In our media, it has been said that "technology is the core competitiveness of an enterprise", and it is also said that "innovation is the core competitiveness of an enterprise", which almost means the same thing. Moreover, many of our companies are also following this guiding ideology, transforming, striving for technological innovation, and relying on improving technology to compete in the market, instead of simply assembly, processing and production without much technological content.
The most typical ones are our home appliances and Japanese home appliance production. In the early years, our home appliance production was very large, but it was only assembly and production. Many key core technologies were still in the hands of foreigners. We were not yet able to achieve 100% R&D and production, and we were not yet able to achieve localization rates. Take color TVs as an example. We don’t have the key core technologies. High-end goods are still foreign brands. Our home appliances sell output, while foreign brands sell technology. After many years, some of our color TV brands have been on the verge of bankruptcy. However, for foreign brands that control the core technology, even if the company goes bankrupt, the patents and technology will still be there. Based on this alone, its market value will still be there. One core technology can surpass the market sales profit of millions of color TV sets produced by our manufacturer. This is the value of core technology. As for the early VSH home video recorders, we were unable to produce them ourselves. They were all imported products because we did not have the core technology.
Therefore, even today, technology is still the core competitiveness of enterprises. Efficiency was not the core competitiveness of enterprises before. The purpose of an enterprise is to make profits. No matter how efficient it is, the goods it produces must be put into the market to make profits for the enterprise. Otherwise, no matter how efficient it is and how many goods it produces, it will not be competitive in the market. Failure to bring profits to the company will also crush the company, and if goods want to win in the market, they need technical support. Therefore, what is competing is not the quantity shipped from the factory, nor the efficiency of production, but the technology of the goods. This is the core competitiveness of an enterprise, and it is also the direction that many of our enterprises are pursuing.
