Chapter 3 Chapter 02 The Curse of Chinese Culture on High Technology
There are three things that are most undesirable in Chinese culture: impetuousness, opportunism, and rigid thinking.And these three kinds of spirits are deeply rooted in Chinese enterprises, and they are constantly repeating these three kinds of mistakes today.Lenovo Group is the most representative of them. The previous chapter talked about the mistakes Lenovo made in the past, mainly impetuousness and opportunism.
After the failure of Lenovo’s strategy to acquire IBM’s global PC business, although Lenovo has announced in a high-profile way that the business integration will end early, and even rampantly end the use of the IBM brand early (of course, Lenovo may also want to save hundreds of millions of dollars that it needs to pay every year. trademark royalties).But what about stock prices?The stock price fell from more than 6 yuan per share to around 2 yuan. When the stock price was the lowest in 2008, it was only 1.32 yuan per share, which underperformed the market by 20%.A very significant contrast is IBM's judgment on Lenovo and Lenovo's management's judgment on itself.Logically speaking, Americans certainly do not have people from Lenovo who understand the Chinese market, let alone Lenovo understand their own value.But do you know that in the first half of 2008, what happened to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange where Lenovo Group was listed?According to the data of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, from March 7 to April 16, 2008, Lenovo Group repurchased 99.318 million shares at a price of HK$4.25-5.58 per share, using a total of about HK$485 million.
Because the domestic A-shares have a very short full circulation time, everyone is not familiar with the tactic of repurchase.In fact, this is very common in the U.S. stock market. As a finance professor, I will teach these basic contents to students in corporate finance courses for undergraduates.So in the United States, what was this mechanism originally used for?It is when major shareholders feel that their stocks are seriously undervalued by the market, so they use their own money to repurchase stocks in the secondary market, thereby pushing up the stock price and allowing shareholders to obtain benefits.Therefore, this is originally a win-win approach, which benefits both large and small shareholders, and is part of professional managers' fulfilling their fiduciary responsibilities.So what has become of the same mechanism in the hands of Lenovo?
We have statistics on the H-share market in Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, the average book return of H-share shareholders repurchases reaches 10% to 20%. However, behind the high returns of such repurchases are actually hidden high risks!On the surface, it is to support the stock price in the short term, and the financial statements will be very good. Based on Lenovo’s average repurchase price of HK$4.88 in March 2008, as of the market close on May 8, 2008, Lenovo’s share price was HK$5.87, about 20% book profit.In other words, there is a 20% return in 2 months, and an average of 10% of the net profit in 1 month—you may not have such a high net profit in a year by selling computers!
But this is only the profit on the book. If there is no fundamental support, you bought a lot of tradable shares in one go. Who will you sell them to in the future?Even if someone buys it, will they accept the stock price like Lenovo?Therefore, it is not surprising that if IBM, one of Lenovo's major shareholders, announced that it would sell Lenovo shares one by one, Lenovo's share price would plummet by more than 5% that day.At the same time, IBM, which holds Lenovo shares due to the acquisition, is also seeking to reduce its holdings for the second time.According to the arrangement of Citibank, IBM plans to sell 116.19 million Lenovo shares at a price of HK$5.61-5.76 per share, accounting for about 1.3% of the company's issued share capital, and plans to cash out HK$669.3 million.What does it mean?I think the most reasonable guess is that IBM thinks that Lenovo stock is not worth holding at all, so take advantage of the high stock price and quickly cash out!Of course, I don't know if it is possible for Lenovo to cooperate with IBM's exit and boost the stock price to benefit IBM.
Since IBM is not optimistic about Lenovo, I really can't imagine that so many executives in Lenovo who are smarter than me violate their professional knowledge and are so optimistic about themselves, and even use money to buy their own stocks.In fact, their real purpose should be to cover up their panic in the past few years by stuffing losses into channels and creating performance.Here I want to explain what is called the practice of stuffing losses into the channel.In the past few years, Lenovo has not managed well, but in order to maintain poor book profits, it insisted on selling the product to the distributor at a price of 100 yuan, but the actual price was only 80 yuan. Lenovo promised that the distributor would return them 20 yuan in the future.But after a few years of flickering, the channel dealers understood it, and at the same time they stopped working due to losses, and Lenovo couldn’t bear it anymore, so they had to write off these losses on January 6, 2009 through their so-called reorganization Lose.Unable to withstand the pressure of huge losses, many executives of Lenovo resigned one after another. This seems to be the reason why the old coach Liu Chuanzhi had to go out in person.
In fact, the real question is that these risks are the risks of the company's shareholders, so if the management knew in advance that the reorganization and write-off will be carried out on January 6, 2009, do you think it is possible for Lenovo to cash out its own shares after the stock price rises? Stocks, and then throw the mess that had to be restructured to shareholders?So you can see what Lenovo Group has done, and it even made 26 buybacks in one go!In the Hong Kong stock market, there is absolutely no company crazier than Lenovo!
It would be a miracle if Lenovo outperformed the market!So it’s no surprise that if you compare Lenovo with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index, whether it’s a half-year chart, a one-year chart, a two-year chart, or a five-year chart, you will find in despair: Lenovo just can’t outperform the market!And I think that the direct result of Lenovo executives cashing out stocks during the peak buyback period in 2008 was the sharp drop in stock prices in 2008-2009.
I think the most interesting thing is that Lenovo is betting again in this predicament. In 2008, Liu Chuanzhi said that he would build servers, but he has not seen any real improvement. In 2009, he bet on the SME market, supercomputers, and servers. , betting on 1,500 experience stores, betting on fashionable computers, and betting on netbooks.Anyone will find out why this company's strategy is so chaotic!
In fact, this chaotic strategy fully shows that Chinese high-tech companies are particularly happy to succeed.For example, in 2005, Lenovo announced very high-profilely that it would manufacture the world's fastest supercomputer, with the goal of being 10 times faster than IBM!What is behind this?It is the spiritual goal that our culture advocates, such as "pursue the first", "if you don't sing, you will be done, and you will be a blockbuster".This mentality is what I called impetuousness in the previous chapter, and the cultural expression of impetuousness is the worship of tragic heroes.
Due to the influence of this impetuous culture, many enterprises in our country pursue high goals in the process of developing high-tech products, shouting "the world's fastest supercomputer", and even put the pursuit of "domestic first", "filling the domestic gap" and "filling the world" Blank", as the research and development goal of the product.As for how to achieve this goal, it turns out to use non-scientific concepts such as "The Foolish Old Man Moves the Mountain" and "Grind an Iron Rod into a Needle" as the motto.
Because the goal is too high, many high-tech enterprises have slow progress in the research and development of products and continue to increase funds.This phenomenon has become one of the main reasons for the failure of technology product R&D in Chinese enterprises.
In fact, if we carefully analyze the market conditions, we will find that Lenovo's corporate strategy lacks practical significance.
First, small and medium-sized enterprises are the personal computer strategy of Dell and HP in the past two or three years. As a latecomer, how can you compete with others?
