Author | Match Q, Xiaobei Editor | The history of Ms. A's four technological revolutions is a history of the gradual transition between technology and business becoming bigger and deeper. The first technological revolution with steam engines as the core did not achieve technology

Can people who see the future live to the future?

Author | Match Q, Xiaobei Editor | Miss A

The history of the four technological revolutions is the history of the intersection of technology and business gradually becoming bigger and deeper .

The first technological revolution with steam engines as the core did not achieve technology companies.

The main theme of the era at that time was colonization and being colonized, and the most powerful business force was a trading group dominated by the will of the state, such as the British East India Company. This revolution did not create a large company around the steam engine itself.

The second technological revolution with electricity and internal combustion engines as the core has made the inventors appear on the commercial stage for the first time. Inventors and technical experts such as

Bell , Edison , Ford and other inventors and technical experts have founded century-old stores such as Bell Telephone Company (later ATT), Edison Electric Light Company (later GE) and Ford Automobile, and have dominated the industry so far.

The third technological revolution with information technology as the core, "technology entrepreneurship" has become a collective insurgency for engineers.

This technological revolution has set off two waves of business tides: the first wave began in the 1940s, and IBM, Intel , Apple, Microsoft rose successively in the fields of computer hardware and software; the second wave began in the 1990s, and top Internet companies such as Amazon , Google , Facebook were born in batches. The United States has thus established the advantages of electronic manufacturing, information industry and Internet industries, and has firmly established its position as the world leader. China, which missed the first wave, caught the second wave, and made giants big and small, which profoundly affected all aspects of China's economy.

Now, the fourth technological revolution ongoing has been sinking from the virtual world to the real world, becoming a collective change across the two generations of enterprises, one, two and three major industries.

This AI, cloud, and big data-driven intelligent revolution has formed a style like the Japanese "K1 alien fighting competition" : companies with different backgrounds, different sizes, and different paths compete on the same stage. Players not only have large and small technology companies, but also include all three major industries of agricultural manufacturing and service industries. All companies try to have the same label: technology companies.

However, behind the long-term prosperity of in the four technological revolutions, there are many "making rice bowls" and "snatching rice bowls" in the short-term rise and fall of in the .

Most of the time, the main body that starts the technology wave and the main body that gains commercial success are not the same main body. In the waves of all generations full of accidents and complexity, there are stories of sowingers losing their time and harvesters being proud of .

The following stories are about those who started the wave in the internal combustion engine revolution, the computer revolution, the Internet revolution, and the intelligent revolution, which is one step away from the success of business, but eventually leave sadly.

Who says that if you see the future, you will definitely be able to live to the future?

1. The sky war in the early century

arrogance is a kind of dignity that cannot be supported. —— Balzac

In the second industrial revolution, the most regrettable loser was the Wright brothers.

There are records of their invention of aircraft in history textbooks in various countries: On December 7, 1903, the aircraft made by the Wright brothers successfully tested the flight and stayed in the air for 59 seconds, marking the birth of the aircraft.

In fact, the Wright brothers are not just inventors, they also want to commercialize technology like Bell and Edison. Since 1905, my brother Wilbur Wright has been traveling between the United States and Europe, trying to sell their planes. At the end of 1909, the Wright Brothers officially registered Wright Company, but in 1915, just before the start of the golden decade of the aircraft manufacturing industry in World War I, my younger brother, Orville Wright , sold the company and withdrew from the aviation market. In the meantime, some companies that started later have created glory, and some have survived to this day, such as Lockheed Martin (founded in 1912 and is currently the world's largest weapons manufacturer) and Boeing (founded in 1916, one of the two largest civil aviation aircraft oligarchs in the world).

Review the Wright brothers' entrepreneurial journey, their mistake was a series of business and technical misjudgments brought about by arrogance .

The first mistake of Wright Brothers' is the hostile attitude towards exposure.

At the beginning of its business, the Wright brothers have always believed in "making a fortune in silence", for fear that others will steal their own technology. During that test flight in 1903, the Wright brothers did not invite the public or the media to watch it. Apart from the five neighbors who happened to be nearby, the world knew nothing about this big event.

