Opportunity cost thinking of industrial development
I remember that boss Ren said that the biggest waste of the company is the waste of repetition and experience.
And failing to achieve the world's number one position at a key point, the lost opportunity cost should be the biggest loss when facing a century of industrial change, and this is precisely the easiest to ignore and the least easy to achieve.
Because of the problem of human genes, we always hope or naturally crave certainty and seeing is believing. To discuss a certain, real, and clear problem, everyone can easily participate, but for a problem that does not yet exist, even in the future There is always something that is impossible to talk about. Although there is Ma Yun’s famous saying "Because I believe, I see", but in daily life and work, facing practical and invisible problems every day, most of the discussion and energy still return to what can be done and do something first. It is also in line with the "Internet" thinking, crossing the river by feeling the stones. But crossing the river by feeling the stones, at least you can see the other side of the river in your eyes, so you still know a direction, at most you don’t have enough concentration, stop and go, or sometimes people on the bank will yell, don’t stand in the middle of the river. . And if the river is replaced by the sea, few people would mention "crossing the sea by feeling the stones". In the ICT future, it seems that there are many "sea-like opportunities", regardless of whether it is a blue ocean or a red ocean. This requires both long-term capabilities (with the help of various satellites) and the courage and ability to build large ships, otherwise large-scale navigation will become infeasible.
After talking so much, back to the question that the title wants to explain. Although everyone knows the "dilemma of innovators" and "the original sin of leaders", and even reveals that we will be trapped in such a profound truth as "not being able to expand the space and cake, and falling into the trap of competing with customers for profit", but back to measures , Still "know a lot of truth, but still have a bad life." Combining with the recent internal seminar of ORAN, we found that our insight is indeed very wide and deep, but there are still big blind spots in the initiative because of some single assumptions. Here is a list for readers to think about:
First, why we are genetically known for pressure input and Vantelite ammunition, and our company’s actual R&D investment and engineers have huge advantages over existing players and potential players. In the face of proposals like ORAN, we do not Take the initiative to participate, choose its scenarios and needs, and guide its structural innovations, turning this field into a good opportunity to continuously accumulate high-tech thresholds and widen the gap with opponents, and naturally defines ORAN as introducing new players and lowering the barriers to competition. . This is like an excellent "student tyrant" who should have a natural desire for the difficulty of the test questions, and should be eager for "extra points", or an excellent "long-distance runner" should hope that the distance of the marathon will be longer. Of course, some people say that if the total income is fixed, even if you are a high school student, running God will not actively waste your brain and physical energy, it is not cost-effective. However, our pattern in the telecommunications market is far from reaching the ceiling, and in many competitions, we are far from getting a few blocks away from our opponents. This can be confirmed from the number of 5G commercial contracts. The single-point feature is 18 months ahead of our opponents. Certainly there are, but there should be room for the absolute lead of the product;
Second, we all say that advanced customer needs are our main driving force. The company's wireless product leadership is also benchmarking the leading advantages obtained by the world's advanced mobile operators VDF and CMCC, and the first realization of the joint innovation with customers that year. Obtained our huge market advantage in the 4G era. Then the question arises. Who is the most advanced, leading, radical, and fastest growing operator in terms of network cloudification and larger 5G 2B? There is no doubt that we should remove the existing VDF and CMCC. We also need to see operators such as Rjio and Lotte. In the Indian market, it is clear that Rjio has made operators such as VDF miserable. If we don’t embrace the needs of these customers, we will push them into the hands of Samsung or other disruptors. Therefore, the opportunities for people like Samsung are not just relying on their own efforts, they still have our support to some extent. We gave them the opportunity to meet the needs of our customers. They went from being unable to participate in this game to becoming able to participate, and they also stood on some "ethical" commanding heights.
Third, of course, some people say that customer needs need to be identified, and Rjio and Lotte are not high-quality customers. So what about VDF, DT and even CMCC, why are they so interested in ORAN? And from the speeches of VDF, Orange and other customers participating in ORAN, it is not only the participation of its innovation department. So here has to mention another blind spot. We see that ORAN has only a single perspective, that is, customers definitely want to introduce multiple manufacturers, hope not to be locked by us, and even hope to lower prices. This is only a single perspective of network construction and procurement, so we desperately explain our cost advantages, or hope to pass Autonomous driving further shows that we are also trying to solve OpeX's problems. But in fact, I forget that all major operators are not "stupid". Their thinking and desire for their own commercial success are not weaker than ours. The only thing they lack is the necessary technology and capabilities. We have all seen the problem of pipe scissors, but it has not been solved for so many years. Customers or big Ts should have a bigger perspective on ORAN, which is to expand the ecosystem and expand the opening of pipeline capabilities. It is these essential demands (open source rather than throttling) that the pipeline needs to be more agile, automatic and flexible, and then Technically embrace servitization, modularization and deconstruction. If we do not help customers to expand the ecosystem, expand sales, strengthen 2B innovation and model expansion for a long time, then customers will really turn to other positions and manufacturers and actively seek out the "disruptors" in our eyes.
In summary, we have lost the opportunity to invest in R&D instead of actively embracing "workload" and "difficulty", and we have also lost an industry that represents "advanced" customer needs or industry needs to make the cake bigger and share cake dividends. opportunity. In the face of ORAN, the loss of opportunity cost is our biggest loss and waste. We should have more confidence and self-confidence in our investment in the industry and R&D capabilities, instead of "a cup of a bow and a snake shadow" and a "vegetable army", facing the opportunity Turning a blind eye to hearing and not listening, like the government of country A, it abandons the responsibilities of the boss of the industry and gives up opportunities for latecomers. Our employees and R&D expenses are rigid and sunk costs. How to save can not let us lead, how to "pierce the sky", "root", create opportunities, seize opportunities, throw away opponents a few blocks, do not take the initiative Pan-politicization of architectural innovation (we should hate it even more), even if there is this trend, we must use open issue setting and technological innovation to guide the industry away from politicization, so as to build our bright future.