Second, the best experience store is Apple Computer, but how many experience stores does Apple have in the United States?What's more, Lenovo now has 5,060 specialty stores and 2,000 Think experience stores.Stylish computers are the main selling point of Sony and Apple. How can Lenovo's stupid, ugly and expensive computers attract these users?
Third, as for netbooks, Lenovo's response in this market is seriously lagging behind, which is simply unimaginable!When ASUS launched the netbook, Lenovo believed that this product was low in cost and low in profit. If it intervened, it would damage Lenovo's high-end image.The results of it?ASUS launched the first two netbooks on June 6, 2007, but Lenovo launched them in September 2008.It is said that the sales volume exceeded 30,000 units in just one month, but in the face of ASUS and Acer, which have already become popular, such sales volume is obviously not worth mentioning.Statistics show that ASUS's EeePC netbooks sold 1.8 million units in the fourth quarter of the festive shopping season, and the target of 5 million units for the whole year of 2008 has been successfully achieved.
What did Lenovo say about the winter? It was the financial crisis that led to its poor performance.In fact, at the end of October 2008, Wang Zhentang, chairman of Acer, said at the shareholders meeting that the financial crisis did not affect the sales of netbooks.Benefiting from the hot sales of netbooks, Acer’s notebook sales grew by as much as 60% in the fourth quarter. According to data, in September 2008, Acer’s total notebook shipments reached 3.6 million units, beating HP for the first time in a single month and leapt to the top of the global market. Notebook shipment No. 1.
Fourth, supercomputers are a traditional project of IBM. Together with HP, these two account for 80% of the top 500 supercomputers in the world.Foreign investment in the domestic server market accounts for 73%, and Sugon and Inspur are doing the rest, and Lenovo has no advantage at all. On April 20, 2009, the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced that it had finally cooperated with Lenovo and Sugon to develop a "supercomputing system with a single-precision peak exceeding 1,000 trillion floating-point operations per second."
But, do you know what the reality is?Supercomputers are just a saying that they only exist in China, but they are essentially mainframes.And Paul, the vice president of HP's global server business?Miller said that because mainframes are too troublesome to run proprietary software and high annual service fees, mainframes are actually dying, while blade servers, which replace mainframes, are bucking the trend. In the fourth quarter of 2008, the global server market experienced a sharp decline. The sales revenue of IBM, HP, Dell and Sun Microsystems, the major server manufacturers, all shrank to varying degrees compared with the same period in 2007, but the only one showing positive growth The trend is the blade server.In the fourth quarter of 2008, blade server revenues grew 16 percent year-over-year.HP leads with a 54.8 percent revenue share; IBM follows with 21.7 percent.Looking at the whole year of 2008, blade server revenue increased by 33%, and the market size reached 5.4 billion US dollars.
Will Paul Miller's predictions be accurate in the long run?Probably inaccurate, but not because mainframes have stronger competitiveness, especially the competition from China's mainframes is absolutely impossible, but because of the challenge of cloud computing.After all, mainframes are too expensive and inconvenient to maintain. If the hardware is broken, you have to replace it.The use of cloud computing technology will not have these effects, the system runs the same, and the advantages are more obvious.
First, with cloud computing technology, websites without strong financial resources can also obtain ultra-large-scale computing power and storage space. When Google started in 1997, it faced a shortage of funds, but it needed a large-scale storage space to store the content of all web pages on the Internet, a large-scale computing power to build a search index, and handle a large number of concurrent user requests. Google boldly uses a bunch of cheap servers to meet the demand for ultra-large-scale storage space and computing power-this is called a cloud computing platform.
In 2006, the size of the Google cloud computing platform was 450,000 machines. Two years later, some speculate that Google has now doubled in size.Not only is the scale super large, but more than 10 years of practice have proved that the stability of the cloud computing platform is also satisfactory.
Second, as mentioned earlier, from 1997 to the present, the Google cloud computing platform has grown rapidly with the growth of Internet content.Usually, the increase in the scale of the computing platform will inevitably lead to an increase in the additional burden of management, resulting in a decrease in the efficiency of the entire system.But the dramatic increase in the size of Google's platform has not led to a significant decrease in overall efficiency.
Third, to deal with access traffic that is difficult to predict accurately, the cloud computing platform can provide sufficient flexibility—increase or decrease computing power and storage space as traffic changes.The visit traffic of the website is uneven, the number of user visits soars during the peak period, and the machine is too busy.In spare time, many machines are idle, resulting in waste of resources.Moreover, the peak periods of various websites are inconsistent, and there are often situations where you are busy and I am not.Based on the same principle, if you look at the top 10 high-performance computers in China, half of them are used for geological prospecting, but in fact, each mainframe does not always have large-scale computing tasks.As for mainframes or large servers for financial services, they mainly serve calculations during the day when the market is open.With the rapid expansion of bandwidth, cloud computing can actually better mobilize these potentially unbusy computing capabilities for its own use.
Having said so much, you have to admit again: Lenovo is far behind IBM, which is a mainframe, HP, which is a blade server, or Microsoft and Google, which pioneered cloud computing.Readers may say that Lenovo's executives are much smarter than you, Professor Lang, and it is impossible for them not to know this background knowledge. So why does Lenovo still go forward bravely and never look back?
In fact, this is not just a problem of association, but the essential problem is that in our hearts, we believe in and worship miracles.This mentality of believing in miracles is the low-probability events I talked about in the previous chapters, such as Zhuge Liang borrowing the east wind, empty city tricks, and so on.According to the results of my research in Guangdong, 54.6% of domestic companies tend to expect a certain R&D personnel to suddenly create a very good product.For example, the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced that it has cooperated with Lenovo and Sugon to develop a "supercomputing system with a single-precision peak exceeding 1,000 trillion floating-point operations per second" is a manifestation of this miracle mentality, and hopes to make a lot of money through this miracle.But this is not the case in the West. They only believe in laws and do not believe in miracles.For example, Paul Miller, the vice president of Hewlett-Packard we talked about earlier, said that the mainframe is actually coming to an end. Miller's statement is an inevitable inference under the law, and he will never imagine miracles.
