Chapter 29 Chapter 6 Suning's Innovation Philosophy

Napoleon said: "There are two most powerful things in the world. One is the sword and the other is thought. The latter is always greater than the former." Innovative thinking is the power source of enterprise development and the foundation of enterprise foothold.Zhang Jindong said: "Looking back on the 20-year history, I attribute Suning's continuous growth to two reasons: the first is persistence, and the second is innovation. In this industry, the competition is so fierce, the environment is so harsh, and profits are so meager. How can you change the way to survive for a long time, develop and surpass your opponents? We rely on persistence and innovation.”

Suning's marketing innovation is based on conforming to national policies, economic trends, industry development, and its own conditions. At the same time, it will not succumb to unfavorable situations, but will often take advantage of the situation and actively seek breakthroughs. It has a characteristic of "the one who sees the opportunity first and moves first wins". "Yellow Emperor's Yin Fu Jing" says: "Observe the way of the sky, stick to the way of the sky, and it's over." It means that if you see the general trend, understand the law, and then act according to the development trend, then all problems can be solved easily.To do anything, you must make a decision on the basis of knowing and comprehending the general trend.The same is true for innovation, which must be carried out in accordance with the general trend.However, following the trend does not mean losing subjective initiative.Even in a harsh business environment, we can't do nothing because of empty waiting.

There is a story about "boiling a frog in warm water" in management science: when a frog is thrown into boiling water, the frog will immediately jump out of the boiling water and escape successfully because it cannot stand the sudden high temperature stimulation; Putting it in a container of cold water and then reheating it makes a difference.Frogs will be at ease in the water because of the comfortable water temperature at the beginning.When I found that I couldn't stand the high temperature, I had more energy than I could, and was scalded to death in the hot water. In reality, many companies always make similar mistakes, because they are not sensitive to changes in the situation, and when innovative changes are required, they do nothing.After seeing new breakthroughs by peers, it was too late.Every innovation of Suning is the product of the changing situation, but Suning, which has always been forward-thinking, is always ready for change before the great changes in the general situation, or one step ahead.

Suning's first major innovation - taking the road of home appliance chain, is to actively seek changes in the industry changes. In 1996, the entire air conditioner market and even the home appliance market were facing a huge turning point.Prior to this, the air conditioner market was in short supply, and manufacturers focused on the production of products without worrying about the market.After the era of oversupply comes, profit margins are compressed, manufacturers are bound to pay attention to marketing, and are bound to attack dealers who share the cake. Zhang Jindong realized that under such a general trend, it will not be long before he concentrates on being a distributor and wholesaler.Therefore, in the face of the butcher's knife of the manufacturer "cutting down big households", he did not have much resentment, but chose to actively adjust his business model to adapt to the changes.Suning aims to create a new operating model to help suppliers solve problems and make suppliers feel that Suning is indeed valuable and has core expertise that they cannot do.At that time, Suning could fully cater to the manufacturer's policy, reduce its scale, and be a quiet and obedient wholesaler, and it could still survive.But Suning did not do this, because it violated the normal law of the development of things.

Zhang Jindong gave the most fundamental solution: first, I jumped out of the air conditioner circle and dealt in more products. One supplier restricted me, so I looked for other ones. Air conditioners were not easy to make, so I went to make color TVs and refrigerators; secondly, You want to limit my development in Nanjing, and I want to build channels across the country, so you can't limit it in every region, right?This is the original intention of embarking on a national chain of comprehensive home appliances. Suning's second major innovation - practicing the collaborative competition model of the entire industry chain, is also an active change in response to competition.On the road of chain development pioneered by Suning, many latecomers flocked to it. After a lot of competition for opening stores, Suning took the initiative to stop.Zhang Jindong found that what is not commensurate with the crazy speed of opening stores is that Chinese home appliance chain companies are quite weak in terms of talent reserve, capital, and management of upstream and downstream coordination in the industrial chain.Suning decided not to compete with its opponents in terms of quantity and quality, but silently transferred to the background construction, and invisibly distanced itself from its opponents in terms of quality and quantity.It is Suning's wisdom to resolutely not compete on the same platform as the opponent.Every game has a priority. When you think you are the first, you find that I am already standing on another higher-level arena.

