On the afternoon of March 12, Zhou Houjian, 65, who has been in charge of Hisense Group for 30 years, chose to retire in a low-key manner, and Lin Lan, former vice chairman of Hisense Group, took over as chairman. Hisense Group bid farewell to the Zhou Houjian era.
"There are no flowers, no red carpets, no banners and grand general meetings, only the friendship of other colleagues and the long salute and applause." Hisense Group informed that on the afternoon of March 12, Zhou Houjian participated in a brief "Letter Seal" logo unveiling activity on the first floor of Hisense Building to express Hisense's respect for the supremacy of "integrity", and then announced that he had resigned as chairman of Hisense Group and officially retired before the group's monthly business work briefing. Then, he said goodbye to his colleagues and left Hisense.
Zhou Houjian is one of the elders of China's home appliance industry, and his leadership has always been based on the business philosophy of "technology establishment and steady operation". Zhou Houjian himself is also from a technical background, and this founder gene has left a deep mark on Hisense.
Zhou Houjian has two considerations for this handover of the chairmanship: one is that Hisense is rapidly growing into a "world-class enterprise" and needs a leader with an international vision, and the other is that according to the principle of continuous improvement of management, Hisense needs to change a management method.
However, after Zhou Houjian retired, he remained in the honor of "honorary chairman for life", which is also the wish of all directors of Hisense Group.
Zhou Houjian
"Technical man" Zhou Houjian
Zhou Houjian was born in 1957, graduated from university in 1982 and joined his predecessor Qingdao TV Factory, served as the director of the factory in 1992, retired in 2022, served Hisense for 40 years, and ran Hisense for 30 years, Hisense changed from a small factory with revenue of 400 million yuan to a diversified home appliance group.
In 2021, Hisense Group's sales revenue was 175.5 billion yuan, of which overseas revenue accounted for 41.3%.
China's color TV industry has always been popular in various marketing concepts to drive product sales, but Hisense has always taken the "technology enterprise" route, relatively low-key, focusing on technology research and development. Hisense this gene can also be said to be the founder gene, although Zhou Houjian was not the original founder of Hisense, he injected Hisense with a very low-level and powerful technical gene.
Relevant information shows that in the early 1980s, Li Dezhen, then deputy director of Qingdao TV Factory, resisted the pressure and insisted on introducing more advanced world-class color TV production technology and equipment, laying the foundation for Hisense's "technology-oriented" development strategy, and deeply implanting the concept of technology first into Hisense's development strategy.
In 1992, Zhou Houjian served as the director of Qingdao TV Factory, continued to adhere to and strengthen this line, and he made drastic adjustments to the organizational structure of the technical background, renamed the design department as the Research Institute, focused on promoting technological innovation, and promoted the Institute to an unprecedented position, becoming a "talent special zone" with tilted wages and benefits in the factory.
This "technology first" strategy has been implemented. Since then, almost every time Hisense has set foot in an industry, it has been fissioned after incubating sufficient talents, technologies and products in the R&D center, which has promoted the rapid development of Hisense's diversification.
Later, Hisense's business philosophy was summarized as "technology enterprise, steady operation", no matter how complex the environmental and competitive challenges are, the pursuit of technological leadership has always been one of the core secrets of Hisense to surpass the technical iteration challenges of the industry and achieve scale growth.
Zhou Houjian has also pointed out many times that technology is an important factor in the development of Hisense. Zhou Houjian and Hisense's major contribution to the Chinese business community is the consistent practice of "technology enterprises" and the experience and wealth accumulated in practicing "technology is the foundation of governing enterprises and establishing enterprises".
