Source: Huaxia Cornerstone E Insight (ID: chnstonewx)
Without innovation, it is almost impossible to survive in the high-tech industry. In this field, there is no chance to breathe, even if it is only a little behind, it means gradual death. -Ren Zheng Fei)
Strategy is the planning and planning of enterprise development, which is oriented to the future, linked with the environment and based on reality. It studies the future of enterprises. Innovation is a process, and the development process of an enterprise is a process of continuous innovation. Fundamentally speaking, the strategy of sustainable innovation and development is the guarantee to realize the rapid, stable and healthy development of enterprises. Enterprise managers should not only pay attention to technological innovation, marketing innovation, management innovation and financing innovation, but also pay attention to the innovation strategy in enterprise development.
Is Huawei an innovative enterprise? An executive of a communication manufacturer once concluded that the biggest event in the global communication industry in the past 20 years was the unexpected rise of Huawei. With the destructive innovation of price and technology, Huawei has completely subverted the traditional pattern of the communication industry, so that most ordinary people in the world can enjoy low-cost and high-quality information services.
But the word "innovation" is rare in Huawei's "management dictionary". In hundreds of speeches, articles and Huawei documents, "innovation" was mentioned less frequently. Especially in the atmosphere of the so-called "Internet thinking" prevailing in China industry in recent two years, Ren even talked about chasing the dragon spacecraft in the spirit of tortoise, demanding "rejecting opportunism" up and down, following Huawei's established path, not being disturbed by flowers and plants on the roadside, and strengthening confidence to move forward.
Then, what kind of corporate philosophy is reflected behind all this, as well as the innovative strategy and practice based on this concept. What innovative ideas can Huawei managers learn from?
First, Huawei's innovation process.
Everyone wants to know how Huawei innovates. I hope to talk about change in combination with innovation. Many enterprises are particularly keen on the research of various innovation modes, such as introducing absorptive innovation, gradual independent innovation and breakthrough independent innovation. However, in Huawei, "independent innovation" is a kind of "reactionary" formulation. Ren always talks about "open innovation", with special emphasis on "customer-centered" innovation.
Huawei's innovation model can generally be divided into two stages, with the performance comparison with Ericsson, the last super competitor in the world as the dividing point. The first stage is an innovative model as an industry chaser before 20 1 1; The second stage is the innovation mode after entering the "no man's land" as the industry leader in recent five years.
The first stage: learning, catching up and differential innovation
At this stage, Huawei's learning benchmark and competitor is Ericsson. Huawei once vividly said: "Ericsson is a guiding light in the vast sea. When the lights are turned off, Huawei doesn't know where to go. "
1. Learning and catching-up stage: In order to catch up with the best in the industry, Huawei has set its own learning benchmarks and main competitors in various segments, studied hard and constantly surpassed competitors in different stages. The goal is to enter the top three in the world, not only "big" but also "strong". From the simple "cost-effective" competition in the early stage, we will gradually replace key components and technologies and strive to enhance core competitiveness. For example, in the field of optical transmission, optical transmission products can surpass the level of competitors through technological breakthroughs in key components and chip manufacturing.
2. Differentiated innovation stage: In addition to Huawei, many successful companies are actually like this. QQ, on which Tencent made its fortune, has won the market by adding differentiated innovations such as cross-terminal login, personalized avatar and fast file transfer on the basis of the existing ICQ. To form differentiation, we must have a deep understanding of customer needs. Therefore, Huawei has established a marketing system focusing on customer demand management and product planning. Demand management has been extended to the nerve endings of the first-line "iron triangle" market, and a three-level demand management process and decision-making system supported by it has been established. Respond to customers' needs quickly and turn them into products with differentiated competitive advantages. The innovation mode at this stage greatly supported Huawei's first management reform marked by integrated product development (IPD) and enriched its connotation.
The second stage: customer-centered open innovation
On an equal footing with the world's leading competitors, especially after entering the "no man's land", Huawei has put more emphasis on customer-centered open innovation at this time. At this point, many scholars and entrepreneurs have different views.
"Being three steps ahead is a martyr", clearly defining the boundaries of innovation and mastering the development trend and rhythm of business, Huawei emphasizes that technology only needs to be half a step ahead. Ren is a person with a heavy technical plot. From 65438 to 0978, he attended the national science and technology conference as a representative of the "science and technology pacesetter" of the army and paid tribute to many Nobel inventions made by Marconi and Bell Laboratories. But when he saw that many excellent companies in the communication industry used to be Huawei's benchmarks and rivals, they fell down one by one, fully realizing the innovation of a commercial organization, and must "ensure the company's commercial success." After entering the "no man's land", taking customers as the center is precisely the basis to ensure business success. Ren stressed that especially in the case of limited financial resources, even if the funds are abundant, Huawei should focus on the main channels.
