is in a huge downward cycle intertwined by the epidemic, war and financial crisis. For most young people who have grown up in good times, all their past business experience has become extremely precious. "Xiaomi Entrepreneurship Thinking", which covers 30 years of entrepreneurship in , Lei Jun and , has more practical value.
Author | Xiaoman
Edit | Yuanye
WeChat public account: slightly large reference (ID: hyzibenlun)
Post-epidemic era, days are no longer the same.
Many people suddenly realize that turns out to be between peaks and troughs, only "time". When "cycle" becomes a reality from an economic noun, more people begin to try to find the answer. is a completely unfamiliar topic for young people who have grown up in good times and always upward hope.
Therefore, it seems normal for CCTV's "Genting Dialogue" to talk about the topic of "cycle" in a recent interview with Lei Jun. This interview revolves around Lei Jun’s new book "Xiaomi Entrepreneurship Thoughts". During this period, the host asked sharply: "You often leave everyone with the impression that you get up early and get on the late stage. Is that true?"
"I have worked in the industry for 30 years and have spanned several cycles. It is very difficult to get 100% right at the right time. Most people either get too early or too late. I get right at the right time or not. In fact, everyone can see it."
time gave Lei Jun the confidence to answer. He has experienced the rise and fall of Kingsoft. Xiaomi , founded 12 years ago, has now become the 266th-ranked technology company in the world. Compared with Xiaomi's glory from 0 to 1, the story of this company falling behind and catching up with it is even more exciting - especially in a time when confidence is scarce.
In "Xiaomi Entrepreneurship Thoughts", Lei Jun disclosed many internal stories of Xiaomi for the first time and summarized the latest and most complete Xiaomi methodology. In fact, 's "Xiaomi Methodology" is not only related to Xiaomi's experience in the 12 years of its establishment, but also covers many thoughts and experiences when Lei Jun has traveled through the industry cycle in the 30 years since his entrepreneurship. When the whole world is in a huge downward cycle formed by the epidemic, war and financial crisis, such thinking is also precious.
01 Taking "people" as the basis
fundamentally, the first test of the cycle is not the business model, not efficiency and speed, but people.
Lei Jun mentioned the value of "people" several times in "Xiaomi Entrepreneurship Thoughts". Whether it is creating Xiaomi or leading Xiaomi to cross mountains and rivers, people are the most critical factors. The starting point of the story is in 2007. That year, , Jobs, released its first iPhone in San Francisco, USA, and the curtain of the smartphone era officially opened. Two years later, Google released the open source mobile operating system Android, and the first Android phone G1 was also released in September of the same year.
At that time, Lei Jun, who had retreated behind the scenes and transformed into angel investor , has been paying close attention to the troubles in the Internet world. He wrote in "Xiaomi Entrepreneurship Thoughts":
"Although the Android mobile experience was still very rough at the time, I think Android will definitely succeed because I am optimistic about open source. So, we decided to make a smartphone based on the Android operating system. Be the best hand in the world The machine is only sold for half the price, so that everyone can afford it. This is the origin of Xiaomi's dream. "
Create a company. The first thing to solve is "people". Lei Jun said in the book, "To form a team is an extremely painful process." "When I interviewed every great person, the great person was also interviewing me. The experience I have summarized is that I am thick-skinned. People visit the thatched cottage three times, and I can visit the thatched cottage for thirty times. No matter what method, the one who can get the talents is a good way."
In 2011, a Peking University student wanted to find an internship job. He searched for a small company online for an interview. Unexpectedly, there were 9 rounds of interviews for this internship. In the last round of interviews, someone pushed the door in the middle. He looked up and saw that it was Lei Jun. This was not surprising. In order to invite a favorite engineer, Lei Jun had talked 10 times in two months, and several times exceeded 10 hours. The core team talked 17 times in total.
In Lei Jun's opinion, it is precisely because the career you want to do is extremely difficult. It is not enough for a person to be able to do it alone. You must find people with a common vision, ability and responsibility, and find people who can drive themselves and do it themselves without managers staring at it. He wrote in "Xiaomi Entrepreneurship Thinking":
"Because such a complex model of ' triathlon ' cannot be managed by management, and can only rely on huge initiative. At the same time, trust is an extremely powerful force. We are willing to trust every colleague, so we must be serious and cautious when looking for people. "
is also thanks to the careful construction of the initial talent team, which has given Xiaomi more important bargaining chips to turn the trend in the subsequent downward cycle.