In 1905, when the Wright brothers first promoted aircraft to the US Department of War (divided into the Department of Army and Air Force after World War II), they raised a series of strict requirements out of concerns about technology leakage: they refused to display product photos and required the Department of War to pay a considerable amount of deposit before they could test flights. Since the Ministry of War had been cheated by other inventors before, the cooperation was left unresolved.

The second error of Wright Brothers is underestimating competitor .

Just as the Wright Brothers were conducting low-key and difficult sales, the world's aircraft manufacturing industry had changed.

In 1906, Brazilian inventor Alberto Santos-Dumont completed a public flight of more than 160 feet (49.8 meters) in France. The flight heat then swept across Europe and the United States, and various flight performances were held from time to time.

However, Wilbur Wright jokingly joked Dumont's flight as a "jump" in a letter to a friend and predicted that there was no sign that someone else could fly more than 300 feet (91.4 meters) in a few years. Wilbur was quickly slapped in the face, and a few months later Dumont flew out 700 feet.

Dumont and other high-profile peers helped Wright educate the market. The U.S. Department of War realized that controllable flight was not nonsense, and at the end of 1907, they reconsidered the Wright brothers' proposal, issued an open bid to build the aircraft, and unexpectedly received as many as 41 bids. Eventually, the Wright brothers, who had a more mature plan, received an order worth $25,000 in the War Department in February 1908.

But not long after the good days began, they met their old rival Glenn Curtis .

1905, Curtis, who was the engine in our bank, wanted to provide engines for the Wright brothers. After being rejected, he turned to the Air Experimental Association (AEA), founded by the inventor of the telephone, Bell, and both sides became competitors.

Curtis is also well aware of the benefits of public show technology. In July 1908, under the witness of more than 1,000 viewers including journalists, photographers and film producers, Curtis flew his AEA 3 aircraft "June Beetle", and won the "Scientific American Flight Award" and a $2,500 prize with a record mileage of 1.5 kilometers (4,921 feet). In August 1909, Curtis won the world's first international aviation weekly award in Reims, Champagne, France, and returned with honors, while selling his first commercial aircraft. He improved the Wright brothers' warped wings to ailerons, which cost only $5,000, one-fifth of the Wright brothers' offer the previous year.

Whether it is Dumont's test flight, 41 aircraft bids, or Curtis, who invented the aileron, they are all conveying a strong signal: the competition for aircraft manufacturing is becoming increasingly fierce, and the pioneers' Wright brothers can no longer rest assured.

Faced with the threat of competition, the Wright brothers made the third commercial mistake of : they did not focus on improving technology and manufacturing processes, but adopted a passive defense posture - prosecution.

In August 1909, when Curtis won the grand prize in France, the Wright brothers formally accused Curtis of infringing on their patents obtained in 1906. In fact, the Wright brothers not only sued Curtis, but also many other colleagues who used unbalanced lift to take off the plane. So much so that these defendants made up a joke: "As long as someone jumps into the air and waves his arms, the Wright brothers will sue him in court." During the

dispute, the automobile king , Henry Ford, who is also in the aviation industry, extended a helping hand to Curtis and provided him with a free luxury lawyer team. Ford does not want to be clamped by the Wright brothers' patents.

The Wright Brothers finally won the case in January 1914: The U.S. Court of Appeals held that every time an aircraft manufacturer sold in the United States would pay the Wright Brothers 20% of the sale price as a patent fee.

However, the seemingly overwhelming victory comes at a huge price. The Wright brothers won the lawsuit but missed the entire era.

Due to the legal process consuming too much energy, Wright's products in 1911 lag behind their peers, especially the complex driving control problem has not been solved, making "Wright's airplane the hardest to drive" a common complaint among pilots. In 1912, Wilbur Wright died of typhoid fever during business operations at the age of 45. He has always been the one who made the decision among his brothers, and his younger brother Orwell began to withdraw and sold the company for $1.5 million in 1915.

Two years later, the United States participated in World War I in 1917. The then-US President Roosevelt, the oldest president, believed that the current patent status dragged down the overall development of the US aircraft manufacturing industry. The patent fees available to the Wright brothers were reduced from 20% to 2%, and the US aircraft manufacturing industry thus entered a golden period of development. Curtis Aircraft and Engine Company became the biggest beneficiary, producing more than 7,000 Jenny fighter jets during World War I alone, becoming the world's largest aircraft manufacturer at that time.