Suning's third major innovation - to embark on the road of self-operation through marketing reform is an active change in response to future trends.The global economic downturn under the financial crisis has caused many retail companies at home and abroad to fall into difficulties, and some companies even went bankrupt.Some of China's local household electrical communication industries, especially small and medium-sized enterprises with small scale, lack of core competitiveness, extensive management, poor anti-risk ability, and little room for capital turnover, are suffering from the cold, and even face the test of life and death.Many manufacturers are reluctantly trying their best to shrink the "winter", but Suning is unwilling to be pulled back and change the pace of rapid development.Zhang Jindong doesn't care about the "winter" topic that the industry has been talking about.He said that there is no "winter" for Suning Appliance.But crises always exist, and at the same time, opportunities are born in dangers. Suning decided to seize this opportunity and start a new attempt to penetrate all links of the industrial chain.

It can be seen from the above that every marketing innovation of Suning is not only an act of "trending" the trend, but also an act of "driving" the trend.When transformation and innovation become inevitable, proactive change is far better than forced change.As the saying goes, "if you don't advance, you will retreat", in today's rapid development and rapid changes, in fact, slow advancement is also retreat.The growth experience of many first-class companies tells us that if an enterprise does not have an innovative vision, it is like a ship losing its sense of direction in the vast sea. It is difficult to predict where it will go, and it may even run aground at any time.

Suning emphasizes innovation and tolerates failure, and believes that both successful innovation and failed innovation will promote the growth and development of the enterprise; both success and failure are growth, and in this sense, growth is more important than success; if success is used as a measure of innovation The only standard is sometimes actually stifling innovation.There are many companies that have been called successful for a period of time. The tragedy is that they are solidified at the point of time and space of success, and this point becomes the culmination of the life of this company!Suning's innovation is a dynamic innovation out of the trap of success.Because what growth emphasizes is a kind of continuation, rather than a momentary brilliance that is frozen at a certain time and space node.

An enterprise is a product of the times and must keep pace with the times.If you can't keep up with the development of the times, you will be eliminated.Every change in the business environment is a huge test for the development of the enterprise.Every great change in the industry is a reshuffle.Any kind of advantage is not enough to support the sustainable development of an enterprise. Zhang Jindong realized the importance of innovative thinking very early. Under his guidance, Suning's innovative thinking is quite distinctive: it not only encourages success, but also tolerates failure.

For successful innovation, every enterprise yearns for and welcomes it very much; but for failed innovation, many companies inevitably keep secrets, because the failure of innovation will inevitably mean that the previous capital and manpower investment will go to waste, and even failed innovation will drag down a company. enterprise.In this regard, Zhang Jindong believes that without the spirit of "breaking" and the drive to "take risks", one must be 100% sure and foolproof in doing everything, and there will be no new undertakings. "Once there is a failure, it will attract criticism and praise, and even be beaten to death with a stick. In such an atmosphere, who else dares to innovate."