It is unfair to talk about Lenovo alone, because there are too many so-called high-tech companies like Lenovo in China.Let me tell readers about a company similar to Lenovo Thinking - Shuguang Company. Let's have fun and have a good laugh.Sugon 4000A was manufactured by China Sugon Company for the Shanghai Supercomputing Center in 2004. It was ranked No. 10 in the world at that time, but it has fallen out of the top 250 in the world now. The Dawning 5000A launched in 2008 has once again carried out the fine tradition of our Chinese culture of "pursuing the first" and "if you don't make a sound, you will be a blockbuster".I don't want to be too technical, I will tell readers the key points.The computer has a total of 30,720 computing cores. Comparing this product with the top 500 products in the world, we can find that the most mainstream solution only uses 2049 to 4096 computing cores (http://www.top500.org /stats/list/32/procclass).For example, the supercomputers provided by IBM and Hewlett-Packard to PetroChina and China Telecom also use so many cores, and these solutions have actually accounted for the main share of mainframes in use in China. Why did Sugon 4000A fall out of the top 250 in just 5 years?Comparing IBM and Hewlett-Packard, we can find that IBM and Hewlett-Packard have very powerful software solutions, so they can create a market, and China's mainframes only have super computing power, which is not enough.For example, during the Olympic Games, the mainframe used by the Beijing Meteorological Bureau was provided by IBM, and its specific solution was software for calculation and forecasting of very complex meteorological problems such as sandstorms. These so-called mainframe computers in China have strong computing power, but due to the lack of solution software that keeps pace with the times, it is difficult to achieve success. This is like making hard disks. China is lagging behind, but they are unwilling to study basic sciences such as material science or computing science in accordance with scientific laws. The goal is to come up with a top 10 in the world, so how do you do it?It is the opportunism that the Chinese are good at, which is the so-called "four or two to pull a thousand catties" and "killing a chicken without a sledgehammer".The last is to string together tens of thousands of small hard drives in parallel!And this chained program is provided by Microsoft, not to mention that these small hard drives are also produced by foreign companies.Do you think it's ridiculous?Why can we all accept this bragging?Because we are a nation that believes in and worships miracles. So many questions mentioned above are more technical, and you may be a little bored reading them.Then I will tell you a story about an American high-tech company. I am sure this story is unimaginable in China.I don't want to tell the story of Bill Gates. Bill Gates went to start Microsoft before finishing college. Everyone must know this story, and I will definitely not tell what everyone knows.I want to tell the story of the owner of Oracle who recently squeezed out IBM and bought Sun Microsystems.Why talk about him?Of course, the first reason is that his English name is the same as mine, Larry; another more important reason is that he is more powerful than Bill Gates.In 1977, when 32-year-old Comrade Larry Ellison founded Oracle with two other people, this guy was a dropout who failed to graduate from three universities.In the eyes of us Chinese, this person is basically useless in this life, and he stands at thirty. You see, he is basically a social worker at the age of 30.What did he rely on for a living at that time?Just occasionally help others write a few lines of programs.At that time, there was no such profession as a software engineer, and the reference books for programming were just a few magazines.At that time, hardware was basically equivalent to the entire computer industry, so people who wrote software codes were similar to assembly workers in today's computer factories, just doing a little auxiliary work. But what does America see?It is your ability and what your products can do, not how many masters or doctors you have read, nor which school you graduated from.Don't underestimate this older young man who dropped out of school. The three of them are not simple, at least they can understand the most cutting-edge papers in the industry.One guy first saw a paper by Edgar Frank Codd, and recommended it to two other people, along with several other related articles.After they read it, they felt that the database software had potential, so they began to plan and build a commercially available "relational" database.I will talk about some professional terms below, including "relational" databases, but readers should not be intimidated by these professional terms. Just listen to them. When I first came into contact with these terms, my level was similar to everyone's. With patience and patience, the level will rise.In order to ease the burden on the reader, I will quote these nouns that do not need to be known below. But the first question is, why doesn't the guy who wrote the paper start his own company?The reason is not that, like our country, writing papers is purely behind closed doors and cannot be practiced.Edgar Coulter published the famous paper "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks" in the professional academic journal "Communication of ACM". A turning point in history.You must know that at that time, the relatively low-level "hierarchical model" and "network model" database products dominated the market.Starting from this paper, it opened the prelude to the "relational" database software revolution.So let me tell you that the real reason Edgar Coulter didn't start a company by himself is that he is an engineer of IBM! So the next question is, why doesn't IBM do it by itself?Here we will find that there are always surprisingly similar scenes in history.This article was actually published as early as June 1970, but IBM has been slow to engage in this project.Why is this?The main reason is that IBM at that time was as closed-eyed as Lenovo is today. What is the conclusion of their huge and complicated bureaucratic system after a long discussion?They believed that "relational" databases were too slow to compare with the backward "hierarchical" databases at the time.The funny thing is that although IBM finally launched a new project three years later (that is, in 1973) to study the practical feasibility of "relational" databases, it has not released such products for a long time because IBM's "hierarchical" "The database is selling well. If a "relational" database is launched, it will involve the self-interest of many people in IBM. In sharp contrast to this, these three "outside the system" people released a commercial Oracle product in the summer of 1979. This new database product was not very stable and lacked some important functions, but there were still customers.At that time, the CIA couldn't wait to buy a set of such software to meet their needs, but after consulting IBM, it was found that IBM did not have a commercially available product, so the CIA contacted Edgar?Court them.It was not until 1983, when they had released the third edition of Oracle, that IBM released the long overdue product DB2. What do you see behind this? First, only in the environment of the United States can new technological research results be released in a timely manner.Even if a company fails to make it due to internal problems, this technology will not disappear, but will be accumulated and passed down, so that the people behind will not need to waste time on some low-level problems. The so-called scientific research This is the accumulation and transmission.The characteristics of Chinese scientific research are just the opposite. We basically waste time at a low level, and lack accumulation and transmission. First of all, I want to talk about what low-level waste is.For example, our second-grade students pitifully memorize the ninety-nine multiplication table. cycle.If you have the opportunity to go to a supermarket in the United States to buy things, you will find that American cashiers not only do not know how to use multiplication and division, but even do subtraction. This will not affect the United States becoming a super technological power.This low-level waste also includes that we consume a lot of time and energy for students to learn problem-solving skills in subjects such as mathematics and physics, as well as Olympic mathematics and physics competitions that focus on problem-solving.In addition, there is a saying of low-level waste that all students and parents are most familiar with-"Learn mathematics, physics and chemistry well, and you will not be afraid to travel all over the world."This is absolute nonsense and an absolute waste of time at a low level.These subjects are basically studied by the second- and third-rate talents in the United States. Contrary to China, the first-rate talents in the United States do not study mathematics, physics and chemistry, but study law school, business school and medical school.While the first-class talents in the United States have traveled all over the world, I have never seen them care about mathematics, physics and chemistry, and it doesn't matter if they don't even know mathematics, physics and chemistry. Let me talk about what is called accumulation and transmission.For example, you have obtained A result through doing research, and the so-called scientific research is to research B on the basis of A. From A to B is the transfer and accumulation of scientific research.You can never come up with B out of thin air, because without A there would never be B.Our scientific research in China, taking finance as an example, I have read that some studies basically lack the transfer and accumulation from A to B. Many papers just come up with a self-righteous C theory out of thin air, and this C has nothing to do with A and B. Not only is it irrelevant, but it is ridiculous to write the result of C as unparalleled in the world.I still remember a doctoral student in finance from a certain university in Chongqing told me that when he was studying for a doctorate, his advisor asked him to take the course "Atmospheric Physics". Just like the climate is fickle, so study atmospheric physics. I couldn't help laughing out loud when I heard this. This is the A and B that I never learned from international academic papers related to stock market topics, but the C I came up with at home.It's ridiculous.Also, a doctoral student in finance from a normal university in Shanghai called me and said that the school stipulates that doctoral dissertations must be published in internationally renowned academic journals. I laughed and told him that almost no professors in your school have ever published papers internationally. , Why are you doctoral students able to publish?Later, when I read his paper, it was so ridiculous that there was not even a "reference".This is the standard without the accumulation and transfer of A and B, but an imaginary C.This is the research level of many financial schools in our mainland. On the surface, China has a high investment in scientific research and a high level of R&D personnel, but the R&D efficiency is very low and there are few scientific research products.There are many people with doctoral and master's degrees, but not many inventions.According to the survey results, 30% of the surveyed companies have doctors as professional and technical leaders in terms of technology development, 45% have masters as professional and technical leaders, and 24% have undergraduates as professional and technical leaders.It can be seen that the academic structure of high-tech professional leaders in Chinese enterprises is comparable to that of foreign developed countries.In 70% of the company's R&D teams, more than 90% of the researchers have a bachelor's degree or above, but the patent output per 10,000 people ranks last in the world.A large number of our scientific research personnel and funds are basically wasted on some low-level technologies, instead of accumulating and passing on.So recently there has been a long discussion in China about whether copycat phones are good or not, and I don't think they hit the essence of the problem!The key question is whether talents are used in the accumulation and transmission of scientific research.
