Immigrant small factory

Bill Gates once said in an interview: "If Wang An can complete the second technological reform in time, there will be no Microsoft in the world." .

Wang An is a world-famous inventor and an extremely rich entrepreneur. 1986 is the pinnacle of Wang An's life: he was chosen as the first "outstanding immigrant" by the United States, worth as much as $2 billion, ranking fifth in the rich list of the United States, ranking first among Chinese in the world, and being regarded as a god-like figure. At that time, Wang An's position in the computer field was as unshakable as Mount Tai.

However, who would have thought that such a legend and his huge Wang An technology empire collapsed six years later, and the company's share price plummeted from 43 dollars to 75 cents, with a loss of more than 4 billion dollars. Until 1990, Wang An died in Massachusetts General Hospital with terminal cancer. Two years later, Wang An's computer went bankrupt.

To borrow a sentence I read on the Internet, "Wang An's success begins with IBM and ends with IBM". His feud with IBM lasted for half a century. The difference is that IBM has entered the world's top 100 enterprises, while Wang An Computer, from its peak to its decline, has only a short decade.

Countless people are sighing for it, and countless people are thinking: What is the reason for Wang An's decline?

I think the ending of Wang An's computer is inevitable!

Wang An's first bucket of gold comes from the breakthrough of memory technology. After being acquired by IBM at a sky-high price of $500,000, he was keenly aware of the huge market of computers in the future, and he devoted all his money and energy to this field. During the period of 1960- 1980, computers were mainly used in enterprises and military affairs, and neither IBM nor Wang An involved personal PC. Personal computers rose in an all-round way in the 1980s, and how to transform them became a big problem. After being tortured, IBM, which has always been conservative, resolutely opened the door and joined forces with a number of small PC equipment manufacturers. Although the technical scale and business scope of these small manufacturers are not large, they have the advantages of compatible equipment, convenient use and their own software development camp.

Among these small manufacturers, one is Microsoft, the other is Apple and the other is ARM.

IBM abandoned the old prejudice and finally gained a firm foothold under the impact of the market. However, Wang does not agree with IBM's approach. He thinks it is unreasonable to develop personal PC, and it is a better choice to develop incompatible high-priced machines alone. Therefore, when other enterprises are holding a group to keep warm, Wang An Computer chose a completely opposite road to the future direction. However, the high cost and shrinking market share have seriously dragged down Wang An's energy. Even worse: Wang An Computer has almost no software industry of its own! This seemingly insignificant thing at that time became the last straw to crush Wang An in the future.

In this way, due to conservative thinking, Wang An Technology missed the best opportunity and failed in its first transformation.

After the failure of the first transformation, Wang An Technology fell into a downturn. In the end, Wang gave up the proudest achievement of his life-the "Rossi" desktop based on transistors, and made a small personal computer instead. Fortunately, in view of Wang's previous influence in this field, Wang's personal computer has done well and the company's state has gradually recovered, so Wang is optimistic that it is only a matter of time before the company returns to its former glory. So he made an incredible decision to fight IBM to the end.

IBM's business involves all aspects, many of which are the lifeblood industries of American science and technology economy, and its inside information is not as good as that of Wang An Technology. In addition, as mentioned above, IBM has won the support of many American companies because of its timely transformation and win-win cooperation. Wang An, who lost his head, actually found Microsoft President Bill Gates and Grove and asked them to leave IBM to cooperate with him.

After receiving the olive branch, both of them said excitedly, I won't go.

This is really not a very wise decision. Microsoft grew up rapidly on the big tree of IBM, and Bill Gates' mother was also an IBM executive. Grove's reasons are even more shameful. In the early years, Grove visited Wang An, hoping that he could provide some advice for a memory of Intel. This is actually a question of betraying personal feelings. However, at that time, Wang was carried away by the victory and said in front of everyone, "If you had come to me earlier, you wouldn't have produced such a bad product at all." Grove, with strong self-esteem, could not accept such humiliation and left angrily. With such a good chance of revenge now, how can he cooperate with Wang An?