The first battle promoted the rapid development of the aircraft manufacturing industry. The aircraft production of various industrial countries increased significantly. The number of US fighter jets manufacturing increased from 83 units in 1916 to 11,950 units in 1918.

In 1929, Wright was acquired by his old rival Curtis and reorganized into Curtis-Wright. Although Wright was the inventor of the aircraft and the earliest pioneer of commercial aviation, their last name could only appear in the second place.

A sentence from "Three Body III: Death Eternal Life" is very suitable for this battle in the sky at the beginning of the century: "Weakness and ignorance are not obstacles to survival, arrogance is."

2. Xerox Paradise Lost

People wander in memories and lose in them. ——Sanmao

1983, the end of the year is approaching.

is located in the Apple office of Cupertino . The Bill Gates that just developed the Windows system is surrounded by more than a dozen Apple employees. Jobs is the leader. He shouted to Gates in anger: "You are a thief, steal our things!"

Gates looked cold: " It should be said that we all have a rich neighbor named Xerox. I broke into his home and stole the TV, but found that you had stolen it. "

Xerox, the world's largest copier manufacturer in the 1960s, once monopolized up to 82% of the market. Just like today's "Baidu" , at that time, taking the thing to copy is called "Xerox".

Xxar's previous history of making a fortune is a textbook-level case that seizes technical opportunities.

In 1938, a US patent office clerk, Carlson, invented a photocopier. Because copying paper was popular at that time, Carlson was rejected by more than 20 companies including IBM and General Electric.

1947, the Thousand Mile Horse finally met Bole, the predecessor of Xerox , the photo paper company Harroyd, CEO of real gold and bought Carlson back with his skills. Wilson believes that the basic law of corporate success is: success depends on profit, profit comes from development, and development depends on new thinking and new technologies.

From 1947 to 1960, Harloyd invested a total of US$75 million. This is a big bet for a small and medium-sized enterprise with only $20 million in annual sales.

1960, they succeeded. A photocopier named "Xerox 914" appeared in the offices of major American companies, and Harloyd changed his name to Xerox and applied for more than 500 patents. Other companies must pay a patent fee to produce the same copier, thus building a costly moat.

In addition to new technologies, the smart business model is also the reason for the great success of "914".

At that time, the cost of "914" was $2,400, but Wilson set it at $29,500. The profound meaning is: According to the law, any product priced at more than 10 times the cost will be banned from selling. When the media accused Wilson of a long and promoted the new technology, Wilson began to open his storefront in major American cities and opened up the business model he really envisioned: leasing. The monthly rent is $95, more than 2,000 copies, and each copy is 4 cents.

The average copy number of ordinary users is only 15-20 pages per day. This model is obviously in line with reality, and it also greatly expands the user base and number of copies.

's insurmountable technical barriers and perfect business model made Xerox the first company in U.S. history to exceed $1 billion in (the second one is Apple) in 1968.

In 1968, Carlson died, and Wilson handed over the position of CEO to Peter McCaron, Xerox ushered in a turning point.

At this time, the growth of copiers has slowed down. Faced with the new market situation, Wilson once again showed his business vision. When he left, he explained to McCaron: "In the upcoming computer era, numbers will be used to process information. 20 years later, if we still want to become a great company, we must be able to process information with numbers."

McCaron did not disappoint and formulated the "information architecture" strategy. On the one hand, it entered the computer industry through acquisitions. On the other hand, it established the famous Palo Alto Research Center, which was the world's first personal computer, and later was born.

Xerox invited Bob Taylor, Director of the Information Processing Technology Department of ARPA (U.S. Department of Defense Advanced Research Program), which was highly prestigious in the computer industry and was preparing to build ARPANET "1".

Under his call, PARC became the paradise that computer geniuses at that time yearned for. It is 4,500 kilometers away from the company's headquarters and is close to Stanford. It is surrounded by green trees. In order to satisfy the quirks of geniuses, the company has placed many lazy sofas and rocking chairs. They can come to work in pajamas and shorts. There is no fixed work station, everything depends on their mood.

genius otakus were holding a meeting

Taylor once revealed that 76 of the 100 best computer scientists in the United States are in PARC.

It was in this environment that in 1973, the world's first personal computer, Alto, was born. Alto uses graphical interface technology (GUI), Ethernet, monitors and a three-button mouse, and laid the foundation for modern computers.