Open innovation is to absorb the essence of the "universe", including learning from competitors. Huawei is still learning about the offline store layout of the Blue and Green Corps and how to maintain high profitability, learning about Samsung's key equipment research and development and supply chain operation, and learning about Apple's business model and ecological chain construction.
Second, Huawei's innovative practice.
An enterprise can develop continuously for more than ten years, and there must be fundamental factors at work. In Huawei, this fundamental factor is independent innovation, and Huawei's great success is the great success of independent innovation. As the management guru Peter Drucker pointed out, "the success of innovation lies not in its novelty, scientific connotation and dexterity, but in its success in the market." Huawei's great success in the market proves the success of its independent innovation strategy.
1, technological innovation
Huawei's success in developed markets such as Europe has benefited from two major structural subversive product innovations, one called distributed base station and the other called SingleRAN. The design principle of this subversive product refers to the integration function of 2G, 3G and 4G wireless communication systems in a cabinet, which can theoretically save customers 50% of the construction cost and is also very environmentally friendly. SingleRAN solution adopts a unified platform architecture and software-definable design mode, which provides flexible adjustment and expansion of dynamic network capacity, realizes coordination and centralized scheduling among different standard networks such as GSM/UMTS/LTE, effectively improves network resource efficiency, and provides users with ubiquitous broadband service experience.
Huawei's competitors also try to imitate innovation, but so far there is no substantive breakthrough, because there are complex mathematical operations behind this multi-standard technology integration, not simple building block assembly.
It is such a revolutionary and subversive product that has brought huge gains to Huawei in the European and global markets in the past few years. When the chairman of a state-owned enterprise met Ren, he said, "Old Ren, how did you achieve such great success in the world with low-price tactics?" Zheng Fei blurted out, you are wrong, we don't rely on low prices, but on high prices. In the European market, the highest price is Ericsson, and the average price of Huawei's products is 5% lower than Ericsson. But it is 5%-8% higher than Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Siemens.
2. Customer-centered micro-innovation
Operators at home and abroad are vigorously carrying out broadband speed-up, and the main means of broadband speed-up is that light enters copper and retreats. However, because the physical characteristics of light and copper are completely different, light entering copper can not be simply replaced.
Statistics show that under normal circumstances, more than 30% of the optical fibers of operators can't be used because the labels are confusing and unrecognizable, so they can only reinvest in laying, resulting in a lot of waste of resources. In addition to the precipitation of resources, operators are also faced with the problem of opening and managing optical fiber network services. For example, the operation and maintenance department received an order and sent construction workers to the far end for construction, but it was only at the scene that the optical fiber was laid; As for whether the local office needs to expand, operators can only adopt the mode of regular inspection, which consumes a lot of manpower and material resources.
Huawei noticed this problem in the process of helping overseas operators deploy FTTH networks, so it started research and development in 2007, and released the prototype of iODN solution in 2009, realizing the visual management of passive optical networks. For operators, simple implementation and acceptable price are important reasons why Huawei iODN is favored.
3. Organizational innovation: Huawei's iron triangle organizational innovation.
"Iron Triangle" is an innovative management model explored by Huawei. It is a customer-oriented combat unit composed of account managers, solution experts and delivery experts, who are responsible for early communication with customers, mid-term product design and late delivery respectively. The essence of "iron triangle" is to break down functional barriers and form a project-centered team operation mode, which is an important step for Huawei to explore the road of management organization innovation.
Huawei is highly centralized in management, and its organization and operation mechanism are the powerful engines of the authority of the headquarters. Now, Huawei has forged an "iron triangle" in the first-line team and distributed its power, gradually forming a "pull" mechanism. To be precise, it is a combination of "push" and "pull". When each "iron triangle" is pulled up, it will be cut off when it sees which rope is not stressed, and the departments and personnel connected to this rope will be cut off together, which greatly improves the organizational efficiency. With the change of management mode and the redistribution of power, Huawei's organizational structure, operation mechanism and process have been completely changed. Each chain can run quickly and flexibly, and key interactive nodes can be controlled.
Three, Huawei's seven innovation principles
Principle 1: Encourage innovation and oppose blind innovation.
