Lecture series in the era of 5G: (2) Ecological chaos

In the last article, I talked about the following points:

1. In the era of personal digitalization, the larger the enterprise, the stronger its competitiveness. Mobile Internet makes Internet companies the biggest winners, and telecom operators are also the beneficiaries. The winners are all big companies.

2. Internet companies have touched the ceiling of personal digital market, and telecom operators' personal customer market is saturated, so they all need to find new growth points; The technical characteristics of 5G are more suitable for the digitalization of enterprise customers, so the new digital era opened by this is called the "5G era".

3. In the new digital era, equipment vendors, telecom operators and Internet companies no longer cooperate, and all players have the intention of infiltrating into the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, trying to get more industrial dividends for themselves.

4. Large enterprises are suitable for the "cloud+network" infrastructure. But the overall value space of infrastructure is limited. In order to win more shares in the limited space, fierce competition will break out among large enterprises.

So how to compete? In the struggle for the right to speak in the industry, large enterprises invariably talked about the problems of ecological construction and development. Today, I will share my observation and research on the ecology of the 5G industry.

Compared with the personal digital era before 4G, 5G not only brought many innovations to enterprise users in wireless technology, but also complied with the IT trend of CT industry, making the core network of 5G cloud. On this basis, the network slice was born to provide the underlying connection for enterprise customers.

On the basis of digital connection, the data generated by the connection goes to the cloud, and digital applications are developed on the cloud to form digital applications of enterprises. In the era of 5G, it has become a common sense that both the communication network providing digital connection and the cloud platform providing digital storage and computing capabilities constitute the digital infrastructure of 2B.

However, no matter telecom operators, equipment manufacturers or cloud platform providers, they all realize that they lack understanding of various sub-sectors and it is difficult to independently complete the end-to-end digital solutions required by corporate customers. What about the part you can't do? Give it to your partner. As a result, large enterprises providing infrastructure have put forward strategic measures for ecological construction, hoping to promote the development of enterprise digitalization and industrial application with the help of resources and strength of partners.

Industrial ecological cooperation means that cooperative enterprises play their respective advantages and do what they are good at. Enterprises that understand the industry have the technical support of a large platform and rely on standardized open interfaces to develop applications, which can grow rapidly; Cross-industry platforms and infrastructure providers will benefit from the large-scale development of the industry. Big water, big fish. If all parties work together to successfully build the industry, then all participants are winners.

Through the cooperation of industry players to promote innovation, with the construction of new industrial space, mobile communication network is an excellent case.

The earliest mobile communication was a closed system. Even for different communication equipment manufacturers in the same system, the wireless base station and switching equipment are internal interfaces and are not open to each other. Therefore, if an operator can be provided with the equipment needed for network construction at the first time, the subsequent expansion and transformation will be purchased from a single source, and the proceeds will be exclusively enjoyed by the equipment supplier.

But some equipment suppliers take a longer view. They actively support the work of communication technology standards organizations and even contribute their own technical achievements. Although this will lose some market share and short-term economic benefits; However, in the long run, promoting the opening of the industry is more conducive to "making a big industrial cake" and bringing about an increase in the overall income of the industry.

Industrial ecology is coordinated as a whole to support telecom operators to build networks quickly; Telecom operators have made huge profits from their investment, so they have the ability to continue to spend huge sums of money to buy equipment; Therefore, equipment manufacturers have enough funds to continue technological innovation and drive the continuous evolution and development of technology. Moreover, as the infrastructure of the mobile Internet industry, the sustained and healthy development of the mobile communication network has also led to the success of many enterprises such as terminals and mobile Internet applications, and the entire industrial ecology has shown a thriving scene.

Similarly, Monternet and the successful promotion of many IT technologies in those years were achieved through the construction of industrial ecology and the strength of partners.

For industrial ecological construction, industrial leaders should bear great responsibility. Leading big brother should not only point out the direction of progress, but also make contributions in technical support, resource investment and industrial cooperation. Even in the process of making and implementing rules, he needs to sacrifice his own interests in order to win the overall harmony of the team.

There is no road in the world. If more people go in the same direction, it will become a road.

Ecology, originally a biological concept, refers to the interrelation and interaction between organisms, between organisms and their surrounding environment, and between enterprises and the outside world through reference. For many enterprises, ecological construction is a new concept that they are not familiar with or good at. They are used to the supply chain management of the industry.

For the traditional industrial model, the relationship between different enterprises is solidified, and the industrial ecology is largely about the upstream and downstream relationship management of the industrial chain. Enterprises always hope that their products will be sold more expensively in order to get more income when supplying upstream customers. For suppliers in the downstream of the industrial chain, it is natural to hope that the price will be lower, and the cheaper the better. In the stage of price negotiation, both sides have become haggle over every ounce businessmen, hoping that all the bargains can be earned by themselves.