In 2015, Xiaomi fell into a two-year downturn. In the mobile phone industry, once sales declined, almost no company could reverse it. Lei Jun was really anxious this time. During that time, he led all Xiaomi employees to fight to the death.
In addition to Lei Jun personally taking over the mobile phone department, Xiaomi's self-save method also includes:
1. The young and reliable engineers are promoted internally as director-level cadres, and some cadres of the group are transferred to the position, and external recruitment is carried out to quickly form a more dynamic new management team.
2. A special supply chain team was established, led by Zhang Feng, the founder of Zimi Technology, who is engaged in Xiaomi Mobile Power , to specifically solve the supply problems of mobile phones.
3. Increase investment in core technology and set up key departments such as core device department and camera department. Continue to invest heavily in core technologies such as screen, photography and charging.
4. The quality committee of the mobile phone department was established, and Lei Jun personally served as the chairman to establish a quality veto system.
The first two most important measures are actually related to the company's personnel layout. In short, it is to give the most professional people more business decision-making power.
Regarding employment, Lei Jun mentioned this methodology in "Xiaomi Entrepreneurship Thinking": "There is a team of mutual trust, as well as the principle of front-line resource and care for decision-making power, so that the front-lines that can hear gunshots have the right to call fire. "The importance of decision-making power lies in inspiring people's self-drive, which is the basic premise for jointly creating a career.
In the process of the joint resistance cycle, this can greatly inspire people's fighting spirit, thus turning crisis into opportunities.
Similar stories have been staged in many successful commercial companies. For example, Kazuo Inamori, which is known as the "god of business" in Japan, "Everyone does his best for the development of the company." This sentence is the most critical business way of Kyocera and is also Kazuo Inamori's management philosophy.
html l0 Later, when he became the chairman of , the bankrupt and reconstruction of , Japan Airlines, the first thing he did was to run around various airports of JAL, repeatedly telling the flight attendants and crew: the key to rebuilding JAL is to how much everyone can be loved by passengers.With the joint efforts of all JAL staff, in just one year, JAL created an unprecedented profit of 188.4 billion yen in history and completely got out of the crisis.
is different from the short-term limited impact brought by a single event. The cycle is often accompanied by endless variables and may continue for many years. At this time, the commercial strategies that worked in the past that were effective may fail.In such a change, only by uniting people's hearts and revitalizing organizational vitality can the value of "people" be brought to its limits.
Of course, for Xiaomi, another meaning of "people" is users. When Xiaomi returned to growth after completing two-year tutoring, shipments rebounded in the second quarter of 2017 and mobile phone shipments returned to fourth place in the world in the fourth quarter, the biggest contributor was actually users. Xiaomi has been emphasizing over the years: Excellent companies make profits, and great companies win people's hearts.
Therefore, Lei Jun sighed in the book -
"Why can Xiaomi get rid of the 'death spiral' of decline in sales? Why can Xiaomi still have the opportunity to survive? Putting aside the so-called luck factor, sticking to values, its own rapid and profound reflection, review, learning, iterating ability, and close unity with users, let them still have the precious trust and expectations of users in the most difficult times."
02 Methodology
If the span cycle is compared to building a house, people are the most fundamental bricks, tiles and cement, and different construction methods will point to completely different results. The explanation of methodology is naturally an important part of Xiaomi Entrepreneurship Thinking.
"Concentration, extreme, reputation, and fast, this is the seven-character Internet formula I summarized, and it is also my high summary of Internet thinking." Lei Jun wrote in the book. This set of rules has led Xiaomi to create dazzling enough results and has become a textbook for general learning in the industry. And its most valuable thing is that it is also highly suitable for cycles.
because it was summarized after countless lessons of pitfalls. It is rooted in reality, and has gained more tenacious vitality after being questioned.
For example: focus. A few years ago, there was a discussion within Xiaomi: Is there any boundaries in the company's business? believes that the reason why people who "don't" move out is that Xiaomi's methodology is universal, and the various consumer needs of Xiaomi's user base are becoming wider and wider. It seems that as long as you have a user base, the company can do anything.
After many years, Lei Jun refuted this view in the book again, "Absolutely wrong. How can a company have no boundaries? Organizations without boundaries will inevitably go blind and confusing." In his opinion, "deciding not to do anything is equally important as deciding to do what to do." , and Xiaomi's ultimate mission is to insist on making good products that are "touching and generous". This is Xiaomi's long-term "focus".
Lei Jun gave an example, "PSP", the once popular overlord in the consumer electronics industry, in addition to the positioning of the game console, it also tried to build a multimedia entertainment terminal in the 21st century, but the result did not meet expectations. It was finally officially suspended in 2011 and only survived for only 7 years.