At the end of last century and the beginning of this century, Motorola worshiped technology, ignored the needs of customers and blindly invested $5 billion in the so-called "Iridium Project", which led to disaster. Due to the failure of major technology investment, the capital market voted with its feet, which accelerated the collapse of Motorola. Motorola has become a "forgotten great symbol".
Huawei has invested the greatest strength in innovation in the world, but Huawei opposes blind innovation and innovation for innovation's sake. Huawei promotes valuable innovation. Twenty years ago, Ren said that you should be engineers and businessmen. A set of processes established by IBM in terms of processes have verified and solidified this orientation. A few years ago, Xu Zhijun confidently said that in the past, the R&D team of 3,000 people felt that they were losing control. Now that we have managed more than 70,000 people, we can still manage another 70,000 people. What is the reason? Based on the end-to-end R&D process, the whole R&D is based on rational decision-making and market demand-explicit customer demand and implicit customer demand. The error rate is greatly reduced, the cost waste is greatly reduced, and the organization's dependence on individuals is also reduced.
Principle 2: Customer demand and technological innovation two-wheel drive
Make products with customer demand as the center and make future architecture platform with technological innovation as the center.
Now we are innovating on two wheels. One is the innovation of scientists. They pay attention to technology and do whatever they want, but they can't control the application. Whether and when technology should be put into use depends on another round of marketing. Marketing constantly listens to customers' voices, including today's needs, tomorrow's needs and future strategic needs, so as to determine how to use the technology we have mastered and the exact time to put it into the market. (Source: Ren's speech at the third swearing-in ceremony of the change strategy reserve team, 20 15)
The company should change from the innovation of engineers to the joint innovation of scientists and engineers. We should not only focus on customers, study suitable products and services, but also increase investment in the future technical direction and platform core, and we must occupy strategic highlands. Do not hesitate to take big risks on chips and platform software. At the core, we should do whatever it takes and not be afraid of sacrifice. We should move from the introduction of talents in electronic technology to the introduction of some talents in basic theory, and we should have patience to cultivate their maturity. We should also understand and cherish some wizards that are difficult for us ordinary people to understand. In short, we should move from technological progress to theoretical breakthrough. (Source: Success is not a reliable guide to future progress, 20 1 1)
Principle 3: Being half a step ahead is advanced, and being three steps ahead is a martyr.
Too advanced technology is of course the wealth of mankind, but it must be at the expense of itself. The bursting of the IT bubble cost the world $20 trillion in wealth. From the statistical analysis, it can be concluded that almost 65,438+0,000% companies died not because the technology was not advanced, but because the technology was too advanced for others to fully understand and recognize, so that no one bought it. The product can't be sold, but it consumes a lot of manpower, material resources and financial resources and loses its competitiveness. Many technologies that lead the world trend, although the leaders of the 10,000-meter race, are not necessarily winners. On the contrary, they paid a lot of money for "cleaning saline-alkali land" and popularizing new technologies. But enterprises cannot do without advanced technology.
Huawei's point of view is that in terms of product technology innovation, Huawei should keep ahead of technology, but only half a step ahead of its competitors. If you are three steps ahead, you will become a "martyr" and clearly change the technology-oriented strategy into a customer-oriented strategy. Through the analysis of customer demand, this paper puts forward solutions and uses these solutions to guide the development of low-cost and high value-added products. It is necessary to become a "martyr" who blindly guides the new trend of innovation in the world.
Principle 4: Open cooperation, a cup of coffee absorbs cosmic energy.
Bees have the instinct to change from quantitative to qualitative. If you want to transition from a single bee to a colony, you only need to increase the number of bees, so that a large number of bees can gather together, communicate with each other, and then form a network with each other. The nodes of the network and the network itself constitute a new individual, which has great power. Honeycomb is an organization form that is easier said than done, and the difficulty often lies in how to construct the nodes of the network.
Ren Zeng explained Huawei's "hive thinking" from the side with "a cup of coffee absorbs cosmic energy". In his view, the node of the bee colony network can be simplified as a "coffee cup", which encourages Huawei employees to have coffee with the best talents in the world, exchange cutting-edge innovative ideas and cooperate at the fastest speed.
"In this' coffee cup', with you as the core, unite all scientists in the same direction in the world and dilute the chemical card culture. If those scientists have made the same contribution as you, then you should give them the same treatment. " Ren Zheng Fei told employees that he even suggested trying "talent crowdfunding", that is, "fast-forward and fast-out" outstanding talents without withholding people's lives.