A zero-sum game must be divided into winners and losers. If you earn it, it means that I have suffered a loss. In order to take the initiative and get more benefits, the wits and wits between partners are fierce.

Of course, industrial chain management is not only a matter of playing tricks on each other, but also the operation and management of EMBA education science system. The important content is to continuously optimize and manage the industrial chain and reduce the time and cost losses caused by intermediate links. For large manufacturing enterprises, the importance of industrial chain even exceeds R&D and sales.

Industrial chain management has been brought to the extreme by large enterprises, and it is still being optimized and improved. However, even experts in this field tend to ignore such a problem:

For the relatively solidified industrial chain, continuously strengthening management can improve efficiency and enhance corporate profits; However, this kind of management only focuses on cost reduction, and can't bring industry increment, so it is mainly used in mature markets and models, but it can't be done in new markets.

Cloud network infrastructure providers strive to build industrial ecology. The logic is correct and the wishes are good, but at the operational level, it has changed its taste.

First of all, infrastructure enterprises are accustomed to supply chain management with the goal of reducing costs and increasing efficiency, which squeezes the interest space of partners.

In the face of unfamiliar and uncertain new market space, partners bear greater risks and deserve corresponding returns. Therefore, the builders of industrial ecology should be inclined to innovators when distributing benefits.

However, large enterprises are used to treating their partners in the traditional way, without making a reasonable evaluation of risk factors and the value of innovation. They simply reward their contributions according to the contribution of the industrial chain, and feel that the less money they get, the more reasonable it is.

There are many cases in which leading enterprises leave the "unwilling" task to their partners, saying that it is ecological cooperation, but in fact it is just outsourcing the time-consuming and laborious hard work. The essence is industrial chain management, and the goal is to reduce costs. Therefore, they do not recognize the contribution of partners in pioneering and innovative work, and are only willing to pay as low a fee as possible for "hard work".

So at the operational level, "being kind to partners" has become an empty talk. Eco-leaders not only failed to tilt their interests to their partners, but also actively compressed the interest space of their partners. The difficulty is not only reflected in the amount, but also in the payment cycle and other links, which increases the survival pressure of partners.

There is a very popular saying: "If the money is divided, more than half of the management problems will be solved." In fact, the more benefits partners get, the greater their enthusiasm for expanding new space, and they will also benefit as infrastructure providers. On the other hand, if the other party thinks that cooperation will suffer, they will find opportunities to stay away from you. How long can cooperation last?

Secondly, the infrastructure enterprises themselves get the "impossible" projects, name them "building industrial ecology" after finding partners, and then dump the pot.

The success of large-scale technology companies in the era of personal digitalization and the investment in digital marketing and publicity of enterprises have indeed produced good results. Customers want to do digital transformation projects and prefer to choose large enterprises.

But the interlacing is like a mountain, you can't directly tell customers that you don't understand, but what is "industry know-how"? Experts who focus on information infrastructure really don't understand. Fortunately, once you get the list, you won't worry that there are no manufacturers to talk about cooperation, so even if there are no products and solutions, you must bite the bullet and promise in front of customers.

Many times, after signing a contract, leading enterprises first take over what they can do, and then hand over the rest to their partners under the banner of ecological cooperation.

In some projects, the customer's requirements are not clear or the scope is too large, but the partners did not participate in the early communication with the customers, resulting in the delivery can not meet the customer's requirements.

In some projects, the technology of partners and infrastructure suppliers is not well integrated, with long cycle and high cost, which makes partners miserable and loses a lot.

Due to fierce market competition, no matter how difficult the project is, some people will be willing to take it. But in my opinion, if all the partners around the leaders of industrial ecology are sacrificed one by one, is there any so-called industrial ecology? Killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, the result of abnormal development of industrial ecology is difficult to sustain development.

What these people do under the banner of "ecological construction" is to destroy the fragile ICT industry base. After repeated blows and failures, how many people will firmly believe that enterprise digitalization is a track worth exploring.

I am anxious to see many strange things in the industrial ecology. Industrial development is to pool all aspects of resources and twist them into a rope. As a big enterprise in the field of ICT, we must not be too short-sighted and utilitarian in ecological construction. Unconventional development often involves huge risks, and 5G technology itself is still constantly improving. However, the previous high expectations of 5G and various unreasonable phenomena in the promotion process can easily lead to public opinion quickly falling in the opposite direction. High spirits, then decline, three exhausted, and when exhausted, it is too late to regret.