If you do many things half a step ahead, you may become a pioneer, and if you are too far ahead, you may become a martyr.
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Image source: meeting site
On December 9~10, the "21st Annual Meeting of Chinese Business Leaders" sponsored by China Entrepreneur magazine was grandly held. In the "Theme Sharing: My Product View" session held on December 10, Li Peng, founder, chairman and CEO of Quantum Song Group, made a keynote speech.
Here are the core takeaways:
1. Half a step ahead, you may become a pioneer, one step ahead, two steps ahead, you may be a martyr.
2. Consumers don't know what they need, and if they want to understand the real needs of consumers, they need to make judgments based on their own cognition.
3. After truly understanding the needs of customers, only half a step in advance to make a product has real value.
The following is a transcript of Li Peng's live speech (with abridgement):
Quantum Song is an enterprise that provides online learning and Xi services for adults. When it comes to products, we must first mention how we understand user needs. Jobs said that consumers don't really know what they need, and they don't say, 'This is what I want) until we bring out the product.
In 2008, I started to do mobile Internet at Baidu. The most advanced mobile phone we used at the time was the BlackBerry, which was densely packed with keypads. In fact, our understanding at the time was that a smartphone should look like a computer, so those buttons on the computer should also be on the phone. However, since the iPhone came out, this has been completely turned upside down, and the BlackBerry is gone. But if you let the users at that time tell you that the iPhone is the mobile phone of the future, it is basically unlikely, because users will not have such a cognition.
In addition, Henry Ford said back then, "If a user tells me what he wants, he will ask for a faster horse." "Just like users don't know what their mobile phones will look like in the future, users don't know what vehicles will look like in the future.
In general, because users are not so aware of the latest technology, many times, users do not have a clear understanding of their real needs.
Sometimes to make a good product and a good company is actually to find a way out in the fog. Lei Jun always said, "Strategy is to do the right thing at the right time." "The key is how we judge what is the "right time", here I share a point of view, we have to do half a step in advance of the judgment, half a step in advance of the strategy, many things half a step in advance, you may become a pioneer, one step ahead, two steps ahead, you may become a martyr.
Everyone knows that new energy vehicles are very popular now, and China is leading in the world, but what everyone doesn't know is that electric vehicles have been invented a hundred years ago. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, tens of thousands of electric vehicles were actually running on the streets of Europe such as London, Paris, and New York, but the later era was the era of fuel vehicles, until the last 20 years. Because the invention of the electric car was too far ahead more than 100 years ago, it became a martyr at that time.
Let me tell you a little example. My mother lives in Beijing, but she doesn't live with me, so I go to see her every once in a while and have a meal. Once I saw a bunch of deliveries on her doorstep, I was surprised because my mother had never shopped online before. Later, I learned that these were things she bought from Douyin and Pinduoduo. I was even more surprised when she opened the package, she bought me a new phone, a watch, and even wanted to change my body from the inside out, even though I was already using the latest iPhone.
At that moment, I was inspired by the fact that middle-aged and elderly people like my mother have been able to use their mobile phones to do many things, such as watching short videos and watching live shopping. In this way, the threshold for middle-aged and elderly people to use smartphones for life and entertainment is getting lower and lower, and the time has come to do middle-aged and elderly interest Xi.
So we launched a new brand called "Thousand Feet School", a thousand feet from a poem by Li Bai: "How to be in the sky, straight up to thousands of feet", through these two poems, you can experience the artistic conception.
Now many middle-aged and elderly people should actually be called "new old people", like me, the post-80s, to say a heart-piercing word, I haven't reacted too much, I have begun to run five, the last batch of big brothers, the post-70s have now begun to run six. My mother is a post-50s generation and is in her 60s, and the growth environment of these people has caught up with China's development for a relatively good period of time, so many people's cognitive level and wealth level have been greatly improved.
In this case, the products and services they need are obviously different from the elderly in their previous impressions. Of course, this judgment is not difficult to make, and we could have made such a judgment ten years ago. But as I said earlier, if you did something for the elderly many years ago, there is a high probability that you will become a martyr. So we judged that for me, that strategic timing point, maybe my deepest feeling came when my mother bought a lot of couriers and wanted to transform me from the inside out.
Serving middle-aged and elderly people, such as teaching them calligraphy, teaching them to draw, and even teaching the elderly to play the piano, many people may think that this is a very small category, but in fact, our growth is very good. We will focus on the needs of the elderly in the future, and we will do some layout that is not limited to learning and Xi services, so as to help the elderly enrich their material and spiritual life.
In short, we believe that in the current environment, services and products for the middle-aged and elderly are a sunrise industry with great opportunities. The university for the elderly is now in a state of rapid growth, and the growth of the online learning Xi we are doing is multiplying.
We believe that the post-60s and post-70s are now entering the stage of middle and old age, they first have stronger spending power, and secondly, in terms of numbers, like I am in around 1980 to 1985, the annual birth population is more than 20 million, almost two or three times that of now. Focusing on the needs of these people, what we do is a business with demographic dividends and a business with sunrise significance, and we have to look at this problem structurally.
The things that the elderly need include not only the needs of travel and vacation, but also the demands for fun and socialization. It's easy to put ourselves in the shoes of the elderly who feel lonely and who want some spiritual uplift. Our 1,000-foot school is dedicated to serving middle-aged and elderly people. The Thousand Feet School not only teaches the elderly the knowledge and skills related to piano, chess, calligraphy and painting, but more importantly, provides a companion service. We have teachers, class teachers, and many students, and students can use this platform to meet new friends, which is also very important for the elderly, and loneliness is actually a very normal state for the elderly.
We believe that the needs of the elderly can be summarized as: first, self-please, including self-improvement, and second, social companionship.
To add a little bit to this, if you want to do a good business, it must be in accordance with human needs. Why is it easy for you to brush Tik Tok every day for two hours to pass, some people play games and go in half a day, and many people are very happy when they do these things, because this is a typical business that is conforming to human nature. But generally speaking, adults learn Xi a bit against human nature. How to make your product more humane in your target group, so that he can accept and even like it calmly, this is very important. For example, our piano lessons focus on teaching everyone to play a simple piece in a short period of time, and students will feel very happy when they learn a piece.
At the same time, we require the class teacher to take the initiative to serve, and there must be various communication greetings, Xi reminders, and even chatting about family life every day.
We also organize activities such as piano competitions, calligraphy competitions, stump health exchange days, and garden parties to enhance students' sense of gain and social participation.
Through this series of measures, we have turned the original Xi of learning that was a bit against human nature into a happy Xi of learning.
To sum up, when you see a trend and make a product, it's more often than not. But when you really understand the needs and make a product half a step in advance, there is real value.
We see that many people are making great strides into the industry of middle-aged and elderly sunrise, and we also very much hope that many colleagues can serve this group with us, and we will jointly promote the prosperity of the industry in the process.
The sunset is infinitely good, and the dream is just the right year!
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