Second, when it comes to entrepreneurship, Western companies are not betting on small probability events, but carefully analyzing and researching academic papers, demonstrating feasibility, and preparing all research and development conditions before developing products according to customer needs. This is the law of research and development. According to this rule, the success rate of research and development can be improved.Western philosophy advocates obeying the law, but we are different. We do not respect the law, but hope to destroy the law. We even take pride in breaking the rules and laws.For example, I, like many Chinese, take pride in breaking the rules.I was invited to give a speech in Wuzhou, Guangxi at the beginning of October 2008. Since there was no plane to get there, it would take 5 hours to drive there. In order to catch up with the time, the organizer of the speech sent a police car to pick me up.After I got into the police car, the siren blared all the way, I ran a red light, and I didn't pay the toll, I felt very happy.When I broke the traffic rules, I was not only not ashamed, but proud of myself. Due to the influence of Chinese culture, many high-tech enterprises in our country pursue the least effort in the development of new products and place their hopes on small probability events. This is the so-called law of destruction.There are many ways to break the law. For example, many companies publicize and reward those who do not have the conditions (such as funds, equipment or environment), insufficient reserves (such as technology accumulation and experience), unconventional processes (not According to procedures and specifications) but successful projects and individuals.These projects are very risky and have a low success rate.
Third, please think about it, why did Oracle launch the second edition so quickly?In fact, the real situation is that the so-called second edition launched by Oracle is actually an incorrectly revised version of the first edition, but the revision is not very thorough.Moreover, this second version is not only unstable, but also lacks some important functions.Maybe our Chinese readers will find it very strange-even the products of high-tech companies like Oracle will make mistakes?Isn't high technology infallible?Otherwise, how can it be called high technology?This is exactly what we don't understand about high technology. In our Chinese subconscious, what is level?It means that there are no mistakes in the things done, and the requirements for work are also like this.Why do we have this pursuit of perfection thinking?I think it may be directly related to our mentality of pursuing 100 points in every exam since we were young.Even if the child gets 98 points in the test, the parents are not necessarily satisfied, because they didn't get 100 points, because only 100 points are perfect.Under the control of this kind of consciousness, strengthening the testing and verification process for errors is regarded as a waste of resources, because since there are no errors, there is no need for testing and verification.In Western concepts, there must be mistakes in the completed work, and the greater the high-tech content, the more mistakes there will be. This is not a question of whether there is a level.Therefore, they believe that strengthening error testing and verification is a necessary guarantee for success.Why do they have this kind of thinking of accepting mistakes?I think it may have something to do with the different examination systems in the West. Basically, the West uses a curve to grade. As long as you are in the top 30% of the class, you are A. Although you made a lot of mistakes in the exam, you are still the best. OKTherefore, the thinking of Westerners who have the courage to accept mistakes is much higher than ours. This kind of thinking is manifested in scientific research, which has formed the West's emphasis on testing and correcting mistakes, while the Chinese do not pay attention to testing.This mentality can be fully reflected in the survey: 85.9% of Chinese companies have a ratio of testing expenditures to total R&D expenditures that is far lower than the 40% level in the West.
Fourth, how did the third edition of Oracle improve?After the founders got the first order, they didn't dare to indulge themselves at all, because they knew too well that if the product was not upgraded, IBM would catch up with it immediately.What's more, unlike today, most computers used Microsoft's operating system. At that time, there were various computers in the CIA, so how to realize cross-platform operation?These are very critical and real issues.They know very well that they cannot fail, but they must solve these specific problems in order to ensure future success. That is to say, in the Western concept, failure is a mistake in control and management. This mentality is unthinkable in our business. "Failure is the mother of success", we take it for granted.But there is no similar saying in English. If you translate it into English, it is called "failure is the mother of success". I think Westerners must not understand it.Because we have this kind of thinking, we can not be held accountable for failures; however, in Western concepts, we don’t see it that way, failures must be errors in control or management, and we must be held accountable.Due to the influence of Chinese culture, 32.6% of the managers of many high-tech enterprises in my country believe that the success or failure of high-tech product development is understandable.It is a natural law for enterprise R&D personnel to fail in R&D.Only 23.1% of enterprises think that control and management are important.Enterprise R&D personnel pursue the embodiment of their own capabilities, and no one cares about and is responsible for the success or failure of high-tech product development. They even think that the success of high-tech product development is based on countless failures.
So how to control and manage it?The two words of control and management are easy to say, but how many of our enterprises can really do it?Do you know that Oracle has already achieved such management and control when it launched the third version of the software in 1983!The principle of the entire control and management is process management, not target management.This sentence seems a bit mysterious, but readers will understand as soon as I explain it. What is management by objectives? I will take the cooking of a great chef as an example. Frying fish-flavored pork shreds to the satisfaction of customers is called management by objectives. As for the method of cooking by a great chef, we do not pay attention. What is process management? We divide the chef's cooking steps into 20 stages, that is, 20 procedures.The first person chops green onion, the second person cuts shredded pork... The 18th person pours 2 spoons of soy sauce, the 19th person turns the fire to 600 degrees Celsius, and the 20th person fry 3 times.If it’s not tasty, readjust the 2nd, 5th, and 9th steps; if it’s not tasty, then readjust the 3rd, 7th, and 14th steps; if it’s still not tasty, then adjust the 18th and 19th steps process.In this way, after countless adjustments, the 1001st process was finally able to fry dishes as delicious as those cooked by the chef. Under the requirements of this process, the length of chopped green onion must be 1.1 cm, and the length of shredded pork must be 1.3 cm, the soy sauce must be 2 tablespoons dark soy sauce.In the future, we will cook according to the 1001st adjustment process, and everyone will do it according to the strict requirements of each process, and we must not innovate.Everyone follows this procedure strictly. As for whether the fish-flavored shredded pork tastes good or not, we don't care about it.Only follow the process and ignore the result, which is called process management. The mentality of Chinese people is completely different. The survey results show that "a white cat is a black cat, and a good cat is a good cat that catches mice." This characteristic of looking only at results has become the motto of 70.5% of high-tech enterprises developing new products.As a result, many enterprises give up the management and control of the R&D process in the development of new products, and place their hopes on the basis of the goal management of "free creation" by R&D personnel.Up to now, 53.1% of high-tech enterprises still only pay attention to R&D results and ignore process management.
