Former Intel CEO Andy Grove has a book called "Only the Paranoid Survive". The central idea of the full text is to warn others that to be prepared for danger in times of peace, the only way to survive is to break the rules and not stick to the status quo.
1. Why are companies focusing on growth?
1. Nokia's cheap sale
Nokia, which once ranked first in the world's listed companies in terms of market value in 2013, sold its core mobile phone business for a mere US$7.2 billion, a price that was less than a fraction of the company's market value of hundreds of billions in its glory days.
On January 9, 2007, Apple launched the iPhone, and Nokia's crisis began with the press conference. Kallasvuo Kallasvuo, who was the CEO of Nokia at the time, was confident that Apple would not have any impact on Nokia.
After the Android system and Apple's IOS system were released successively, Google also invited Nokia to join Android, but Nokia also has conditions, that is, it must enjoy special treatment such as Nokia map navigation and music. And Google said that all mobile phone manufacturers will be treated the same, and will not take care of you alone! So Nokia continued to use the Symbian system.
It wasn't until 2008 that Nokia's management realized that fighting against Apple's smooth operating system was Nokia's biggest challenge and top priority. At that time, Nokia's Symbian system was no longer suitable for the development of the smartphone era, and Nokia later chose Microsoft's mobile phone system Windows Mobile, which was not excellent in itself, which led to Nokia's lack of recovery.
Change is risky, but if you keep conservative and repeat, even if you are rich, it will only take a few years for you to lose all your wealth.
2. Andy Grove's Biggest Annoyance
We know that the world leader in PC processors is Intel. However, when Gordon Moore and Andy Grove first founded Intel in 1968, the main business at that time was still memory. Grove resolutely decided to give up the memory market and switch to microprocessors, eventually becoming the overlord of the generation.
The story is not over yet. It is hard for you to imagine that Intel, which is struggling alone in the field of PC processors, has 0 share in the mobile processor market today, and it is really 0.
Surely we have questions? Doesn't Intel want to make mobile processors?
The answer is definitely no. Going back to 12 years, Intel achieved a profit of 11 billion U.S. dollars, compared with Qualcomm ($6.1 billion), Texas Instruments ($1.8 billion), Broadcom ($720 million), NVIDIA ($560 million) and Marvel ($310 million) combined ($9.5 billion). However, the old rival AMD lost more than one billion US dollars that year. It can be said that Intel is experiencing the pinnacle of life, and the PC market has a lot of money waiting for them to earn.
Intel also had a debate on whether to make a mobile phone processor. In the end, they thought that mobile phones are for making calls. It would be great if they could take pictures and play songs. Only under 3 inches.
Of course, Intel did not completely give up the opportunity in the mobile field, but it started a little late. However, when it wanted to return to the mobile market, it found that there was already a high wall here. At this time, Qualcomm adopted the amd architecture. The mainstream occupies absolute leadership.
Intel's complacency and focusing on the stock market have led to the possibility of further growth of the company. This also became one of Andy Grove's greatest regrets before retiring.
Of course, Intel’s story is not really over yet. Today’s Intel has found what they think is the next breakthrough point—the automotive processor market. When it becomes a smart car, history will prove Intel's vision today.
Advantages do not last forever, stagnation has no way out, and laxity means failure.
2. Conservation and innovation
Large enterprises are constrained by their own business, and they are unwilling, let alone dare to easily change the fundamentals on which they rely for survival. But without such concerns, startups can innovate boldly, and the story of the future will be more exciting. Behind this is the game between growth and stock.
The stock market is of course important, because it is the foundation for the survival of enterprises today. But you never know when it will become your burden.
- Xunlei won a very high market share with its leading download technology back then. However, the speed of the Internet has increased too fast. Suddenly one day Xunlei discovered that people do not need to download.
- Master Kong’s market value once exceeded 140 billion Hong Kong dollars, and it sold 6 billion packets of instant noodles. Master Kong has always regarded Uni-President as his strongest enemy. Unexpectedly, Master Kong and Uni-President were defeated by an industry that does not make instant noodles. It took two years for the takeaway to appear out of thin air and spread all over the country. People suddenly discovered that with more choices, instant noodle companies have entered a cold winter in the past few years.
- The real reason for Nikon's withdrawal from China is not Canon, but the rise of smartphones...
Therefore, innovation, change, and finding new growth points have become eternal topics.
In the frenzy, there is only change. Either take the initiative to think about change, or react passively. Whether it is anticipating change or breaking the boat in an existential crisis. How to actively respond to challenges and realize self-breakthrough and transformation has become a difficult problem for all enterprises.
3. Find ways to grow
1. See the future
Foreseeing the future may seem very metaphysical, but it is actually an ability that everyone has. The most common ones are "I think...", "I think...", "In my opinion...", these are all personal opinions on some matters that I am not sure about. A personal subjective guesswork of a situation. Looking for increments is actually looking at the present through the future.
