Chapter 16 be a pragmatic idealist

Think about it, I have been in business for a long time, but I have never seriously thought about the technical issues of doing business, and the books I read in the process of doing business are basically irrelevant to doing business.I have hardly read any books on management skills in the past ten years. From my heart, I don’t think that a good businessman needs to pursue too many skills, but should answer fundamentally: why run a company?What kind of company will it be?What is the purpose of doing business?Answering these questions is actually the answer to the company's contribution and understanding to this era.

The background of China is rapid economic growth and accelerated urbanization.In the future, China's economy will continue to grow rapidly, and hundreds of millions of people in China will join the process of urbanization.Only when you conform to these major trends, can your efforts be meaningful and valuable, be recognized by the market and society, and be able to talk about contributing to society.Otherwise, the general direction is wrong, and the opposite is the opposite, which is counterproductive and counterproductive.For example, today it is obviously out of date for someone to set up a factory for manufacturing abacus, or a factory for producing BP players and audio tapes, and technological progress will definitely eliminate them.To use a common saying: "Men are afraid of entering the wrong line of work, and women are afraid of marrying the wrong man." If it is divided into extremes, Chinese entrepreneurs can be divided into two categories: one is the natives, or "earth turtles", that is, " Low-tech" category.This category belongs to empiricism, with no general direction and no big picture, which is the lack of Vision as foreigners say.But they are not stubborn. They cross the river by feeling the stones. When they feel the stones, they take a step forward.Such entrepreneurs can easily become opportunists, but thousands of such "low-tech" entrepreneurs have succeeded in this way.China's influence in the world economy and the phenomenon of "Made in China" are produced from such a large number of entrepreneurs. Their vitality is amazingly tenacious and they can survive in any harsh and harsh environment.They can be seen not only on the land of China, but also in every corner of the world.The easiest way is to open a Chinese restaurant, wait for the opportunity, and start slowly.

Contrary to this type of entrepreneurs, there is another type, represented by "sea turtles", who have high educational background and high technical content. They have traveled far and wide, and are well-informed.They are the first group of elites to go international, bringing a new breath to China's opening up.But they are too dreamy idealists, even self-righteous people with blindfolds.I think I have learned all the knowledge and understood all the mysteries in the world. The most commonly used words are "the world will change because of us" and "we provide human beings with a new way of life".They speak clearly about the trends of China and the world in the next few decades, and they can predict the trends of stock prices, exchange rates, and housing prices to a few decimal places.But this type of entrepreneur often encounters bad luck in real life.If they become economists instead of entrepreneurs, and the prediction results are often completely opposite to the actual results, they can only use "the market is immature", "there is a bubble", and "people are irrational" to justify themselves.If the first type of entrepreneur is an empiricist who may turn into an opportunist, this type of entrepreneur is an idealist who often turns into a dogmatist.

To borrow a passage from Chairman Mao: Dogmatism has caused much more damage to the Chinese revolution than empiricism, causing the Chinese revolution to lose 100% of its power in the white areas and more than 90% in the red areas.Why is this the result?Because the Chinese revolution and the Chinese market are very complicated, it is a huge and complicated system, no one can grasp it 100%, and there are still many unknown areas.Even the most knowledgeable and intelligent people have blind spots and things they don't know.It's better to simply close your eyes, jump into the sea and swim, open up the feeling from the subtleties, and feel the flow of the water with your skin. If you swim a few times like this, you may make money.

What qualities should contemporary entrepreneurs possess?This is related to the background of the times and what kind of enterprises are needed in this era.In the era of planned economy, there were only factory managers and no entrepreneurs. This economic form brought us endless poverty and backwardness.In the early days of capitalism, while entrepreneurs created wealth, they also brought poverty. Instead of creating poverty in their own country, they exported poverty to other countries—this is the view summarized by Marx back then, and it still applies today.So, in what kind of country will the new enterprise form conforming to the new civilization of mankind be born?It can't be in Europe, it can't be in the United States, and it can't be in Africa. I think it can only be born in China.This new enterprise form should pay attention to the balanced development of spiritual wealth and material wealth while creating material wealth, pay attention to fairness, justice, and harmonious and balanced development.The new form of enterprise puts forward new requirements for Chinese entrepreneurs. They should not only have the vision, knowledge and ideals of the second type of entrepreneurs, but also have the pragmatic spirit of the first type of entrepreneurs, and respect the unknown domain.Neither can go to extremes, the right path is the mean, I guess they are some pragmatic idealists.