Every innovation of Suning is to solve a serious problem: In the face of changes in the external environment and the industry, what should Suning do?This is a difficult choice, and it is also a new journey to explore the unknown world. Zhang Jindong said frankly that every time Suning made changes, he only had a general idea, and he hadn't figured out how to move forward.However, "do it no matter what, and hold your destiny in your own hands."Zhang Jindong even thanked this kind of "too late to think about it in detail". He believes that it is this kind of energy of "going forward bravely without hesitation" at the critical moment that has made Suning's brilliance today.He believes that the reason why many companies miss opportunities at the critical moment of development is that they "think" too much.Passion is exhausted in "thinking", and conservativeness is nourished in "thinking". What are the essential characteristics of an entrepreneur?Is it the responsibility?Passion?still…… If we use the shortest word to express it, I think it should be "persistence". "Perseverance" is the insistence on the uncertainty of the future. Those who are "persistent" must be able to take responsibility, must be able to persevere, and must be able to judge the situation... Suning believes that many things are not solved in a static state, and the problems of enterprises must be solved in a dynamic state.Suning believes that only after moving, some problems will be solved naturally.Zhang Jindong said that the problem will never be solved.However, the process of solving problems is the process of improvement.Every time you solve a problem, it is equivalent to a step up, and you start to solve problems on this new platform. "Failure is not shameful", this is a saying spread in the Silicon Valley of the United States. It is understood that when the venture capitalists in Silicon Valley evaluate the technological content and expected benefits of technical personnel's technical projects, they will always give blessings to those who have failed. The reason is that if you have failed, it means that you have innovated; if you have failed, you are more likely to succeed, and if you have not failed, it means that you do not have the courage to face failure calmly, and you will not be able to enjoy the benefits of innovation. Come joy. The 3M company in the United States also has a slogan with the same effect: In order to find the prince, you must kiss countless frogs. "Kissing frogs" means failure, but 3M sees failure and dead ends as part of innovation.The philosophy is: if you don't want to make mistakes, the only option is to do nothing.At 3M, over 60% of new product ideas fail.This figure does not include the countless failures that occur in 3M's research and development laboratories every day.In this regard, Zhang Jindong is like a far-sighted venture capitalist. He always gives the greatest support to the bold innovations of the internal employees of the company. Bu Yang, vice president of marketing at Suning, was also deeply impressed by Suning's innovative thinking of "encouraging success and forgiving failure". Regarding the initial promotion planning work, she described it as "stumbled": "Because Suning followed the path of innovative marketing. The promotion route, therefore, I have no object to imitate, and the way we go together cannot meet our requirements; the case of foreign stores is not suitable for China's national conditions, so the idea I first proposed is not too "sun spring white snow", It’s just that they are too “lower people”, and they can’t grasp the proper timing and the effect can’t be achieved. In the end, combined with the continuous integration of various information such as the market, consumers, and enterprise status, we finally found the most suitable promotion route for Suning.” The reason why Suning allows the failure of innovation is rooted in its value of "growth is more important than success".The development of an enterprise is a journey of exploring the unknown. Success is accidental, but failure is inevitable.The so-called growth process is connected by very few occasional successes and countless inevitable failures.Today's success only means that at this moment, if you look farther, you will know that there are mountains beyond the mountains; if you look longer, you will know that the mountains are high and the roads are dangerous.In the process of growing up, the courage to make mistakes, continuous learning, and continuous improvement are the most tangible gains, which are far more important than temporary success. I have what others have, and I have what others have. Innovation itself is not the only purpose. The final result of innovation is what we pursue.In reality, although some enterprises are similar or similar to Suning in terms of form, they are quite different from Suning in terms of connotation, essence and effect.This is the differentiated characteristic of Suning innovation—either it is different in model, or it is different in execution. It took more than 10 years for China's retail industry to complete the 150-year business history of Western developed countries, and a large number of retail companies have been created by rapid development.From the surface, it seems that the practices of the industry peers are similar, but if you look deeply, there will be many differences.On the surface, the retail chain industry is nothing more than unlimited copying and expansion, opening one store after another, and then attracting consumers through low prices on the one hand, and asking suppliers to give increasing rebates and rewards according to the size of their sales. Channel fees, and even require monopoly manufacturers to provide special models of products to achieve the purpose of controlling production and earning more profits.In fact, after careful analysis, we will find that there are still many differences between Suning and other competitors. From the perspective of expansion, competitors