Confucius' students recorded such a story: there is a rule in the state of Lu that if a person from the state of Lu becomes a slave in a foreign country and is redeemed by his own people, the monarch of the state of Lu will reward the redeemer. Once Confucius' student Zi Gong redeemed some slaves from Lu, but he didn't apply for a reward. When he told the teacher about it happily, hoping to get the teacher's praise, Confucius sighed: "You can only prove your personal morality by doing so;" But your behavior makes people who could have received the reward feel embarrassed to apply for it because of you, so that no one will go to other countries to redeem Lu's subjects. I'm just worried that you have a noble man in Lu, but more Lu subjects can't save him. "It can be seen that Confucius said that' the gentleman is figurative' is not to ask the gentleman to take the righteousness, but to advocate the gentleman to take the righteousness.
If Confucius put forward the principle of "taking advantage of righteousness", then Fan Li, a Shang saint who was born at the same time as Confucius and visited Confucius, practiced "taking advantage of righteousness" in business and even formed a principle, making "taking advantage of righteousness" a reproducible business model. At that time, there was a saying that "salt is the price of gold" in the inland of China, but there was also a saying that "salt is a rice barn" along the Shandong coast. Fan Li became more and more loyal and wanted to keep the price of salt in balance all over the world. After three days of observation on the coast, he announced to the world: "I will sell salt on a certain day, which is undoubtedly far and near, and I will not increase the price." It turned out that after three days of ebb and flow, Fan Li not only witnessed the salt stored in the rice barn, but also saw the fish schools separated by reeds 30 miles away. Therefore, Fan Li did not raise the price of selling salt, and Italy was hidden in salted fish. The principle is called compound interest thinking in today's words.
Einstein once said, "Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world". The so-called compound interest thinking means that doing A will drive B's things, and B's things will strengthen A ... Just like snowballing, snowballs stick more and more snow and become bigger and bigger. A bigger snowball can stick more and more snow, and so on, snowballs will be incredible.
Fan Li did not raise the price of salt, which attracted more and more salt merchants. More and more salt merchants help Fan Li sell more and more salted fish. After Fan Li made a profit from salted fish, he could lower the price of salt, and so on, and his business grew. After six years of operation, everyone followed suit and abandoned it. Seeing the vast Central Plains, the people's suffering in farming is extraordinary. I want animals to do it for me, but the price of animals is a hundred times different from the place of origin. I sighed and had a brainwave. I immediately rewarded my daughter for hiring a horse trainer. Three days after the announcement, Zumou and Zu led their brothers, and they were tested and competent. Fan Li sponsored them to make a trip and told them that all the animals they bought should carry 100 kilograms of medicinal materials on their way back. Six years later, the number of imitators increased and the model was abandoned.
After Fan Li, the practice of doing justice with salt and profiting from righteousness continued in China for more than two thousand years, so that in Kelpolo's book, there appeared many unexpected details about salt and China's management of salt affairs. Influenced by this book, in 128 1 year, the Venice government began to give salt subsidies to businessmen from other regions who settled in Venice. Therefore, it is very profitable to transport salt to Venice. These businessmen can transport other commodities, such as Indian spices or condiments, at lower prices than their competitors. This means that Venice paid a high price for salt, but it dominated the trade of spices, condiments and even food, and Venetian merchants rose in the Mediterranean and even the whole of Europe.
In modern business, the proper compound interest model is the ultimate, and the richest nail house and Microsoft founder, Mr. Bill Gates, bear the brunt. More than 40 years ago, when microcomputers first appeared, IBM and Apple considered how to sell more computers, but Gates, like Fan Li, considered "having a computer on every desktop". Fan Li saw the business opportunities that others didn't see, while Gates saw the doorway when watching the video. If there is no video tape, or the video tape is expensive and e-mart doesn't arrive, the video tape will become useless. So Sony jumped out of the circle of video recorder manufacturers at that time, bought out the scheduled film source from Hollywood, made videos, and then supported people who wanted to start businesses to open video rental stores in the community. Such a "righteous act" as Hollywood not only earned money that it could not earn before, but also promoted employment and facilitated users, thus occupying the market. The same is true of computers. According to the practice of IBM and Apple in those years, software companies should be compatible with different hardware systems. Software development costs are high, and the software is not only expensive, but also inconvenient to use. Then the cost performance of computers will be greatly reduced, and users will vote with their feet, which will lead to the slow development of the whole industry.
After seeing this problem, Gates decided to "bridge" between microcomputer and software, so that software enterprises can develop software conveniently and at low cost, and service providers can integrate software and hardware into solutions and services with low threshold. With more software, good service and convenient use, there will be more natural computer users and more computer shipments, and Microsoft will charge computer manufacturers. This "bridge" is the window we are all using today. Not only that, after more users, Microsoft developed Office. If Windows is A, Office is B, A drives B, and B strengthens A, it is a typical snowball compound interest model. The acquisition of this compound interest, of course, stems from Gates' business talent, but isn't it because of his initial intention? If Fan Li didn't have the initial intention of "balancing the price of salt", he couldn't have watched the tide for three days, and he couldn't have found business opportunities hidden in salted fish. If Gates doesn't have the intention of "every desktop has a computer", he can't understand the mode of Windows+Office while watching the video.