"We don't want them to belong to us. We don't restrict their personal freedom and academic freedom. We don't own their papers and patents. We just want to cooperate with them." Ren Zheng Fei will push everything forward. He said, "There should be not only knowledgeable scientists in the coffee cup, but also some' crooked melons and cracked dates' to make trouble; I also hope that the "black swan" will fly into this "coffee cup".
Principle 5: Innovation based on inheritance.
Ren said, "More than 30% of new development is not innovation, but waste!" That is, when developing a product, R&D personnel should minimize their own inventions, focus on the technical achievements of previous products, and cooperate, exchange or purchase external resources.
Huawei has always adhered to the principle of "taking 10% of sales revenue as R&D revenue every year". The higher principle is: we can't use "seemingly rich" R&D funds to do things that are too far from the market demand. Huawei is not obsessed with pursuing the best and latest technology, but based on providing customers with the most cost-effective products.
In this respect, Huawei suffered a lot. At first, its understanding of "the fundamental connotation of innovation" was vague, so that under the cultural guidance of pursuing "pure technological innovation", the switches and transmission equipment developed by Huawei in the early days met with a large number of demands for return and maintenance from operators, because these products overemphasized independent innovation and ignored a basic demand trend of customers in the communication industry: the inheritance of mature technologies was the key to improve product stability and reduce costs.
Since then, Huawei has been advocating a kind of "inherited innovation", the connotation of which is: opposing blind innovation, which can only be regarded as innovation after rational reference, imitation and assembly.
Principle 6: Innovation should tolerate failure and give innovation space.
To make innovation dare to take risks, we must advocate the balance of merits and demerits and give innovation space. Allow risk and innovation. Scientific research can't all be successful, and there should be some risks. The pursuit of scientific research should be the benefit of investment, but if one day the scientific research project 100% reported by R&D is successful and the investment of 100% is effective, it will be wrong. Why? Because not taking risks is the biggest waste of resources: wasting manpower, material resources and time. 100% success means no risk at all, and no risk means no innovation, so innovation must be adventurous, and allowing risk means allowing innovation. (Source: graded authorization, bold innovation, quick response to customer needs, 200 1)
Innovation is a very risky thing, and most innovations will fail. For every innovator, the biggest test is whether he has the courage to bear failure. In the new stage of innovation-driven development, we must tolerate failure and provide the greatest support and guarantee for innovators.
Principle 7: Only with the intellectual property rights of core technologies can we enter the world competition.
In the enterprise development strategy, intellectual property strategy is an important part. However, intellectual property strategy is often ignored by enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises.
Specifically, Huawei's intellectual property strategy can be summarized as three points: 1. Intellectual property is the core competence of an enterprise, and no less than 65,438+00% of its annual sales revenue is used for product research and development and technological innovation, so as to maintain the intellectual property competence necessary for participating in market competition. 2. Implement the standard patent strategy, actively participate in the formulation of international standards, promote the inclusion of proprietary technology schemes in standards, and accumulate basic patents. 3. Abide by and apply international intellectual property rules, handle intellectual property affairs in accordance with international practices, and solve intellectual property problems through cross-licensing and commercial cooperation.
As Ren said, the foundation of the birth of great companies is the protection of intellectual property rights. We should rely on the social environment to protect intellectual property rights. The cost of relying on the law to protect innovation will be low. As we become more and more advanced, the company is open to the outside world, and the policy of opening up sources at home has entered a new environmental system. In the past two or three decades, human society has become networked; The next twenty or thirty years will be informatization, during which many great companies will be born. The foundation of the birth of great companies is to protect intellectual property rights, otherwise there will be no opportunities, and opportunities are others'.
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The only constant in the world is change. In order to survive in a rapidly changing world, we must constantly innovate. Although innovation is risky, not innovating is the biggest risk. It is by embracing innovation that Huawei has become a successful model for China enterprises. To eliminate the influence of innovation decision resistance, entrepreneurs must have the sense of innovation: 1, all-round innovation from organization to process, business model, products and technology. 2. Customer-centered open innovation. 3, moderate innovation, against blind innovation. Finally, only by maintaining a strong desire for innovation and the motivation for innovation decision-making can we ensure the smooth completion of the innovation strategy.
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Huaxia Cornerstone E Insight (micro-signal ID: chnstonewx): led by Professor Peng Jianfeng, a master of human resources management in China, a pioneer in consulting industry and one of the drafters of Huawei's basic law, co-founded by Mr. Song Jinsong, a senior media person and corporate culture consulting expert, strives to provide the most original, thoughtful and practical management articles, and is the top management think tank platform in China and the source of original China's management thoughts. Authority, rationality and insight are what top managers need!