generally adopt the development mode of relying on capital operation, mergers and acquisitions, while Suning emphasizes the development mode of steady progress and self-opening stores.In terms of the layout of the support system, the competitors' tactics are to emphasize the rapid coverage of central cities and nearby areas: every time they enter a city, they start to open stores intensively, covering from the first-tier market to the second-tier market, trying to quickly and maximize the benefits of the area. Market share, wait until the share is established, and then gradually adjust its operation, sort out the process and build the management background.The difference is that every time a city arrives, Suning usually only sets up a point, and then turns around to build a management background. After the platform is completed enough to support operations, Suning will go back and continue to open stores in the same area. Another different appeal is that competitors are pursuing the overall scale and do not care about unity in the construction of specific stores, while Suning is pursuing standardized replication.In Suning's view, the reason why the chain operation model can quickly become a whirlwind on a global scale is that it relies on a set of standardized expansion operation system, and quickly replicates storefronts, products and service levels through the standard system.For customers, no matter where they are in the world, as long as they walk into McDonald's, the taste of hamburgers is the same, which is the value of the chain.Because of the pursuit of standardization, Suning attaches great importance to the self-construction of the background, and far surpasses competitors in logistics and information investment.Different expansion methods and different store management have brought about different results: Suning's model of taking into account both quantity and efficiency has avoided the fate of diseconomies of scale, and far surpassed its competitors in terms of single-store efficiency; many peers have expanded while losing money, or In order to ensure no loss, the only option is to reduce service quality or pass on the crisis to partners, while Suning has been relying on its own side to expand while earning. From the perspective of service model, Suning has always adhered to the direction of "professional self-operation" and established a self-owned service network with strong strength.At present, among the traditional home appliance chain enterprises in China, only Suning Appliance has its own service team of nearly 10,000 people. The scope of its after-sales service has expanded from the original air conditioner to color TVs, washing machines, water heaters, computers and other full-category home appliances.While other competitors mainly adopt strategies of outsourcing or supplier's own installation.In the long run, Suning's strategy complies with the logistics integration requirements of the home appliance industry.Professional self-operated services are not only an important guarantee for Suning's service quality, but also an important means to implement differentiated positioning and meet individual needs, and it is also one of the important sources of profit for Suning's long-term development. Judging from the means of listing and the final result, Suning's intentions and practices are completely different from those of companies in the industry.In China, a listed company means strength and credibility, and is the best annotation of a company's brand.For both listed companies, there is still a big difference between listing here and listing there.With years of hard work, Suning independently listed on the mainland A-share market.First of all, Suning's listing is more about reputation and standardized management issues than capital operation.To be a century-old enterprise, Suning must take the road of socialization, the most important of which is to realize the socialized management of the enterprise. Listing can make Suning a public enterprise, and the strict regulatory mechanism and transparent management requirements of the securities market have defined the norms for the healthy development of Suning.Going public can not only raise funds for Suning, but more importantly, it brings the company a publicity effect that requires at least hundreds of millions of advertising dollars to achieve.Before listing, many foreign investors approached Suning and strongly recommended Suning to go public in Hong Kong, but Zhang Jindong refused. He believed that going public in Hong Kong or abroad would provide Suning with a lot of financing convenience and label it as an international company. But what Suning pays more attention to is the vision that Suning will fully integrate with the modern enterprise management system after listing. In addition, Zhang Jindong still has a deep national complex in his heart, that is, he must maintain the foundation of Suning as a national enterprise. Suning can open up and pursue to become a global enterprise, but it is first and foremost a Chinese national enterprise. Human-controlled and dominated businesses. In terms of attitude towards manufacturers, Suning is also different from its competitors.When manufacturers cooperate, there are common interests and different interests. When there is unity of opinion, there are also times of disagreement. However, Suning tries to eliminate conflicts of interest by expanding common interests, and uses dialogue rather than confrontation to eliminate conflicts. disagreement.Therefore, compared with competitors, Suning's manufacturer relationship is much more harmonious and harmonious.At the beginning of the rise of Suning and the "decisive battle" with the eight major merchants in Nanjing, many manufacturers gave support, which is a clear proof.Compared with competitors, Suning emphasizes the equality of payment.Before Suning gets something from the manufacturer, it often pays more.Suning is constantly increasing platform construction, increasing