Why do more than half of China's Internet companies are losing money and still get the favor of the capital market?
Why can the stock price of Meituan, which has just stopped losing money, rise continuously and become the third largest Internet company in China?
After losing 9 years in a row, why can Tesla still support a valuation of 50 billion U.S. dollars?
Capital is always profit-seeking, and they pay more attention to future premiums than small losses.
It is because the capital market believes that the future is dominated by electric vehicles, and in this industry, Tesla is at least currently the most likely investment in the entire industry to become the king. Then it's only a matter of time before his stake grows.
Meituan has 3.6 million merchants and 250 million users across the country. It includes many consumption scenarios such as food delivery, in-store hotel and tourism, among which the income from food delivery is twice that of Ele.me, which is a super platform similar to Amazon.
** Therefore, the premise of growth is to meet the trend of the times and the usage habits of users to find industry dividends. **It's like Kodak, who imagined that users would change their minds to use film cameras, but in the end they failed to win users' attention.
2. Make people scream
The premise of growth is to have a screaming product.
Here we talk about Nokia's failure again. If a thousand people are asked to summarize Nokia's failure, there may be a thousand answers. Putting aside the business failure here, what is the root cause of Nokia's product failure?
As a traditional mobile phone company represented by Nokia, the research and development department has a BIG RULE: the mobile phone must not be broken. So Nokia's mobile phone can smash walnuts. But is people's real appeal really the hardness or quality of the phone?
In 2008, a user wrote a letter to Nokia headquarters, which caused a strong vibration within Nokia. This user didn't make sense, he just gave an example of a detail of his daily operation. When he changed the ringtone, he needed to go down 5 levels from the home page to find it. Edit countless text messages every day, but you need to choose from "Edit SMS", "Multimedia SMS", "Voice SMS" and "Email".
After the iPhone 1 was launched, a Nokia executive bought an iPhone. He gave the iPhone 1 and the latest Nokia mobile phone to his daughter at the same time, and his daughter quickly got started. Before going to bed, the daughter asked: "Can I put this amazing phone next to my bed?" He knew at that moment that Nokia was in big trouble.
The story of Nokia actually summed up a rule: It is also very simple to test the quality of a product, just to see which one is liked by 4-5 year old children.
There is a Nokia enthusiast in China, he has repeatedly complained about Nokia's functions like Nokia. But the reply I got was: You are right, but we just can't change it. This enthusiast was Lei Jun who later founded Xiaomi.
Perhaps stimulated by Nokia, Lei Jun asked 100 experiencers to participate in the design when he started making mobile phones. The original intention of Lei Jun to create Xiaomi is to make a product that allows users to participate and make users scream.
"Product is 1, Marketing is 0". This is Li Wanqiang's summary of the Xiaomi model. At an Internet conference, Li Wanqiang summed up the success of Xiaomi. He said: All intermediate links have been cut off. Only when the product is screaming enough can you have the power to magnify 10 times or 100 times. If the product is not screaming enough, it will be difficult to maintain it by marketing alone.
Growth is to maintain the ability to track customer insight and data through continuous efforts, and to solve possible problems. The essence of growth is the consolidation of basic capabilities.
This requires the product owner to have the ability to identify good products, sensitivity to beauty and critical thinking.
3. Create word of mouth
With a good product, it only takes one point to cause explosive growth of the product.
To see whether the company's products are good or not, you can actually tell by its marketing methods. Most companies want their products to have word-of-mouth more by means of marketing, and have developed N kinds of tactics, such as crazy discounts, celebrity endorsements, gift giving, team building, bargaining, and racking their brains to think of novel ways to play. Gimmicks are important, but never a selling point. The scream king of the past is "Be Different".
There is a store of Holister, a brand under A&F, in Beijing. Former A&F CEO Mikes Jeffrie insists on "sexy marketing". Therefore, he does three things in brand marketing:
- The opening invites half-naked male models with eight-pack abs to help out;
- The storefront is dimly lit, and the air smells of strong cologne.
- The salespersons are all looking for good-looking people, and they all wear beachwear.
It sounds tempting, but A&F's performance has declined for 12 consecutive months. Why can't such eye-catching activities as sexy marketing save A&F, because A&F's products are too outdated, and most of the designs of A&F clothes are printed with big logos on the clothes. And today's young people don't like this way.
The tipping point of the product is always the word-of-mouth of the users. But a good product does not necessarily have a good reputation. A good word of mouth means exceeding users' expectations and enjoying five-star treatment in a one-star restaurant. And customers who enjoy the experience spontaneously spread it to their friends, which is word of mouth.
Zhang Xiaolong said: "Many companies can pass the technical level, but they lack art and philosophical thinking." He said that the real Internet products are the combination of technology and art.
The core of growth is to create the energy to detonate user communication, and the core of the explosive point is user word-of-mouth. The essence of user word-of-mouth is a screaming product.