What are the inevitable disadvantages of management by objectives? First, as soon as the great chef left, he took everything with him.So what we need is a set of process management, so that we can retain the craftsmanship of the master chef. After that, we don’t need master chefs at all, but need 20 people (also called screws) to execute according to the requirements of the 1001st process, and finally The fried dishes must be at the same level as the chef who left. Second, target management cannot be modified, because we don’t know how the chef cooks, but process management can be modified, because we know all the processes, and this is the most significant difference between the two.The reason why many of our software products and high-tech products cannot be modified according to customer requirements is that there is no such process, so we do not know how to modify them. Third, process management is the foundation of high-tech and capital-intensive industries, which is the foundation of the three versions of Oracle.They use process management, so they know how the quality of each process affects the result, and they can manage 20 processes to make the final result controllable. This is the essence of control and management.If you can't manage 20 processes, you can't control the end result.And the management by objectives means that the dishes served by the master chef are the dishes, and there is nothing we can do to change the dishes that have been fried. Let me take the management by objectives of Chinese enterprises as an example. Our survey results show that 43.2% of high-tech enterprises in China take market demand as the goal of management by objectives.Therefore, rushing to meet the market demand and completely ignoring the process management rules of high-tech products are the main reasons for the many problems and poor quality of high-tech product development. Oracle's third edition also introduces a new feature called "atomicity"-all success or all failure, which further strengthens process management.What does this "atomicity" mean?That is to divide the 20 procedures of frying fish-flavored shredded pork into 2 procedures and divide them into 10 modules.For example, the first module includes chopped green onion and shredded pork. If the shredded pork meets the standard but the chopped green onion does not, the entire first module will be returned to strengthen the strictness of process management.Therefore, it was necessary to manage 20 processes before, but now it has been upgraded to only manage 10 modules, which greatly reduces the workload. 更多别的性能我就不多说了，我就请大家来想想这个“原子性”的原则。这个东西绝对不可能是中国人想出来的，就算有那么几个中国人想出来了，也会被老板臭骂一顿然后否决掉。Why?因为这东西多烦人啊——要么全部成功，要么全部失败。万一哪个地方出了问题，那前面干的活儿不全白干了吗？所以中国人的特点就是什么事都马马虎虎，差不多对付一下就算了。why?因为我们太浮躁，太渴望结果，而不是过程管理。 今天的甲骨文依然走在这一领域的前沿。世界上的所有行业几乎都在应用甲骨文技术，且《财富》100强中的98家公司都采用甲骨文技术。why?这是因为在前面谈的过程管理的基础上，甲骨文由第一版到第三版的不断改进，满足了市场需求，因而成就了今天的甲骨文，而这种由第一版到第三版的不断改进就是所谓的持续竞争力的体现。
中国新成立的高科技企业和倒闭的企业都很多，一批批“先烈”倒下去了，一批批后来者站起来。在国内，这是高新科技企业的一个普遍现象。从20世纪90年代开始，我就没看到多少高新科技企业能好过10年的，总是起来一批倒下一批。如果这种现象不断重演的话，可能3年后现在的企业又要倒下去一大批。我们不希望看到这种现象，我们需要的是像甲骨文一样的持续竞争力。 但是我们的企业对持续竞争力有着太多的误解，根据调查结果显示，中国只有15%的企业了解过程管理才是企业保持持续竞争力的关键，还有很多中国企业竟然认为技术人才（27.1%）和市场需求（43.2%）才是企业保持持续竞争力的关键。人才和技术只能替产品创造竞争力，但竞争力不是高新科技成功的关键。只有持续竞争力才是关键，而持续竞争力必须依赖一个有效的过程管理体系创造出来。 甲骨文的持续竞争力重视的是技术积累，而不是技术创新。以炒菜为例，什么才是持续竞争力？那就是当外部环境变化之后，比如客人突然不喜欢吃咸的鱼香肉丝了，那么我们就马上调整第18道工序，只倒一勺酱油，而不是两勺。如果顾客吃完很喜欢，我们就将这个一勺酱油的流程工序定下来，这就是技术的积累。因为每一次执行这个一勺酱油的流程工序就一定会得到客人的青睐，所以才能维持持续竞争力。如果靠大厨炒菜，端出来什么菜就是什么菜了，我们根本无法修改，必须叫大厨重炒一份不成的鱼香肉丝，至于他怎么炒的我们也不知道，下一次还能不能炒出同样不咸的鱼香肉丝我们也不知道，由于客户要的是只放一勺酱油的鱼香肉丝，大厨越创新越糟糕，从而使得产品缺乏持续竞争力。 但是我们的高新技术企业最缺少的就是持续竞争力。我们的调研结果显示，64.9%的企业重视技术创新，而只有35.1%的企业重视技术积累。这是个非常危险的信号。 总而言之，我们中国人总是希望快点创造出一个高科技产品，把它拿到市场上去赚钱，而不重视把其中的过程管理规律提炼出来。 一个产品研发过程按过程管理的规律该用多长时间就是多长时间，什么“我努力用一个月的时间完成”等都是很荒谬的。我们还经常听到这样的说法：不管采用什么方式，只要能把新产品开发出来就行。这样生产出来的新产品往往不具有持续的竞争力，市场情况一变化它就卖不出去，因为我们缺乏过程管理。这时该怎么办？我们往往是全部重新来过，就好比大厨端出来的菜如果顾客不喜欢的话，只有请大厨师重新炒过，而不是只修改一道工序。这就像在开中国餐馆，没有一套程序，你连怎么改进都不知道，这是最可悲的事。 所以，我们对低端产品技术的研发投入不断重复，其中所花费的资金和人力已经是欧美的10倍多。我们大量的人才资金不应去做产品，而应该去建立一套过程管理的流程工序。
It is unfair to talk about Lenovo alone, because there are too many so-called high-tech companies like Lenovo in China.Let me tell readers about a company similar to Lenovo Thinking - Shuguang Company. Let's have fun and have a good laugh.Sugon 4000A was manufactured by China Sugon Company for the Shanghai Supercomputing Center in 2004. It was ranked No. 10 in the world at that time, but it has fallen out of the top 250 in the world now. The Dawning 5000A launched in 2008 has once again carried out the fine tradition of our Chinese culture of "pursuing the first" and "if you don't make a sound, you will be a blockbuster".I don't want to be too technical, I will tell readers the key points.The computer has a total of 30,720 computing cores. Comparing this product with the top 500 products in the world, we can find that the most mainstream solution only uses 2049 to 4096 computing cores (http://www.top500.org /stats/list/32/procclass).For example, the supercomputers provided by IBM and Hewlett-Packard to PetroChina and China Telecom also use so many cores, and these solutions have actually accounted for the main share of mainframes in use in China. Why did Sugon 4000A fall out of the top 250 in just 5 years?Comparing IBM and Hewlett-Packard, we can find that IBM and Hewlett-Packard have very powerful software solutions, so they can create a market, and China's mainframes only have super computing power, which is not enough.For example, during the Olympic Games, the mainframe used by the Beijing Meteorological Bureau was provided by IBM, and its specific solution was software for calculation and forecasting of very complex meteorological problems such as sandstorms. These so-called mainframe computers in China have strong computing power, but due to the lack of solution software that keeps pace with the times, it is difficult to achieve success. This is like making hard disks. China is lagging behind, but they are unwilling to study basic sciences such as material science or computing science in accordance with scientific laws. The goal is to come up with a top 10 in the world, so how do you do it?It is the opportunism that the Chinese are good at, which is the so-called "four or two to pull a thousand catties" and "killing a chicken without a sledgehammer".The last is to string together tens of thousands of small hard drives in parallel!And this chained program is provided by Microsoft, not to mention that these small hard drives are also produced by foreign companies.Do you think it's ridiculous?Why can we all accept this bragging?Because we are a nation that believes in and worships miracles. So many questions mentioned above are more technical, and you may be a little bored reading them.Then I will tell you a story about an American high-tech company. I am sure this story is unimaginable in China.I don't want to tell the story of Bill Gates. Bill Gates went to start Microsoft before finishing college. Everyone must know this story, and I will definitely not tell what everyone knows.I want to tell the story of the owner of Oracle who recently squeezed out IBM and bought Sun Microsystems.Why talk about him?Of course, the first reason is that his English name is the same as mine, Larry; another more important reason is that he is more powerful than Bill Gates.In 1977, when 32-year-old Comrade Larry Ellison founded Oracle with two other people, this guy was a dropout who failed to graduate from three universities.In the eyes of us Chinese, this person is basically useless in this life, and he stands at thirty. You see, he is basically a social worker at the age of 30.What did he rely on for a living at that time?Just occasionally help others write a few lines of programs.At that time, there was no such profession as a software engineer, and the reference books for programming were just a few magazines.At that time, hardware was basically equivalent to the entire computer industry, so people who wrote software codes were similar to assembly workers in today's computer factories, just doing a little auxiliary work. But what does America see?It is your ability and what your products can do, not how many masters or doctors you have read, nor which school you graduated