Alto

Looking back today, this is Xerox's second "money printing" copier in his dream.

But Xerox failed to "copie" the copier's success. The existence of

PARC and the birth of Alto did not attract the attention it deserved. Instead, it turned the company into two gangs. On one side, it was a business kingdom that made money while lying down, and on the other side, it was a technical utopia. The "Copier Gang" believed that the complex things studied by the "West Coast Gang" could not help the company make money, while the "West Coast Gang" regarded the "Copier Gang" as an old antique behind the world trend.

The customers who were dealing with Xerox at that time were large enterprises and governments surrounded by IBM mainframes and DEC minicomputers. Xerox executives could not outline the grand dream of PCs for hundreds of millions of ordinary users. Alto is priced at $50,000, while laser printers cost $200,000, which naturally becomes Xerox's new direction. In the end, Alto only sold 2,000 units. The dramatic scene that Xerox regretted the most may be allowing Jobs to visit PARC.

In 1979, Jobs was 24 years old. Apple, which had been established for two years, just made its mark with Apple II. He was young and energetic and admired PARC for a long time and yelled to come and visit it in exchange for the exchange that it would sell Xerox $1 million in Apple stock at a low price. At that time, Apple was planning to go public. If it is successfully launched, Xerox will receive a generous reward. "3"

One day in November, Jobs came here as he wished. When he saw Alto, he jumped around excitedly like a monkey. "Why don't you do something with this? These things are great! It will be revolutionary!"

"It seems like the gauze covered in my eyes was unveiled," Jobs later recalled, "I saw the future of the computer industry."

The most concerned Jobs focused on graphical interface technology (GUI). At that time, the computer used Bill Gates' DOS. Compared with DOS, the GUI made computer operations simple and intuitive.

DOS (left) and GUI (right)

We all know the story after that. After returning to the company, Jobs vigorously developed a computer that carries the GUI and specially asked engineers to improve the three-button mouse, so that its cost will be reduced from $300 to $15. In 1983 and 1984, Apple successively launched Apple Lisa and Macintosh. Although it did not make money in business, it laid the foundation for the future success of iMac.

And in this round of drumming and passing, Bill Gates was the one who really succeeded at that time. In 1981, Jobs wanted to find someone to design matching application software for Lisa computers, but he found the person he shouldn't find - Bill Gates. Gates, who also has a keen sense of business, also saw the future of GUI at a glance. He secretly developed the Windows operating system in 1983. After Jobs found out, the beginning scene happened.

Whether it is a misjudgment of business trends or a visit by Jobs, Xerox's great technologies eventually become wedding dresses for others, passing by the greatest success in the computer industry.

Since then, Apple and Microsoft have been in the computer industry for nearly half a century. Xerox continues to struggle in the printing press field. In 2018, it was reported that it was about to be acquired by Fuji. PARC was separated from Xerox in 2002 and operated independently.

"If Xerox realized the value of Alto and seized this opportunity, there would be no Apple, Microsoft, or IBM. Its scale may now be as big as IBM and Microsoft combined." Jobs later said in an interview with "The New Yorker".

How much is Xerox's "sightedness" worth? Today, Xerox's market value is US$7.2 billion; Apple, IBM and Microsoft's total market value is US$1.8 trillion.

We will have to be quite smart to escape our past cleverness.

3. The destruction of the leader

The first generation of private entrepreneurs who are willing to make a comeback and the second generation of private entrepreneurs who want to be invincible, please put on a curve of economic trends in your mind before you get on the road. ——He Xuelin

October 1997, at Dalian Jinzhou Stadium, the national football team failed to reach the World Cup for the sixth time, and countless fans ended in disappointment. Two days later, Wang Juntao (Lao Rong), a Fuzhou man who was obsessed with football, wrote an article at the sports salon of Sitonglifang (the predecessor of Sina): "Dalian Jinzhou does not believe in tears."

This article spread all over the country overnight, and can be called an ancient Internet article.

Two years later, Lao Rong came to Beijing from Fuzhou and relied on Yu Lianbang Software Company to establish China's first B2Ch e-commerce website 8848. Three months after its establishment, he received a joint investment of 1 million US dollars in IDG Lin Dongliang , SoftBank Son Masayoshi , Yahoo Yang Zhiyuan , and Xue Manzi.