Although rejected, Wang's computer still has huge financial resources and production level. At this time, Wang An was terminally ill and could not serve as CEO. At this time, if he can choose talents, he still has a chance to make a comeback. However, he made a decision, a decision that directly ruined his life's efforts:

Despite repeated opposition from the board of directors, Wang chose his son as CEO.

The opportunity for the second transformation was also missed.

On my conscience, Wang An is really generous. He once invested $700 million in personnel training and scientific research and development, and earned $2 billion that year, which shows how hard he worked in this respect. Wang An's company has so many talents that even IBM itself admits that "we really envy Wang An for having so many talents".

But the problem is, in Wang An's subconscious, the company belongs to my family. He does not advocate company investment, claiming that he has absolute control over the company and chooses his family in many important positions. Even john Chambers, who later led Cisco to a market value of $444 billion, was just a mediocre little role like a regional manager.

In China, this situation may be acceptable, but in the United States, these people admire Wang's authenticity, but they can't accept Wang's management model. After Wang An stepped down and Wang Lie took over, their discontent broke out completely and a large number of people left. At that time, the competition in the computer industry was unprecedentedly fierce, and the brain drain was a fatal blow to Wang An's company, and Wang An Technology was in a desperate situation.

Is Wang Lie incompetent? Actually, he's not. He is high flyers from Brown University. He has a solid technical foundation. He once persuaded Wang An to develop a personal computer, which shows that he also has a certain vision. If you let him be the technical director or the project director, it is definitely a good hand. However, there are not so many ifs. Compared with his father, Wang Lie lacks Wang An's self-made courage and means. In just one year, the company's stock plummeted. Wang Lie panicked. In order to make up for the lack of funds, he began to "kill the goose to get the golden egg": in order to increase the cost of the product, even the consultation telephone was charged 175 USD. This move made Wang's reputation plummet, and many customers directly gave up cooperation with Wang Computer.

Wang did not expect this to happen, so he quickly removed Wang Lie and replaced him with the so-called "enterprise repairman" Edward Miller. This man is very powerful and has brought many poorly managed enterprises back to life. Wang An thinks that putting Miller on stage can lead the company out of the predicament.

Another move!

Edward Miller has really made great achievements in business management. Immediately after taking office, he took a series of measures to reduce Wang An's debt from $557 million to120,000, but he doesn't know technology! He knows almost nothing about the computer industry. Although he has stabilized the crumbling company, he can't organize the company to effectively develop new products, nor can he propose solutions that customers are satisfied with. There are also jokes such as "using Unix industry to integrate personal computers" and "Wang An's computer is transformed into a software company with integrated graphics and text". In addition, the Wangs did conceal the current situation of Miller's company, which made him always lag behind in various measures. Finally, 65438+.

The history of Wang An's computer is like a flash in the pan, which failed to enter the door of 2 1 century.

Wang An said in his autobiography: "If you want to be invincible in the world computer industry with fierce competition, you must keep up with the constant changes in the world economy and always stay ahead of your peers." Unfortunately, he didn't do it himself.

A few years later, a young Canadian guy saw his autobiography and remembered this sentence. His name is elon musk, the real Iron Man.

China enterprises have always had a bad habit-excessive competition. In order to gain a foothold, enterprises have to fight to the death. The company keeps rising, prospering, disappearing and circulating, and has never had a long-term strong brand. Like IBM mentioned before, it was founded in 19 1 1, and it is still a "giant" enterprise until now.

Wang An succeeded, but he also failed. Developed countries such as the United States, Germany and Japan will first establish a set of reasonable and modern rules and regulations, and then be managed by professionals. Cooperative relationship based on system can bring firm trust. China enterprises are relatively lacking in this respect. Because of cultural relations, we prefer people who are related to us, and enterprises are gradually becoming family-oriented and difficult to transform. Wang An made such a mistake, which is the root cause of his failure. In today's more complicated and changeable international market, how to make China enterprises bigger is a very heavy problem, but it is also an urgent problem to be solved.