channel resources in exchange for the support of marketing resources. On the whole, the difference between Suning and other peers in the industry lies in: in the development model, there are differences in the leadership of endogenous growth and exogenous expansion; in the focus of operation, there are differences in the focus of industrial operation and capital operation. Suning believes that we advocate innovation, allow innovation to fail and bear the risks and costs of failure, but subjectively we must strive to ensure the success of innovation, that is, to pursue effective innovation, and to pursue efficiency on the basis of effectiveness.The premise of effective innovation is orderly innovation and organizational innovation, and solidifying the achievements of innovation into the productivity of enterprises at any time. Peter Drucker once said: The goal of a business is to create customers, so a business has two and only two basic functions—marketing and innovation.Encouraging innovation has become the consensus of enterprises, and homogeneous competition is becoming more and more serious. Those who plan well win and those who innovate win.Only by constantly innovating can an enterprise obtain a larger market and an extraordinary return on investment.Today, almost all companies are encouraging innovation. When you open the brochures of companies of all sizes, there is almost a section on "Leading Innovation".In this era of overflowing innovation slogans, the internal policy of Suning people is: from the awareness of independent innovation to effective innovation practice, the key is to implement innovation. What is effective innovation?The effective innovation rules of Suning people include the following aspects: First, clear purpose orientation, effective innovation must first be purposeful innovation. As mentioned above, Suning encourages eclecticism and failed attempts in the way of realizing the purpose of innovation. The premise is that the purpose of innovation must be clear when carrying out innovation with problems.Suning firmly rejects "innovation for innovation's sake".In fact, Suning's marketing innovations are all Chinese-style innovations driven by problems, and every innovation of Suning is a successful leap at the crossroads of enterprise development. The way to create a chain retail chain stems from the fact that the original wholesale model cannot adapt to the era of short supply, and must solve the problem of survival and development.From the foreground to the backstage, the innovation in the backstage to promote competition in the foreground stems from the fact that the scale has expanded to an extreme. Suning must solve the problem of how to avoid the vicious competition of diseconomies of scale.The latest marketing reform to return to the essence of business stems from the unsustainable old profit model among manufacturers. This time, Suning has to solve the problem of how to subvert and create a more reasonable profit model. "Problem" is the breakthrough point of Suning's innovation, and the thinking orientation of "solving problems" ensures the effectiveness of Suning's innovation. Second, solid preparatory work, effective innovation must be based on innovation. Many enterprises "innovate for the sake of innovation", in addition to being "blind" in terms of purpose, it is also manifested in blind behavior without considering the actual situation.Every innovation of Suning is carried out on the basis of fully considering its own strength and making preparations.Zhang Jindong is by no means a person who acts hastily, but is both bold and cautious, decisive and thoughtful.For example, after deciding on a national chain, Suning did not immediately open a store, but first carried out corporate reengineering. Suning people are well aware that the difficulties and challenges encountered in the development of national chain operations are unprecedented after the birth of Suning.The entire management system of the enterprise needs to be thoroughly adjusted, including organizational structure, business and management processes, and information systems.More importantly, as soon as the chain plan was launched, all departments and chain stores of the group headquarters needed hundreds of talents with chain and retail management experience and ability. Nor is it readily available. Therefore, around the start of the national chain operation, Suning first launched a systematic reconstruction project.For another example, before the second transformation, Suning had already gone through three generations of informatization construction before proposing the big competition strategy of seeking background advantages.Suning's backstage attempts can be traced back to the "E-chain" concept in 1999. Since then, Suning has spent 30 million yuan to implement the ERP system.That is to say, Suning has already done a lot of backstage homework before formally proposing the backstage strategy. Today, Suning proposes to go to the road of self-employment, not because of the impulsive behavior caused by the manufacturer's friction. In fact, Suning has already started self-operated attempts in many stores, and before deciding to jointly develop products with manufacturers and underwrite customization. Internally, departments dedicated to collecting consumer information, researching consumer psychology, and developing products have been set up. Third, in line with mainstream values, effective innovation must be based on consumer demand. We say that Suning's 20-year marketing history is not only a history of the evolution of manufacturer relationships, but also a history of marketing reforms oriented to customer needs.Suning decided to engage in chain retailing because it clearly saw that consumers’ shopping preferences were changing, and the traditional department store’s practice of not caring about consumers would no longer adapt to the future development situation. That’s why Suning concluded that future chain