In the wilderness of the Internet at that time, 8848 established a complete e-commerce operation system based on Lianbang's complete supply chain, product circulation channels, and purchase and sales information system, which was divided into online supermarkets, information systems, electronic settlement systems, and national distribution systems.

Everything is ready, only the east wind is not available. In September 1999, 8848 sponsored a sensational show in the history of China's Internet - the 72-hour Internet Survival Test. The test content is that the organizer locked the tester in a room and sent 1,500 yuan in cash and 1,500 yuan in electronic currency to each person. He could not use any external force within 72 hours, and could only use a computer to contact the outside world to see if he could survive in the end. It is not difficult to see the doubts about the Internet at that time from the word "survival".

At that time, there were only two websites that could really buy things, one was the newly established 8848, and the other was Yonghe Soy Milk. Yonghe Soy Milk was a website specially opened before the online survival test began.

This incident made 8848 famous in one fell swoop, and its business volume surged. In early 2000, the sales category of 8848 expanded to 16 categories and tens of thousands, and the monthly sales exceeded 10 million mark.

Some honors confirmed the prosperity of 8848 at that time: in November 1999, Intel's president Berrit visited China, saying 8848 was the "leader of China's e-commerce"; in February 2000, the US Time magazine called 8848 the "most popular e-commerce site in China"; in July 2000, 8848 was listed in the top ten websites in China by Forbes magazine.

If there was no Internet bubble at that time, maybe 8848 could have gone further.Or, if 8848 is lucky enough, it can be listed before the Internet bubble. The listing operation of

8848 is no later than the three major portals, but because of the complex capital power behind 8848 (Wang Juntao later revealed that the equity structure of 8848 must be written clearly on six pages), after several layers of divestiture and reorganization, 8848 received approval from the China Securities Regulatory Commission in July 2000. But at this time, the Nasdaq was already bleeding and filled with sorrow.

. After that, the operation of 8848 has entered a land of doom, under the dual influence of capital and historical waves.

is only one step away from being listed, and 8848 is unwilling to accept it. They found a life-saving straw they imagined - B2B. To get a higher IPO price, it must cater to the tastes of Wall Street investors and package 8848 into a B2B model.

2001, 8848 was split into two. Some of them are listed separately under the concept of B2B; Wang Juntao insists on doing B2C and set up a company called my8848.

8848 does not have the advantage of operating B2B. After that, Lao 8848 tried B2B, e-commerce solutions, system integration and other businesses in just one year, but none of them were successful. In the end, there was constant friction during the merger with the e-commerce data company, and finally they fell silent.

Wang Juntao clearly knows that B2C is the core competitiveness of 8848, "In China, if an e-commerce business will be successful first, it will be B2C, and 8848 is undoubtedly the first in B2C." But unfortunately, my8848 also encountered shareholder disputes and even went to the arbitration committee. Wang Juntao, who was both chairman of 8848 and my8848, was in a dilemma and simply resigned from two positions at the same time.

When we come, we all have the same force, and heroes are not free. "The Father of China's E-commerce" withdrew from the stage of 8848, and 8848 also went to a complete collapse.

In 2003, Taobao was established. From then on, only Jack Ma knew about him, and no more Jun Tao.

In May 1999, Wang Juntao proposed the "three mountains" of e-commerce: First, there were only 4 million netizens in China at that time, which determined that e-commerce business opportunities were limited; second, the distribution problem; third, the biggest difficulties, namely the online payment problem and the trust crisis of long-distance purchase.

But he knew very well that these were not the reasons for the decline of 8848, because these difficulties were overcome later by Dangdang, Zhuoyue and Alibaba.

In an interview in 2015, Wang Juntao admitted:

Today, the reason for the failure of 8848 is actually very simple, and it is clear: there is only one reason, that is, investors have not persisted in 8848's core business, and they have gone to do something else. 8848 investors are very clear that 8848's main business is B2C, but they are eager to list and cash out 8848 at this time, and they can no longer care about so much. They have to create a B2B concept for 8848 at all costs, and instead use up 8848's original resources.

If 8848 was not split up under the short-sightedness of capital interests at that time, but slowly crossed the three mountains, perhaps today's e-commerce carnival would start on August 8.

4. The next loser

has imagination but no discernment. It is the most terrifying thing in the world. ——Goethe

2019, the competition for the next wave continues to take place.