from.Don't underestimate this older young man who dropped out of school. The three of them are not simple, at least they can understand the most cutting-edge papers in the industry.One guy first saw a paper by Edgar Frank Codd, and recommended it to two other people, along with several other related articles.After they read it, they felt that the database software had potential, so they began to plan and build a commercially available "relational" database.I will talk about some professional terms below, including "relational" databases, but readers should not be intimidated by these professional terms. Just listen to them. When I first came into contact with these terms, my level was similar to everyone's. With patience and patience, the level will rise.In order to ease the burden on the reader, I will quote these nouns that do not need to be known below. But the first question is, why doesn't the guy who wrote the paper start his own company?The reason is not that, like our country, writing papers is purely behind closed doors and cannot be practiced.Edgar Coulter published the famous paper "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks" in the professional academic journal "Communication of ACM". A turning point in history.You must know that at that time, the relatively low-level "hierarchical model" and "network model" database products dominated the market.Starting from this paper, it opened the prelude to the "relational" database software revolution.So let me tell you that the real reason Edgar Coulter didn't start a company by himself is that he is an engineer of IBM! So the next question is, why doesn't IBM do it by itself?Here we will find that there are always surprisingly similar scenes in history.This article was actually published as early as June 1970, but IBM has been slow to engage in this project.Why is this?The main reason is that IBM at that time was as closed-eyed as Lenovo is today. What is the conclusion of their huge and complicated bureaucratic system after a long discussion?They believed that "relational" databases were too slow to compare with the backward "hierarchical" databases at the time.The funny thing is that although IBM finally launched a new project three years later (that is, in 1973) to study the practical feasibility of "relational" databases, it has not released such products for a long time because IBM's "hierarchical" "The database is selling well. If a "relational" database is launched, it will involve the self-interest of many people in IBM. In sharp contrast to this, these three "outside the system" people released a commercial Oracle product in the summer of 1979. This new database product was not very stable and lacked some important functions, but there were still customers.At that time, the CIA couldn't wait to buy a set of such software to meet their needs, but after consulting IBM, it was found that IBM did not have a commercially available product, so the CIA contacted Edgar?Court them.It was not until 1983, when they had released the third edition of Oracle, that IBM released the long overdue product DB2. What do you see behind this? First, only in the environment of the United States can new technological research results be released in a timely manner.Even if a company fails to make it due to internal problems, this technology will not disappear, but will be accumulated and passed down, so that the people behind will not need to waste time on some low-level problems. The so-called scientific research This is the accumulation and transmission.The characteristics of Chinese scientific research are just the opposite. We basically waste time at a low level, and lack accumulation and transmission. First of all, I want to talk about what low-level waste is.For example, our second-grade students pitifully memorize the ninety-nine multiplication table. cycle.If you have the opportunity to go to a supermarket in the United States to buy things, you will find that American cashiers not only do not know how to use multiplication and division, but even do subtraction. This will not affect the United States becoming a super technological power.This low-level waste also includes that we consume a lot of time and energy for students to learn problem-solving skills in subjects such as mathematics and physics, as well as Olympic mathematics and physics competitions that focus on problem-solving.In addition, there is a saying of low-level waste that all students and parents are most familiar with-"Learn mathematics, physics and chemistry well, and you will not be afraid to travel all over the world."This is absolute nonsense and an absolute waste of time at a low level.These subjects are basically studied by the second- and third-rate talents in the United States. Contrary to China, the first-rate talents in the United States do not study mathematics, physics and chemistry, but study law school, business school and medical school.While the first-class talents in the United States have traveled all over the world, I have never seen them care about mathematics, physics and chemistry, and it doesn't matter if they don't even know mathematics, physics and chemistry. Let me talk about what is called accumulation and transmission.For example, you have obtained A result through doing research, and the so-called scientific research is to research B on the basis of A. From A to B is the transfer and accumulation of scientific research.You can never come up with B out of thin air, because without A there would never be B.Our scientific research in China, taking finance as an example, I have read that some studies basically lack the transfer and accumulation from A to B. Many papers just come up with a self-righteous C theory out of thin air, and this C has nothing to do with A and B. Not only is it irrelevant, but it is ridiculous to write the result of C as unparalleled in the world.I still remember a doctoral student in finance from a certain university in Chongqing told me that when he was studying for a doctorate, his advisor asked him to take the course "Atmospheric Physics". Just like the climate is fickle, so study atmospheric physics. I couldn't help laughing out loud when I heard this. This is the A and B that I never learned from international academic papers related to stock market topics, but the C I came up with at home.It's ridiculous.Also, a doctoral student in finance from a normal university in Shanghai called me and said that the school stipulates that doctoral dissertations must be published in internationally renowned academic journals. I laughed and told him that almost no professors in your school have ever published papers internationally. , Why are you doctoral students able to publish?Later, when I read his paper, it was so ridiculous that there was not even a "reference".This is the standard without the accumulation and transfer of A and B, but an imaginary C.This is the research level of many financial schools in our mainland. On the surface, China has a high investment in scientific research and a high level of R&D personnel, but the R&D efficiency is very low and there are few scientific research products.There are many people with doctoral and master's degrees, but not many inventions.According to the survey results, 30% of the surveyed companies have doctors as professional and technical leaders in terms of technology development, 45% have masters as professional and technical leaders, and 24% have undergraduates as professional and technical leaders.It can be seen that the academic structure of high-tech professional leaders in Chinese enterprises is comparable to that of foreign developed countries.In 70% of the company's R&D teams, more than 90% of the researchers have a bachelor's degree or above, but the patent output per 10,000 people ranks last in the world.A large number of our scientific research personnel and funds are basically wasted on some low-level technologies, instead of accumulating and passing on.So recently there has been a long discussion in China about whether copycat phones are good or not, and I don't think they hit the essence of the problem!The key question is whether talents are used in the accumulation and transmission of scientific research.