retailing would be the 21st century. The mainstream; Suning as the backstage, on the one hand, is to respond to the needs of competition to improve its own advantages, on the other hand, the most important thing is to improve the ability to serve consumers.Consumers need to shop not only conveniently, but also quickly. Suning's innovations in logistics, informatization, and professional services are aimed at meeting consumers' needs in this regard. Suning took the road of self-employment because it saw the increasingly obvious trend of consumers' individual needs. Suning believed that neither manufacturers nor Suning's own marketing personnel should be an obstacle to consumers' free shopping. The personnel will not only be dedicated to the promotion of a certain product, but to provide professional solutions to customers. Fourth, do not follow the trend, effective innovation must be self-centered innovation. Compared with the high-growth and high-risk marketing model of competitors who take advantage of too many opportunities, virtual operations, and rely on third parties, Suning's overall marketing trend is a stable and efficient model that focuses on itself, is steady and steady, and works step by step, emphasizing both speed and benefit.Suning's plain and low-key style is reflected in its pragmatic and steady marketing, with Chinese characteristics and traditional Chinese style.Suning was the first to embark on the road of chain operation, the first to engage in informatization to strengthen the background construction, and actively improve its self-operating capabilities. These are all based on the concept that Suning strives not to be on the same platform as competitors. Innovation can make or break a business.There are many cases where blind innovation can destroy a company that has accumulated for many years.Only effective innovation can the enterprise develop sustainably.Effective innovation is pragmatic innovation. Under the guidance of the concept of effective innovation, Suning's innovation path can be divided into three stages: the innovation form of the first stage is continuous innovation, which is based on the existing basic setting and can bring operational management efficiency to the enterprise. Continuous improvement; the innovation form of the second stage is system innovation, large-scale investment, the overall improvement of technology and organization, the risk is high, but it will bring about the acceleration of development; the innovation form of the third stage is breakthrough innovation, revolutionary Redefine the market, technology or rules of the game radically, thereby changing the value chain and affecting the existing business model of this industry.This innovation will bring leap-forward development to the enterprise. In the West, chain operation has a history of nearly a hundred years and is a relatively mature business model.However, in China, the home appliance distribution industry has a history of only 20 years.There is a surprising phenomenon in the Chinese market. If you look around, almost all industries that are open to the outside world are monopolized, controlled, or dominated by multinational companies. Only in China's home electric communication industry, foreign companies have been lingering outside for a long time and dare not entry, or has been at a competitive disadvantage after entry.With oriental wisdom, Suning accurately grasped the environment of China's home appliance market, skillfully borrowed and applied the scientific methods formed in the chain operation of the West, and created a Chinese road of home appliance chain: Suning model. Learning is the foundation of innovation, and innovation is the sublimation of learning.If one-sided emphasis on innovation is not learned and borrowed from other people's experience, it is to build a car behind closed doors.By learning and researching advanced companies, knowing what competitors have done and what state they have reached, it is possible for them to do what they have not done, realize innovation, and catch up from behind. Stones from other hills, can learn.Over the past 60 years since the founding of New China, in the first 30 years, there were no real market-oriented enterprises in China, and in the last 30 years there were real enterprises.However, China does not have its own innovative ideas, business theories and management models. Most of our marketing theories are imported from abroad. Learning from foreign advanced experience is a shortcut.As Hu Xueyan, a red-top businessman in the Qing Dynasty, said: "If you have the vision of a country, you can do business with a country; if you have a vision of a province, you can only do business with a province." Suning is a company that focuses on learning and has an international perspective.Before carrying out major innovations, Suning has learned from colleagues in Europe, America, Japan and Hong Kong. Before the transformation from scale to intensive, Zhang Jindong led Suning's senior management team to conduct a detailed inspection of outstanding companies in Europe and America. In 2005, Zhang Jindong led Suning executives to the United States for a business inspection, visiting the largest home appliance chain group in the United States, AO Smith's overall kitchen and bathroom and Motorola's R&D base.During the investigation, Suning found that, compared with the international giants, the biggest gap is not the long development process of the international giants, but their advanced ideas.After detailed research and analysis after returning to China, Suning found that the extensive application of information technology has enabled many multinational companies to take the lead in business and strengthened its own competitiveness in the market. Industrial giants such as General Electric, Ford, and Chrysler have reduced raw material procurement costs and sales costs by 20% to 30%, or as high as 40%, by implementing online distribution of raw material online procurement