Innovation has always been the focus of our advanced research institute. A person, an organization, and even a country all need innovation to continuously evolve and develop.
So if you want to innovate, is there any way? The answer is yes. On the one hand, we will study the best practice cases of innovation in all walks of life, extract their exclusive methods and share them with our classmates; On the other hand, doers from all walks of life will also share their best practices in innovation here.
Next, I will report to you the inspiration we got from the students of Advanced Research Institute 1 1. Let's listen to how they break away from convention and achieve innovation.
Xu Zhihua: People-oriented.
The first student I want to introduce is Xu Zhihua from Hangzhou. He is the project general manager of Zhejiang Yintai Department Store. Before, I worked as general manager in many shopping malls such as Wenling Yintai City, Linhai Yintai City and Wenzhou World Trade Yintai.
Students in Hangzhou may be familiar with Intime Department Store, which is located in a prime location in Hangzhou and is one of the largest comprehensive shopping malls in Hangzhou. In fact, Yintai Department Store is an influential enterprise not only in Hangzhou, but also in the department store retail industry in China. It began to explore digital transformation from 20 18. In the industry, it is considered as an internet department store with a comprehensive architecture on the cloud. It should be said that it is in the forefront of digital transformation.
Xu Zhihua has worked in Yintai Commercial Group for 15 years, and she is a witness of this digital transformation. Of course, digital transformation is a complex innovation, and I can't explore all of them here. I want to share with you a very specific element explored by the Xu Zhihua team. This element is the shopping guide. Yes, it's the shopping guide behind every counter in the mall.
In Yintai, the job content of the shopping guide has changed a lot. We are all familiar with online department stores and shopping guides selling products in fixed stores. But now Yintai's shopping guide can sell all the goods in Yintai Department Store.
For example, in the past, the counter sister of a cosmetics counter sold cosmetics to customers, and the transaction relationship with customers was completed. Only when this customer comes to this cosmetics counter next time will he link again. But now their shopping guides have developed customers into their own fans. Each shopping guide is a KOL with goods, which can recommend cosmetics to you, as well as clothing, jewelry, daily necessities and other goods you need. Shopping guides only need to focus on dealing with customers, and Yintai Department Store is the supplier behind them.
You may be curious, how did this change happen?
In fact, digitalization is the fundamental reason why shopping guides can make such changes. The digital tools of Yintai Department Store play the role of shopping guide secretary, assisting shopping guides to manage their own customers. For example, customer A is running out of cosmetics and customer B is running out of milk powder. How long have you been contacting customer C? If you don't contact him, it will be gone. Including shopping guide's own business progress data, how many customers have been added today, how many products have been sold, and so on. Digital tools will be presented to the shopping guide in real time to help him operate and manage.
You see, what is the essence behind this? In fact, through the tool of digitalization, they changed the role of shopping guide from managing goods to managing customers. Turn shopping malls from product-centered to people-centered. In the past, the shopping guide only sold one counter, but it was actually product-centered. Now the shopping guide has a friendship with customers, and is a consultant who has served every customer for a long time, providing the overall solution from food, clothing, housing and transportation. This is people-oriented.
At present, almost all our industries have to face the reality that the logic of obtaining growth dividends by continuous traffic is likely to be gone forever. The biggest inspiration from Xu Zhihua's sharing is that this change of "people-centered" management consciousness can establish a deeper user relationship and perhaps open an innovative road to growth.
Wang Lin: Build a sense of dignity at work.
The innovation achieved by paying attention to "people" like this is also the classmate Wang Lin of Guangzhou Campus. Unlike Xu Zhihua, Wang Lin's goal is to motivate the team. As a manager, the focus of her motivation team is not the traditional external incentives such as rewards and subsidies, but to build an internal engine to make them self-driven from the inside out. This internal engine is the sense of dignity of work.