Second, when it comes to entrepreneurship, Western companies are not betting on small probability events, but carefully analyzing and researching academic papers, demonstrating feasibility, and preparing all research and development conditions before developing products according to customer needs. This is the law of research and development. According to this rule, the success rate of research and development can be improved.Western philosophy advocates obeying the law, but we are different. We do not respect the law, but hope to destroy the law. We even take pride in breaking the rules and laws.For example, I, like many Chinese, take pride in breaking the rules.I was invited to give a speech in Wuzhou, Guangxi at the beginning of October 2008. Since there was no plane to get there, it would take 5 hours to drive there. In order to catch up with the time, the organizer of the speech sent a police car to pick me up.After I got into the police car, the siren blared all the way, I ran a red light, and I didn't pay the toll, I felt very happy.When I broke the traffic rules, I was not only not ashamed, but proud of myself. Due to the influence of Chinese culture, many high-tech enterprises in our country pursue the least effort in the development of new products and place their hopes on small probability events. This is the so-called law of destruction.There are many ways to break the law. For example, many companies publicize and reward those who do not have the conditions (such as funds, equipment or environment), insufficient reserves (such as technology accumulation and experience), unconventional processes (not According to procedures and specifications) but successful projects and individuals.These projects are very risky and have a low success rate.
Third, please think about it, why did Oracle launch the second edition so quickly?In fact, the real situation is that the so-called second edition launched by Oracle is actually an incorrectly revised version of the first edition, but the revision is not very thorough.Moreover, this second version is not only unstable, but also lacks some important functions.Maybe our Chinese readers will find it very strange-even the products of high-tech companies like Oracle will make mistakes?Isn't high technology infallible?Otherwise, how can it be called high technology?This is exactly what we don't understand about high technology. In our Chinese subconscious, what is level?It means that there are no mistakes in the things done, and the requirements for work are also like this.Why do we have this pursuit of perfection thinking?I think it may be directly related to our mentality of pursuing 100 points in every exam since we were young.Even if the child gets 98 points in the test, the parents are not necessarily satisfied, because they didn't get 100 points, because only 100 points are perfect.Under the control of this kind of consciousness, strengthening the testing and verification process for errors is regarded as a waste of resources, because since there are no errors, there is no need for testing and verification.In Western concepts, there must be mistakes in the completed work, and the greater the high-tech content, the more mistakes there will be. This is not a question of whether there is a level.Therefore, they believe that strengthening error testing and verification is a necessary guarantee for success.Why do they have this kind of thinking of accepting mistakes?I think it may have something to do with the different examination systems in the West. Basically, the West uses a curve to grade. As long as you are in the top 30% of the class, you are A. Although you made a lot of mistakes in the exam, you are still the best. OKTherefore, the thinking of Westerners who have the courage to accept mistakes is much higher than ours. This kind of thinking is manifested in scientific research, which has formed the West's emphasis on testing and correcting mistakes, while the Chinese do not pay attention to testing.This mentality can be fully reflected in the survey: 85.9% of Chinese companies have a ratio of testing expenditures to total R&D expenditures that is far lower than the 40% level in the West.
Fourth, how did the third edition of Oracle improve?After the founders got the first order, they didn't dare to indulge themselves at all, because they knew too well that if the product was not upgraded, IBM would catch up with it immediately.What's more, unlike today, most computers used Microsoft's operating system. At that time, there were various computers in the CIA, so how to realize cross-platform operation?These are very critical and real issues.They know very well that they cannot fail, but they must solve these specific problems in order to ensure future success. That is to say, in the Western concept, failure is a mistake in control and management. This mentality is unthinkable in our business. "Failure is the mother of success", we take it for granted.But there is no similar saying in English. If you translate it into English, it is called "failure is the mother of success". I think Westerners must not understand it.Because we have this kind of thinking, we can not be held accountable for failures; however, in Western concepts, we don’t see it that way, failures must be errors in control or management, and we must be held accountable.Due to the influence of Chinese culture, 32.6% of the managers of many high-tech enterprises in my country believe that the success or failure of high-tech product development is understandable.It is a natural law for enterprise R&D personnel to fail in R&D.Only 23.1% of enterprises think that control and management are important.Enterprise R&D personnel pursue the embodiment of their own capabilities, and no one cares about and is responsible for the success or failure of high-tech product development. They even think that the success of high-tech product development is based on countless failures.