and sales systems.The information systems of Metro, Carrefour, Auchan and other chain enterprises have well solved the problems of geographical dispersion, variety of varieties, and huge amount of information processing faced by management.And the world's retail giants have also slowed down their expansion pace due to the decline in sales growth and increasing pressure on profits, focusing on the construction of information management systems.The investment in the information system ensures that the inventory turnover rate of the enterprise during the period of rapid expansion is always higher than that of the main industry peers, thus enabling it to achieve higher profitability.It was inspired by these European and American benchmarking companies that Suning established a backstage strategy based on informatization. In dealing with upstream and downstream relations, Suning has learned experience from Wal-Mart.For the early Wal-Mart, a powerful supplier like Procter & Gamble was very tough, but after Wal-Mart became stronger, it did not retaliate against Procter and Gamble. Instead, it chose to form a partnership with Procter & Gamble by sharing its own Electronic information was used to improve the performance of both parties. As a result, Procter & Gamble became the first manufacturer to connect with Wal-Mart.Later, Procter & Gamble became Wal-Mart's largest customer, operating a business of about $3 billion a year.Suning has learned from Wal-Mart's attitude and experience. When it became the "King of Chain Stores", Suning responded with kindness and strengthened the manufacturer's relationship through the sharing of central warehouses and the connection of informatization. In 2006, Wal-Mart sold as many as 1,800 kinds of self-owned brand products in 56 stores in China. More than 90% of the company's annual purchases of tens of billions of dollars in China were Wal-Mart's own brand products.Private labels cost less than comparable national brands, so these products also command lower prices in Wal-Mart stores.Wal-Mart digs deeper into profits by operating its own brands. Today, Suning is not satisfied with simply pursuing economies of scale, market share, and point-of-joint operations. It aims to build its own platform, conduct independent marketing, and control terminals in the supply chain. The re-examination and comparative analysis of the crystallization.Suning found that the business attributes of foreign chain companies are all self-operated, so they do not rely on the passive way of "eating upstream" in order to obtain profits.Therefore, Suning proposed a new marketing reform. The great artist Qi Baishi once said: "Those who learn from me live, those who resemble me die." That is to say, you can learn, but you cannot imitate mechanically.Tangerines grown in Huainan are oranges, and oranges grown in Huaibei are oranges.Suning is well aware of this truth.The purpose of learning from others is definitely not to become others, but to innovate on the basis of predecessors, to find what truly belongs to oneself, and to surpass others.This is why Suning has changed from "doing Wal-Mart" to "surpassing Wal-Mart". The ancient Chinese philosophy has long put forward the idea of ​​"flexibility", which reveals that the movement and development of everything in the world is characterized by the replacement of the old and the new and the unity of the old and the new.Everything has to change, and change will lead to success, and success will last forever. The eight trigrams and sixty-four hexagrams in "Book of Changes" represent all the complicated things in the world, but they are all composed of two symbols, yang and yin. Through a certain number of different structural relationships between yin and yang, they represent two different things.In fact, everything is composed of two extremes, positive and negative, and finally manifested as a reconciliation of these two extremes. This dialectical thought in "Book of Changes" has two implications for innovation management.First, for independent innovation of enterprises, the innovation process is a process of self-contained and continuous external absorption.As the saying goes, "Yizhi is a name, and one name contains three meanings. Yisi is one, changing is two, and not easy is three."What is "difficult" for an enterprise is the "soul" of innovation.Second, for enterprises to achieve integrated innovation and re-innovation through digestion and absorption through cooperation with other enterprises, enterprises must also have dialectical thinking when cooperating with innovation partners.This is just like Confucius' warning, "You can learn with your classmates, but you can't be with the right way; you can be with the right way, but you can't be with the establishment; you can be with the establishment, but you can't be with the power." For today's Chinese companies, it is more important to accumulate local practical experience while learning from Western experience.While learning from the excellent experience of European, American and Japanese counterparts, Suning did not forget to analyze their respective drawbacks, and do their best to address the areas where they are not suitable for China's national conditions.For example, Suning found that the common practice of European and American retail giants in logistics and distribution is to rely on third parties, or let consumers solve it by themselves like IKEA. Suning believes that this approach is feasible in countries with a clear division of labor in Europe and the United States, but it has no competitive advantage in China, where consumers generally demand door-to-door delivery. Key factor.It is such a differential analysis that allows Suning to find a starting point for building localized advantages.Today, the Suning model formed by assimilating the experience of hundreds of international companies and based on localization practice is becoming an advanced model that the international chain retail industry is eager to study.