Whether it's a businessman or the richest man, whether it's a Venetian businessman in the past or a Sony company in the past, their success has been very clear, that is, making the best use of the right time, the right place and the right people. The Social Enterprise Research Center of Oxford University provides a "spectral classification" which divides enterprises into seven categories. Among them, the "task-locked social enterprise" in the middle can be used to describe the enterprises run by Fan Li and Gates. Being in the middle position, we can also call this kind of enterprise an intermediate enterprise. In other words, the enterprise that benefits from righteousness is the enterprise that takes the middle road, and the so-called business road is the middle road of business.
According to the Book of History, when he gave up the throne to Dayu, he warned Dayu: "The human heart is only in danger, and the Taoist heart is only weak, but the essence is unique, so let it be in the middle." This is the best way to achieve the mean. The spectral classification of enterprises and the definition of "task-locked social enterprise" provided by Oxford University prove theoretically that Tao is feasible in business practice. The successful business of Fan Li and Gates provides a set of practical methods to realize the golden mean in business. Gates' method is the operating system we all know today. In essence, the operating system is a service platform developed with the spirit of * * * as the main contradiction. At that time, the main contradiction in IT industry was not how beautiful computers were and how good the user experience was, but that consumers wanted to use more software on computers conveniently and cheaply. However, on the supply side, both IBM and Apple made their own systems, which led to high software development costs and restricted the development of the industry.
Gates found the main contradiction, developed the operating system, and then opened the operating system to everyone to make money with everyone. This is what Shun told Dayu: "Only Excellence is the foundation, focusing on professional research, and the first is unity." Sticking to the initial intention, persevering in implementation and leading the spiral development of the whole industry and even society is to "let it go". For example, Microsoft took the lead in launching MSN, an online chat tool, and found that companies like Tencent were also making similar products and doing better, so they voluntarily withdrew from the online chat market. If Microsoft didn't take the initiative to quit, with the monopoly position of Windows, it would be impossible for Tencent to contribute everything to society today.
The greatness of Gates lies in that he not only inherited the business mode of fighting righteousness for profit, but also was the first person in the world to realize this mode by digital means. The career he started has far-reaching enlightenment and applicability to all walks of life in China, which is seeking digital transformation today, because the source thought comes from China. However, before Gates and after Fan Li, although there were many big businessmen who spoke bravely, even if they were as brilliant as Sony, they were yesterday's flowers. Only Mr. Gates is not only the richest man, but also the Microsoft he founded is still the company with the largest market value in the world. Why?
Because since we speak out, taking the middle road means paying a higher price, and capital is profit-seeking. On the other hand, Tao can be Tao, which is unusual. When the Tao changes, the meaning changes, otherwise it is not "morality". Therefore, it is not easy to get benefits from righteousness and realize it. But in the digital age, through the application of digital technology and intelligence, the cost of "righteousness" can be reduced; At the same time, because you have mastered the data, you can adapt to the needs. If the road changes, you can use it to change. You can even predict changes in advance and make changes in time according to the data.
For example, there is a motor manufacturer in Ningbo called Hua Stirling, which is the largest Stirling engine production and research and development enterprise in the world. Stirling is an external combustion engine for refrigeration, which has many advantages such as energy saving, environmental protection and accurate temperature control. However, they broke through the traditional sales thinking and turned their attention to the main contradiction that restricts the development of cold chain. They see that every year, a large number of high-quality agricultural products rot in the fields or are lost in the process of transportation turnover because they have not realized the commercialization of the origin. For example, an enterprise in Ningxia led farmers in poor areas to plant cranberries in the desert, but because of storage and transportation problems, fresh fruits could not be sold, and investment in deep processing of cranberries could not open the market. On the other hand, people in cities are eager to eat some good fruits, but they can't eat them. It can be said that you are starving cows while planting grass. At the same time, seeing the problems and business opportunities, they decided to go out of pure product sales and launched the mode of * * * enjoying the cold chain-the fresh field micro-chain.
First of all, they will enjoy the Stirling cold box to the farmers in the production area, and the farmers will have their own cold chain without investing in cold storage and refrigerated trucks. After precooling and packaging, agricultural products are transported to high-speed railway station by Stirling cold box, transported to different cities by high-speed rail freight, and then delivered to stores by courier brother. Guests can choose to pick it up at the store or have it delivered by the store service staff. How to get an order? Because the supply of goods is sufficient and there is no worries about doing fresh food business, the store is naturally willing to meet the needs of consumers and earn money that could not have been earned. In this way, although it is much more difficult to take a big bend than to sell a cold box, the advantage is that there is data! With data, the supply chain can be continuously optimized. For example, customers who have sold raspberry fresh fruit can sell raspberry deep-processed products such as raspberry red wine, just like Fan Li selling salt, which means salted fish; Fresh fields sell raspberries in micro-chains, and Italy sells raspberry red wine. Compared with red wine brewed from grapes, raspberry red wine has an extraordinary mellow taste. Next, the optimized supply chain will inevitably bring better customer experience and more traffic, and more traffic will bring more and better suppliers. This forms an endless ecological closed loop. This is based on digital justice!
Therefore, when the Middle Road culture benefiting from righteousness meets the integration of digitalization, industrialization and modernization, it will inject vigorous vitality into China's economy. Chinese businessmen in the new era will inevitably emerge more and more big businessmen!
Source | Jane Su Life, WeChat official account jiansulife.