So how to control and manage it?The two words of control and management are easy to say, but how many of our enterprises can really do it?Do you know that Oracle has already achieved such management and control when it launched the third version of the software in 1983!The principle of the entire control and management is process management, not target management.This sentence seems a bit mysterious, but readers will understand as soon as I explain it. What is management by objectives? I will take the cooking of a great chef as an example. Frying fish-flavored pork shreds to the satisfaction of customers is called management by objectives. As for the method of cooking by a great chef, we do not pay attention. What is process management? We divide the chef's cooking steps into 20 stages, that is, 20 procedures.The first person chops green onion, the second person cuts shredded pork... The 18th person pours 2 spoons of soy sauce, the 19th person turns the fire to 600 degrees Celsius, and the 20th person fry 3 times.If it’s not tasty, readjust the 2nd, 5th, and 9th steps; if it’s not tasty, then readjust the 3rd, 7th, and 14th steps; if it’s still not tasty, then adjust the 18th and 19th steps process.In this way, after countless adjustments, the 1001st process was finally able to fry dishes as delicious as those cooked by the chef. Under the requirements of this process, the length of chopped green onion must be 1.1 cm, and the length of shredded pork must be 1.3 cm, the soy sauce must be 2 tablespoons dark soy sauce.In the future, we will cook according to the 1001st adjustment process, and everyone will do it according to the strict requirements of each process, and we must not innovate.Everyone follows this procedure strictly. As for whether the fish-flavored shredded pork tastes good or not, we don't care about it.Only follow the process and ignore the result, which is called process management. The mentality of Chinese people is completely different. The survey results show that "a white cat is a black cat, and a good cat is a good cat that catches mice." This characteristic of looking only at results has become the motto of 70.5% of high-tech enterprises developing new products.As a result, many enterprises give up the management and control of the R&D process in the development of new products, and place their hopes on the basis of the goal management of "free creation" by R&D personnel.Up to now, 53.1% of high-tech enterprises still only pay attention to R&D results and ignore process management.
What are the inevitable disadvantages of management by objectives? First, as soon as the great chef left, he took everything with him.So what we need is a set of process management, so that we can retain the craftsmanship of the master chef. After that, we don’t need master chefs at all, but need 20 people (also called screws) to execute according to the requirements of the 1001st process, and finally The fried dishes must be at the same level as the chef who left. Second, target management cannot be modified, because we don’t know how the chef cooks, but process management can be modified, because we know all the processes, and this is the most significant difference between the two.The reason why many of our software products and high-tech products cannot be modified according to customer requirements is that there is no such process, so we do not know how to modify them. Third, process management is the foundation of high-tech and capital-intensive industries, which is the foundation of the three versions of Oracle.They use process management, so they know how the quality of each process affects the result, and they can manage 20 processes to make the final result controllable. This is the essence of control and management.If you can't manage 20 processes, you can't control the end result.And the management by objectives means that the dishes served by the master chef are the dishes, and there is nothing we can do to change the dishes that have been fried. Let me take the management by objectives of Chinese enterprises as an example. Our survey results show that 43.2% of high-tech enterprises in China take market demand as the goal of management by objectives.Therefore, rushing to meet the market demand and completely ignoring the process management rules of high-tech products are the main reasons for the many problems and poor quality of high-tech product development. Oracle's third edition also introduces a new feature called "atomicity"-all success or all failure, which further strengthens process management.What does this "atomicity" mean?That is to divide the 20 procedures of frying fish-flavored shredded pork into 2 procedures and divide them into 10 modules.For example, the first module includes chopped green onion and shredded pork. If the shredded pork meets the standard but the chopped green onion does not, the entire first module will be returned to strengthen the strictness of process management.Therefore, it was necessary to manage 20 processes before, but now it has been upgraded to only manage 10 modules, which greatly reduces the workload. 更多别的性能我就不多说了，我就请大家来想想这个“原子性”的原则。这个东西绝对不可能是中国人想出来的，就算有那么几个中国人想出来了，也会被老板臭骂一顿然后否决掉。Why?因为这东西多烦人啊——要么全部成功，要么全部失败。万一哪个地方出了问题，那前面干的活儿不全白干了吗？所以中国人的特点就是什么事都马马虎虎，差不多对付一下就算了。why?因为我们太浮躁，太渴望结果，而不是过程管理。 今天的甲骨文依然走在这一领域的前沿。世界上的所有行业几乎都在应用甲骨文技术，且《财富》100强中的98家公司都采用甲骨文技术。why?这是因为在前面谈的过程管理的基础上，甲骨文由第一版到第三版的不断改进，满足了市场需求，因而成就了今天的甲骨文，而这种由第一版到第三版的不断改进就是所谓的持续竞争力的体现。
中国新成立的高科技企业和倒闭的企业都很多，一批批“先烈”倒下去了，一批批后来者站起来。在国内，这是高新科技企业的一个普遍现象。从20世纪90年代开始，我就没看到多少高新科技企业能好过10年的，总是起来一批倒下一批。如果这种现象不断重演的话，可能3年后现在的企业又要倒下去一大批。我们不希望看到这种现象，我们需要的是像甲骨文一样的持续竞争力。 但是我们的企业对持续竞争力有着太多的误解，根据调查结果显示，中国只有15%的企业了解过程管理才是企业保持持续竞争力的关键，还有很多中国企业竟然认为技术人才（27.1%）和市场需求（43.2%）才是企业保持持续竞争力的关键。人才和技术只能替产品创造竞争力，但竞争力不是高新科技成功的关键。只有持续竞争力才是关键，而持续竞争力必须依赖一个有效的过程管理体系创造出来。 甲骨文的持续竞争力重视的是技术积累，而不是技术创新。以炒菜为例，什么才是持续竞争力？那就是当外部环境变化之后，比如客人突然不喜欢吃咸的鱼香肉丝了，那么我们就马上调整第18道工序，只倒一勺酱油，而不是两勺。如果顾客吃完很喜欢，我们就将这个一勺酱油的流程工序定下来，这就是技术的积累。因为每一次执行这个一勺酱油的流程工序就一定会得到客人的青睐，所以才能维持持续竞争力。如果靠大厨炒菜，端出来什么菜就是什么菜了，我们根本无法修改，必须叫大厨重炒一份不成的鱼香肉丝，至于他怎么炒的我们也不知道，下一次还能不能炒出同样不咸的鱼香肉丝我们也不知道，由于客户要的是只放一勺酱油的鱼香肉丝，大厨越创新越糟糕，从而使得产品缺乏持续竞争力。 但是我们的高新技术企业最缺少的就是持续竞争力。我们的调研结果显示，64.9%的企业重视技术创新，而只有35.1%的企业重视技术积累。这是个非常危险的信号。 总而言之，我们中国人总是希望快点创造出一个高科技产品，把它拿到市场上去赚钱，而不重视把其中的过程管理规律提炼出来。 一个产品研发过程按过程管理的规律该用多长时间就是多长时间，什么“我努力用一个月的时间完成”等都是很荒谬的。我们还经常听到这样的说法：不管采用什么方式，只要能把新产品开发出来就行。这样生产出来的新产品往往不具有持续的竞争力，市场情况一变化它就卖不出去，因为我们缺乏过程管理。这时该怎么办？我们往往是全部重新来过，就好比大厨端出来的菜如果顾客不喜欢的话，只有请大厨师重新炒过，而不是只修改一道工序。这就像在开中国餐馆，没有一套程序，你连怎么改进都不知道，这是最可悲的事。 所以，我们对低端产品技术的研发投入不断重复，其中所花费的资金和人力已经是欧美的10倍多。我们大量的人才资金不应去做产品，而应该去建立一套过程管理的流程工序。