Wang Lin used to be the head of e-commerce operation of a well-known international beauty brand. During her tenure, she managed an online customer service team of nearly 800 people. When she first took over the team, she faced such a challenge. On the one hand, the average age of the team is 24 years old and the education is not high. On the other hand, the business is unfamiliar and often faces the pressure of the brand; Moreover, they have to face the emotional venting of customers all the time, and the morale of the whole team is low.
But it is such a team that has become one of the most concerned departments of the company in the two years led by Wang Lin, contributing 30% to the company's e-commerce business. Under the influence of the epidemic in 2020, they also took the initiative to save nearly 1 billion business for the company.
How is this done?
The first thing Wang Lin did after taking over the customer service team was to change their names and customer service to EBA. EBA is short for online beauty consultant. Don't underestimate this small name change, because of this change, the working status and work content of team members have changed greatly. First of all, consultants sound more professional than customer service. Therefore, many employees take the initiative to learn more about beauty knowledge and more professional beauty products. Moreover, unlike customer service, which generally passively accepts consultation and then replies, consultants usually provide professional services to customers more actively. Therefore, the mentality of team members to serve customers has also undergone positive changes. They provide more active and professional services, and they receive more and more positive feedback from customers, so they have more energy to carry out their work, and a positive flywheel is thus rolled up.
This is to build employees' sense of dignity in front of customers, and also to build a sense of dignity within the team. Wang Lin promoted one thing, that is, let all employees of the company come to EBA for three days. This incident has brought about two effects. First of all, everyone in the company feels that EBA's work is not as simple as imagined. Secondly, they really realize that EBA is the best spokesperson for customers. Because you will receive real feedback from customers here, and these feedbacks can guide the optimization of work. For example, a supply chain director really realizes what is wrong with the logistics service experience from the real feedback from customers and optimizes it immediately after coming back from work. And a designer, full of confidence in the design of his product introduction page, realized from the real feedback from customers that the product description designed on that page may not be paid attention to by customers at all.
It is through these actions that the whole EBA team has become more professional, happier and more fulfilled. In 2020, due to the outbreak of the epidemic, the company's offline store business was blocked and online traffic encountered bottlenecks. When everyone was at a loss, the EBA team stood up and said, we have an idea. Can we try? They launched the "swipe action". For those customers who have not paid their orders or asked for a refund after payment, they used sales skills and precise service actions to save nearly 1 100 million businesses throughout the year.
You see, when a person's value is seen and lit up, he can release much more energy than we thought. What Wang Lin inspired me is that, compared with traditional material incentives, helping a person to build a sense of dignity and see the meaning of work can stimulate his internal drive and achieve unexpected results.
Guo: Differentiation.
The third classmate I want to introduce is Guo from Wuhan University.
Hongyi is a food lover. To what extent? For the sake of food, he changed from a professional space designer to an entrepreneur in the catering industry. When it comes to the catering industry, you can imagine how fierce the competition is. But Hongyi not only succeeded in changing careers, but also became famous in one fell swoop. At present, he is the co-founder of u excellent natural seasoning restaurant. In the past five years, it has opened 23 Chinese food chain stores, and also hatched a number of catering project brands such as Cuixiao Babao.
Why can you do this? Hongyi mental method is a key word, differentiation and innovation.
He said that when he started his business at the restaurant track, as everyone imagined, the most difficult question was, what kind of restaurant should he choose? To be a differentiated category, everyone understands this truth, so how to find differentiation?
Guo Hong and his team tried many restaurants, and recorded every move and experience from entering to leaving in detail. After repeated analysis, they decided to grasp one thing, that is, the customer's five senses experience, vision, taste, hearing, smell and touch. They feel that if they want to make differentiation, they must work hard from these five senses.
For example, one of their explosive products, Bangbao, is a differentiated category found in the five senses of customers.