Some people say that the end of Sony PSP is not unrelated to the rapid rise of smartphones, but on the other hand, Nintendo , which has always strictly adhered to the positioning of game consoles and focused on games, has a handheld switch, with its clear positioning logo, still has a huge market share even today.
Regarding the ultimate, Lei Jun also gave his own understanding in the book. "I always believe that the ultimate is polishable and trainable. We must have a patience that is always not satisfied with the status quo, uneasy to mediocrity, and always pursues perfection in the continuous improvement of boring and painful." In practice, the ultimate performance of includes two aspects: unlimited investment in mind, spare no effort to strive for the best; infinite pursuit of optimal solutions, and cognitively reach the essence of industry and user needs.
In 2012, Xiaomi conducted a test. Two people with a combined weight of more than 350 kilograms stood together on the packaging box of Xiaomi mobile phone . As a result, the packaging box was not damaged at all.
Even if it is a packaging box with extremely low reuse rate, Xiaomi must pursue the "extreme".This packaging box uses the best structural strength and most expensive kraft paper as the raw material at that time. The entire design team took 6 months, after more than 30 structural modifications, hundreds of proofs, and made more than 10,000 samples, and finally decided on the next plan. These "tortures" are also to satisfy Lei Jun's understanding of two basic characteristics of the ultimate product:
First, the product should be amazing, the design should be amazing, and the cost should be amazing; second, it exceeds user expectations and can really make users scream.
But the ultimate "cost" is often tormenting. Lei Jun mentioned a short story in "Xiaomi Entrepreneurship Thoughts", Xiaomi design team once made a very famous poster inside Xiaomi: change and change again and again. "Continuous modification and polishing has become a habit for Xiaomi's team. Never stop thinking and polishing until the last moment."
The outside world's cognition and interpretation of Xiaomi's "reputation" and "fast" may be rich enough, but Lei Jun still gave more sufficient content in "Xiaomi Entrepreneurship Thinking", for example, he shouted "Sales second, reputation first", and explained that this is because reputation always leads sales or profits, which is a requirement to form a positive cycle with products and businesses. He also emphasized that good products, cheap products, and good and cheap products may not necessarily bring reputation, "only products that exceed expectations can bring reputation."
He also shared a story about "fast" in the book.
In 2019, Ding Lei suddenly said to Lei Jun during a meal: "Mr. Lei, can you help me make a batch of super-large TV sets, such as about 100-inch ones." Lei Jun realized that 100-inch TVs have a wide range of application scenarios in the home and business fields, but the cheapest one on the market costs more than 100,000 yuan, so this is likely to become Xiaomi's next hot product "popularization of high-end products".
On March 24, 2020, this Redmi 98-inch ultra-large screen TV was officially released and priced at 19,999 yuan, causing an industry sensation. At this time, it was only 5 months before Ding Lei made a request.
"focus, extreme, reputation, and fast", which is different from the pure theoretical school. The set of Internet seven-character formulas summarized by Lei Jun is actually the "seven-character proverb" that travels through the cycle.
Whether it is a commercial company or a consumer product, it has its own specific life cycle. In the mid-1950s, American writers Booz and Allen introduced the "life cycle" into corporate management theory for the first time in their book "New Product Management", and divided it into investment periods, growth periods, maturity periods and recession periods. According to this theory, when a product enters a mature stage, companies often fall into the "trap" of relying on mature products, trying to maintain their existing market share through non-product factors, such as cutting costs and emphasizing promotions, but they will eventually enter a "recession period".
How to break the trap of "product life cycle"? Lei Jun has had several successful experiences. In 2011, he took over Kingsoft as chairman and revitalized the old company that encountered a huge crisis. Ten years later, Kingsoft focused on software businesses such as WPS and successfully achieved Internet transformation, "from revenue that year from less than 1 billion to consolidated revenue of 12 billion, an increase of more than 11 times." This is especially true for
Xiaomi. This company, which was known for its early disruption of the industry, has actually been trying to disrupt itself. The recent vivid example of is undoubtedly car manufacturing. Lei Jun has devoted himself to it. He wants to verify the universality of the Internet Seven-character Skills in a brand new industry. is more meaningful for young people today than 100 preachings - don't complain, act, fight the cycle, and win the initiative.
03 The power of "faith"
"Xiaomi Entrepreneurship Thoughts" took two years to polish it.