Katy Huberty, head of the hardware industry research department of Morgan Stanley Technology, said: "In decades, this is the first time that has been observed that spending in IT and manufacturing industries is increasing at the same time; it can be said that they are in a parallel rising cycle."

is different from the wave of Internet innovation that has reached fierce competition in the previous two years. Innovations around the technological directions of AI, big data, 5G, industrial robots, new materials, biotechnology, etc. are bringing changes to the real physical world, and simultaneously affecting the first, second and third industries.

On the one hand, the innovator group has gained unprecedented potential energy; on the other hand, deeply transforming the physical world and existing industries is destined to be more difficult, heavier, more dangerous, more investment, more failure or success, and more time and capital costs are required to falsify or confirm.

In the next wave of rolling in, different tracks of present different narratives .

Some tracks, the loser and the harvester has already appeared.

In the competition for smart voice among giants, former rivals Microsoft, Apple, and Google, which is known for its black technology reserves, all got up early and rushed to the late stage.

In 2009, Microsoft integrated voice functions in the Win7 operating system; in 2010, Google launched voice search function (Google Voice Search); in 2011, Apple released Siri, but none of these products really opened up the market and became useless.

is actually a late-stage Amazon. Through the new AI category released by the end of 2014-the smart speaker Echo, it found a breakthrough in the implementation of smart voice and started the future "100-box war". Large companies such as Google, Apple, , JD.com, iFLYTEK, , Xiaomi, Alibaba, Tencent, etc. have entered the market one after another, and startups are also eager to try. In 2015, more than 50 teams in China alone were developing smart speakers at the same time.

To this day, the global smart speaker market has shown a clear ladder: Amazon is still ranked first, with sales in 2018 of 29.7 million units, with a market share of 34.5%. Google, which is closely behind, also has more than 30%, and the two companies divide more than 60% of the global market. In China, four players such as Alibaba, Xiaomi, , Baidu , and Dingdong (co-launched by JD.com and iFLYTEK) sold a total of 20 million smart speakers last year, accounting for 91% of China's total sales, and other players, including Tencent, accounted for only 9%, and entrepreneurs' data were bleak.

data comes from Statista

https://www.statista.com/statistics/792598/worldwide-smart-speaker-unit-shipment/

Behind the smart speakers, the greater competition is the smart voice platform that provides technical support. Amazon relied on its speaker advantages to enhance the strength of its platform Alexa. At the end of 2018, Alexa had more than 70,000 skills, and connected 28,000 devices from 4,500 third parties, the number was 6 times higher than the beginning of the year, and the data ranks among the top among all voice platforms.

Lu Qi once commented in hindsight: Apple and Microsoft's mistake was to focus on mobile phone terminals and computer terminals, and did not expect to develop new devices that put AI first.

In fact, the Echo project launched in 2010 was led by Amazon's consumer electronics product development unit Lab 126, and 's initial goal was to develop new hardware , not a platform. Echo's initial team mainly engaged in AR, and expanded its voice technology strength after acquiring voice startups Yap and Evi in ​​2011 and 2013. Bezos was also after the Echo was launched, and gradually realized the full potential of Alexa, which was born from the Echo.

Therefore, hot products terminals feed back to the platform, and the platform has become the common strategy of AI giants through the positive cycle of terminal growth, good technology and good scenarios.

However, the competition for smart voice has not yet reached its end. Google quickly learned from Amazon's implementation method, and gained the advantage of latecomer with its stronger technical strength and better Q&A experience.

Research agency Stone Temple has tested 5,000 common questions on several voice assistants, and Google Assistant performed three times better than Alexa. Previously, consumers' big complaints about Echo were too stupid and answered questions that were not right. Currently, Google's smart speaker market share is comparable to Amazon.

Stone Temple's evaluation results on Google Assistant, Microsoft's Cortana, Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa.

In the future, the success or failure of these two companies will more comprehensively outline the different roles of technology reserves and scenario mining in the new round of technological entrepreneurship.

Some tracks face the risk of collective failure.

Wilbur Wright once misjudged the speed of development of flight technology, and he believed that opponents would not be able to fly long mileage in the short term. The controversial autonomous driving industry has made the opposite mistake: is too optimistic about and believes that commercialization will come soon.