Bobo pot is Cantonese food. The second part of the famous food documentary China on the Tip of the Tongue has been introduced in detail. Bobo pot is a unique cooking technique in Cantonese cuisine: put the ingredients into the pot and heat them with strong fire. High temperature will make the soup in the pot evaporate quickly and make a sound of "baa", which is pronounced as "baa" in Cantonese, hence the name "baa".
Before opening a shop in Guo Hong, there were many Cantonese restaurants in Wu Hanyou, but at most lollipops were made into side dishes instead of main courses. However, Guo Hong also found that Bababao is actually extremely unique in the five senses experience.
First of all, as the name implies, "Bo Bo" is a kind of delicious food that can sing, and its hearing is unique.
Secondly, vision, the cooking time of this pot is very short, and finally there will be a process of watering flowers and carving wine to ignite. At this time, the whole casserole will be wrapped in flame, which is visually impactful.
Then there is the sense of smell, the burnt wine, and its own unique sauce. Finally, serve the casserole and open the lid, and the aroma will be very special.
Finally, because it was a storm, the hot air of the food continued to the table. There is an old saying that "one hot top three fresh". If you eat it while it is hot, it will taste more delicious. In this way, both touch and taste will be satisfied.
You see, the five senses experience brought by the pot is unique. This will not only give a small surprise to those who used to like Cantonese food, but also attract those who don't eat Cantonese food.
At this point, with the unique five senses experience, Babao, as the main product, can achieve the unique difference of Cantonese cuisine. However, this is not the only reason for choosing this category.
As we all know, Chinese food usually depends on the skill of the chef. A chef's choice of ingredients, cooking time and even the skill of tilting the spoon will affect the taste of a dish. Therefore, to make a standard dish, chefs need long-term training, which leads to the problem that Chinese food is difficult to scale and standardize. And think about it, this problem is almost non-existent in the pot. Pot practice, quantitative ingredients, unified sauces and cookware. For restaurant operators, it reduces the operation difficulty of chefs, shortens the training cycle, strengthens the entry ability, and most of the work can be standardized, thus reducing the difficulty of large-scale expansion of restaurants.
You see, from Guo's case, we can realize that we can find an innovation point of a subdivision category through differentiation strategy. In this way, you don't have to catch up with your competitors on a track, but you can create a new track and get the bonus of the leader.
Guo Zhiyong: monistic thinking and analogical thinking.
The last classmate introduced is Guo Zhiyong from Guangzhou Campus.
He is an organ transplant surgeon. The innovation he made is of course related to medical technology. Their team solved a technical problem that has plagued the medical industry for 63 years, and it only took three months. The presidents of the World Transplantation Association, the German and Dutch Transplantation Associations and the director of the Transplantation Center of Harvard University all flew to China to observe their new technologies. What kind of technical problem is this?
Guo Zhiyong told us that in organ transplantation, most operations failed, not because of surgery, but because of organ damage. The operation was successful, but the organs were not functional, and finally the patient could not be saved.
Since the birth of 1954 organ transplantation technology, the medical community has been using techniques similar to frozen seafood to barely maintain the vitality of transplanted organs. However, organ damage is still difficult to avoid, which is the biggest problem of transplantation technology.
Scientists all over the world have been puzzled by this problem for 63 years, but Guo Zhiyong's team found a solution, which reduced the complications in surgery by 92. 1% and improved the one-year survival rate of patients by 9.8%.
How is this done? Guo Zhiyong shared that apart from medical technology itself, they also benefited from their "monism" thinking and analogical thinking.
What is "monism" thinking?
In fact, this is a basic principle of clinical diagnosis, that is, no matter how many abnormal symptoms and signs there are in front of patients, we should try our best to explain them with a disease, instead of classifying clinical symptoms from the beginning. For example, a person may have dizziness and low back pain at the same time. If dizziness is diagnosed as a nervous system disease, and low back pain is an orthopedic disease, then it is difficult to fall into the embarrassing situation of "more treatment is more complicated".
Back to organ transplantation, why should we apply the "monism" thinking?