When Xiaomi was founding the tenth anniversary, Lei Jun proposed three iron laws that Xiaomi will never change: technology-based, cost-effective and making the coolest products. Based on this reason, Xiaomi conducted an in-depth review and summary for half a year, and Lei Jun spent another two years repeatedly polishing and improving the details, and finally wrote it into a book.
Many people commented that the biggest feature of Xiaomi Entrepreneurship Thinking is "practical". There are not many unfathomable business concepts in the book, nor are there any simple and straightforward inspirational chicken soup, but they just plainly record Lei Jun’s entrepreneurial journey over the past 30 years.
This is also a book about how to realize your dreams. "No one succeeds without taking risks. I have worked in Kingsoft for almost 30 years. The most important sentence I realized in Kingsoft is: People are great because of their dreams," he wrote in the book.
Lei Jun’s dream is to "start a great company". In his opinion, there are two types of companies in this world: one is the premium model and the other is the cost-effective model.
The fundamental motivation for enterprises based on the premium model to innovate and improve are all from the pursuit of excess profits and are highly dependent on the high premium brought by information opacity. It is very difficult and painful to persist in companies that adopt the cost-effective model. It requires strong determination to restrain greed, tolerate long-term growth and accumulation, and tolerate low tolerance and high-risk operations, such as Walmart , Uniqlo , etc.
There is no doubt that Xiaomi wants to be the second one. Of course, numbers are not the most important criterion for measuring greatness. What he wants to gain is the hearts of the people. "I founded Xiaomi and don't want to be a cheating person, and I don't like people who sell straw into gold bars. We are like farmers farming every day, and we get what we sow." He wrote in the book.
He highly recognized the statement made by the famous economist Schumpeter 100 years ago, "The success of business is not to provide the queens with more exquisite stockings, but to the fact that the stockings that female engineers can afford are as good as those of the queens."
Set a clear goal and always be clear about who you are and how to achieve it - whether for a company or an individual, this is the basic premise for maintaining a clear and motivated momentum, and it is also the power of belief. If Lei Jun has any secret weapon for traveling through the cycle, there is no doubt that the most important thing is it.
In fact, this is also the gene written in the blood of Chinese people. Our nation has experienced disasters, but it has been moving forward continuously. Fundamentally, this is because most of us can maintain optimistic confidence and firm belief in the future in the midst of difficulties, and then take it through it in their own ways and even defeat it.
No matter how much learning or thinking is done through the process of the cycle, it is impossible to do anything. Lei Jun and Xiaomi’s results today are inseparable from all the past tests, which also makes "Xiaomi Entrepreneurship Thinking" more practical. All those who want to travel through the cycle may find their own inspiration from it.
was inspired by a book and then he clarified his life's direction and goals. Such a story full of fate once happened to Lei Jun himself. Lei Jun, a computer student at Wuhan University, read " Silicon Valley Fire " at the age of 18 and was stirred up by the content:
"In the 1970s, a group of computer amateurs in the United States set off a computer technology revolution in Silicon Valley , with the goal of breaking the monopoly rights of professional and technical personnel to use large computers closed in air-conditioned computer rooms, so that those who need to use computers can own a computer themselves."
"We are in an era today: people full of fantasy find that they have gained the power they once dreamed of and can use this power to transform our world."
This young man is determined that his life will be devoted to this unprecedented wave of information transformation. By the 12th anniversary of Xiaomi's founding in 2022, the market value of this company has exceeded HK$220 billion. In the science and technology park built by Xiaomi, the book sculpture of "Fire of Silicon Valley" is an existence that no one can ignore.
saw it, believed it, worked hard, and finally let a beautiful thing happen. Such a story can become the hope for many young people to travel through the cycle.
In "Genting Dialogue", Lei Jun mentioned for the first time that 1999 was the most painful year in his life. At that time, Kingsoft was facing the challenge of Microsoft . This local technology company was so motivated that it did not discover the huge changes that were happening outside.
"We knew how to fight with Microsoft. We wanted to become the greatest company in the world. We had to fight with Microsoft. After three or four years, we looked around and found that you were nothing. Everyone was busy doing the Internet. We found that Kingsoft was no longer at the peak at that time, and all our efforts seemed to have no high value. ”
In hindsight, it was the pain that made Lei Jun see the direction of the wave clearly. He accurately grasped the opportunities of the times and became one of the most influential entrepreneurs in the mobile Internet era. Many years later, he wrote in "Xiaomi Entrepreneurship Thoughts": "Anxiety is useless. There are many things in this world that we cannot change, but what we can change is our own mentality. ”
