginning of the year, the data in the top of the voice platform.
Lu Qi once commented with hindsight: The mistake of Apple and Microsoft is to focus on voice assistants on mobile terminals and computer terminals, rather than thinking of developing new devices with AI first.
In fact, the Echo project, launched in 2010 and led by Lab 126, Amazon's consumer electronics development arm, started with the goal of developing new hardware, not platforms.
Echo's initial team was mainly engaged in AR, and it expanded its voice technology strength after acquiring voice startups Yap and Evi in 2011 and 13, respectively. It was also after the Echo was listed that Bezos gradually realized the full potential of Alexa, which was born from the Echo.
As a result, the explosive terminal feeds back to the platform, the platform grows through the terminal, and the positive cycle path of good technology and good scenes has become the common strategy of AI giants.
However, the competition for intelligent voice is still not over. Google quickly stole the landing method from Amazon, and with stronger technical strength and better Q&A experience, it gained a latecomer advantage.
Stone Temple, a research institute, has tested a number of voice assistants on 5,000 frequently asked questions, and Google Assistant has performed 3 times better than Alexa. Previously, a big complaint from consumers about Echo was that it was too stupid to answer the question. At present, the market share of Google's smart speakers has been comparable to that of Amazon.
Stone Temple's review of Google Assistant, Microsoft's Cortana, Apple's Siri, and Amazon's Alexa
In the future, the success or failure of these two companies will more comprehensively outline the different roles of technology reserves and scene mining in the new round of technology entrepreneurship.
Some tracks are at risk of collective empty.
Wilbur Wright had misjudged the pace of development of flying technology, arguing that opponents would not be able to fly long-range in the short term. The currently controversial autonomous driving industry has made the opposite mistake: being overly optimistic that commercialization will soon come.
In the boom of autonomous driving three years ago, many car companies and new companies have taken an aggressive timetable: GM, Ford, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and other established car companies have taken 2021 as the time node to achieve full autonomous driving commercialization; Nissan and Toyota have announced that they will launch self-driving cars in 2020.
Judging from the current technical conditions and industrial development, it is unlikely that there will be a passenger car that is highly autonomous and can be mass-produced and put on the road next year and the year after.
John Krafcik, who is at the helm of Waymo, the world's top self-driving leader, even told the Wall Street Journal in late 2018 that there could be no car that could fully autonomously drive on any road without human intervention, and that the popularity of cars with advanced self-driving capabilities is still decades away.
How many of the surviving players will survive until decades later?
There are also tracks that have just entered the mainstream vision and are blurred.
For example, the eye-catching folding screen boom in early 2019. There are two main types of players: one is the terminal manufacturer, such as Huawei and Samsung, which have just released folding screen mobile phones, and Apple and Xiaomi, which are about to release folding screen mobile phones; the other is to provide flexible OLED technology and production of screen manufacturers behind the scenes, such as Samsung, LG, BOE, and Shentianma.
But whether foldable screens are a new growth point for consumer electronics such as smartphones has not yet been verified. The situation faced by the folding screen may be like a group of completely disappeared tide makers in the battle of the sky at the beginning of the century: the airship company.
For humans at the time, the sky must be the next destination, just as today's consumer electronics will pursue cooler experiences and interactions.
But later history proved that the airship builders saw the general direction, but did not choose the right path. Around 1910, the airship was heavy and long-range compared with the aircraft of the time, but by the second decade of the 20th century, the growth of various functional indicators of the airship was obviously thrown away by the aircraft, and this means of transportation finally withdrew from the historical stage with the crash of the "Hindenburg" in 1937.
Lotta Perez, honorary researcher of SPRU in the United Kingdom, said: "The evolution of emerging technologies to industries is a process in which technological solutions are constantly selected and eliminated, and the space for technical feasibility is gradually shrinking. "Direction is important, so is the method.
Looking back at these stories, the real business transformation is the history of "a thousand boats sinking everywhere".
Generations of tidal waves have been planted on different reasons in turn: arrogance and stubbornness; greed; too optimistic or too pessimistic; failure to continuously improve technology; no imagination or discrimination; short-sighted turning; stepping on technology but stepping on the scene; choosing the right direction but choosing the wrong path.
In the process of an enterprise moving towards the evergreen foundation, the future is vague and the road is dangerous, and the person at the helm must have enough modesty, enough vigilance, enough imagination, enough cohesion, enough seeking truth from facts, and with the help of luck, in order to achieve miracles.
And those who give their hearts and end up rejoicing are also of extraordinary value, and they at least provide a sample for the development of the times. After all, on the road to innovation, failure is inevitable, and success is accidental.
*This article is reprinted by i Dark Horse with the permission of Koshi Lightyear (ID: Jazzyear), authors: Match Q, Xiaobei. i dark horse, let entrepreneurs no longer be lonely.
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