Guo Zhiyong told us that most surgical failures are the result of organ damage. Therefore, what the medical profession mainly tries is how to reduce the degree of organ damage. From this perspective, we need to find a solution from the mechanism of organ damage. This will enter the level of cells, molecules and genes. To develop various drugs, stem cells and so on. Research will naturally become more and more complicated.
What did Guo Zhiyong think when he used monism thinking? They believe that, in fact, the root cause of organ damage is the interruption of blood supply after organ separation. Due to the interruption of blood supply, the mechanism of the above organ damage is the result.
You see, think about it, the solution is not from the dimensions of cells, molecules and genes, but from the external blood supply mechanism.
Then how to find it? At this time, analogical thinking comes into play, and they think of the backup power supply in life. When the main power supply fails, the standby power supply can be started. Therefore, they should establish a standby blood supply system for organs, and they should seamlessly switch between the human blood supply system and the standby blood supply system.
Guo Zhiyong happens to be one of the few international experts who have mastered the technique of mechanical organ perfusion in vitro. Therefore, the problem of the standby blood supply system is solved. Then there is the problem of how to realize seamless handover.
Let's go back to the analog backup power supply. Usually, the standby power supply system has a three-way structure, with one end connected to the electrical equipment, one end connected to the main power supply and the other end connected to the standby power supply. When the main power supply stops working, the standby power supply must be started immediately to ensure the continuous work of the electrical equipment. So by analogy, if you want to switch seamlessly, you also need such a three-way structure. Do the blood vessels of human organs have similar structures? Surprisingly, this three-dimensional structure can be found in the blood vessels of almost every organ of the human body. Connecting one end of the organ to the standby blood supply equipment will realize that the blood supply of the organ will not be interrupted every minute from leaving the donor to being implanted in the patient!
After repeated experiments, from 2065438 to July 23rd, 2007, Guo Zhiyong successfully performed the world's first non-ischemic organ transplant. Their work was evaluated as "a milestone in the history of organ transplantation" in academic journals.
Dr Guo Zhiyong told us that he has a bigger goal in mind, that is, he wants to spread such an innovative technology to the whole world and benefit more people. He said that this challenge is actually no less than technological innovation itself. Because this requires not only scientific research ability, but also comprehensive problem-solving ability, communication ability, resource integration ability and so on. This is also the reason why he came to the Institute of Advanced Studies. He hopes to meet more doers here, accumulate more comprehensive abilities and contribute to his vision.
In fact, this is also the value that advanced research institutes want to provide for students. Economist Schumpeter has a definition of innovation, that is, rearranging and combining the original factors of production into a new mode of production. I think, from this perspective, the Advanced Research Institute is an innovation distribution center. Because here, there are 6.5438+0.7 million students who have contributed rich thinking and diverse problem-solving methods.
For example, Yang from Wuhan Campus is the director of China Construction Third Bureau Intelligent Company. Last year, he took over a project, the construction period and funds were halved compared with the normal standard, and there were insufficient personnel. However, he chose an innovative method, and finally led the team to build a technologically advanced global full-scene smart park platform within the construction period.
For example, Chen Erdong, a student from Beijing Foreign Studies University, had an insight into the pain points in the internal business of Shell, so he created the innovative product "Smart Signing Big Screen" and won the highest-level project award in Shell together with the team.
And Fan Ming from Chengdu Campus. When the epidemic broke out in 2020, as a smart community construction unit designated by the Public Security Bureau of Chengdu High-tech Zone, they needed to quickly open a digital epidemic prevention system, facing a new task with tight time and heavy tasks. He led the team to build a reliable epidemic prevention and control platform quickly and remotely, and gradually evolved into a "Tianfu Health Link" for large households.
I believe that in the collision and communication with them, new permutations and combinations will germinate, and innovation will germinate inadvertently. Finally, you are also welcome to join this innovative highland and get the advanced research institute.