When Zhou Houjian was elected as the "2017 Top Ten Economic Persons of the Year", he summed up his past with Hisense on stage and said, "I was assigned to Hisense after graduating from college, and I have been working in Hisense for 36 years, and I have been working in the position of 'being a family' for 27 years. ”
Due to its dedication to technology, Hisense is also the first Chinese home appliance company to enter the chip field. In 1999, just when the "color TV price war" was in full swing, Zhou Houjian revived the matter of making cores at an internal meeting: "What is the possibility of us getting involved in chips now?" ”
Since January 2001, Hisense has set up a R&D team with an average age of 28 years in Shanghai, and after 1600 days and nights of research, it has finally successfully developed the first digital TV processing chip with independent intellectual property rights and industrialized in the field of mainland video. This chip, which is named hi-view "xinxin", its structural design and key algorithm design have reached the international advanced level, which can be widely applied to digital high-definition color TVs and can completely replace similar foreign products.
At the end of 2015, Hisense released the Hi-View Pro picture quality engine chip, making Hisense officially comparable to industry giants Samsung and Sony, becoming the only TV company in China with its own high-end picture quality chip, and was shortlisted for the world's top three.
Today, Hisense's picture quality chip has been iterated to the fourth generation. Independent research and development of The first 8K+120hz ultra-high-definition picture quality chip in China has been returned to the film and taken the lead in applying to the whole machine product, and it is expected to achieve full mass production in November this year.
At the same time, Xinxin Micro Company's screen-side driver chip (TCON) products have covered the entire series from high-definition to 8K ultra-high-definition, in 2020, TCON chip shipments exceeded 40 million, the cumulative shipment has reached 100 million, the current global share of more than 50%, ranking first, and a large number of shipments to the domestic first echelon of panel manufacturers, including BOE, Huaxing Optoelectronics, CLP Panda, Huike and Rainbow and other mainstream panel companies.
Saved "five treasures" for hisense family
As the head of Hisense for 30 years, Zhou Houjian retired on the one hand, he took the initiative to retire, on the other hand, he also felt that the timing of the handover was appropriate at this time.
As a state-owned enterprise, Hisense Group completed the mixed reform in 2021, introducing strategic investors plus employee management shareholdings, making The New Hisense Group a non-state-owned holding company, and this more flexible system is more conducive to competing in the home appliance market.
Tianyan's investigation shows that after the mixed reform, the major shareholders of Hisense Group hold a total of 36.85% of the shares of natural persons; among them, the shares of natural persons include most of the grass-roots and above managers of Hisense.
At the beginning of the stock reform, Zhou Houjian and other executives unanimously gave up the "lifelong holding of shares" and designed the equity incentive principle of "people in the stock, stocks changing with the post, leaving the post and retiring the shares, and circulating incentives". This also means that after Zhou Houjian retires, his equity in the company will also be recovered.
Hisense Group official summary Zhou Houjian left "five treasures" for the company.
First, as the actual founder, he founded the Hisense Group, turning a small local factory into one of the world's largest home appliance companies, and the group is about to enter the world's top 500 companies.
Second, as a technical paranoia, it has laid the engineer gene for Hisense, making innovation and research and development the surging blood of Hisense.
Third, as a long-termist, he has the courage to subvert traditional industries and left an advanced industrial layout for Hisense; today, Hisense has become a representative of the industrial transformation and upgrading of China's home appliance enterprises.
Fourth, as the founder of Hisense culture, he has left a corporate culture of honesty and integrity and a clean and healthy organizational atmosphere for Hisense. This is the greatest spiritual wealth left by Zhou Houjian to the enterprise.
Fifth, as a brave victim of vested interests, he took the lead in giving up the shares that can be held for life, and created an equity incentive mechanism for Hisense that "people are in the shares, people withdraw from shares", so that the development of enterprises can obtain a long-term endogenous driving force.
Zhou Houjian's successor, Lin Lan, born in 1958, graduated from the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the Tennessee University of Science and Technology in the early years, received a doctorate, joined Hisense in 2006, is an active practitioner and firm implementer of Hisense's internationalization strategy, and is also a meritorious contributor to Hisense's overseas development layout.