Challenge! 2014:
Secrets from the Best
by Stan Dong
The “Challenge 2014” BizTech500 Summit organized by CSDN and BT Media was held in Beijing from December 5 to 6th. The event attracted attendance from hundreds of founders, CEOs and CTOs of industry leading companies. Here they were able to share and learn behind-the-scene stories, insightful thoughts and views on both technology and business development. What are the challenges they consider in their particular industry section? What are the solutions they came up with? how do they envision future? How do they manage to operate through that winding journey? How does the industry ecosystem differ before, during and after the transformation? And what can we learn from their experiences? CSDN has taken the privilege to summarize some of the highlights for our readers. Here you will find answers to most if not all of these questions.
Challenge! 2014 — Kingsoft: Second Time’s a Charm
According to Hongjiang Zhang, CEO of Kingsoft [3888.HK], the company after nearly 23 years in IT business was in a life or death situation when he joined in 2011. The first question to answer was where to go next. They placed their faith in Mobile Internet and sticks to it ever since. Then the biggest changes came being at the core values of the company. Gross margin improved dramatically with the removal of the middle parts. Product design/update/release cycle reduced from 2 years to every week. Organization chart became flat and the attitude of the company change back to a “startup mindset”. What is a “startup mindset”? Zhang said it is a “can-do” mindset and taking ownership in your project. To make employee completely buy into the ownership mindset, the company offered shares to employees with deep discount to align their interests. If the project fails, employees actually have something to lose as well. In product development, Kingsoft’s motto is “care, perfection, and reputation”. Because they care for their product, they can make it into perfection, which lead to reputation. Kingsoft plans to invest 1 billion usd in cloud computing as they continue to firmly believe their future in Mobile Internet.
Challenge! 2014 — Manufacturer with “Internet Thinking”
When asked how RedCollar Group, a leading Chinese clothing manufacturer, became so successful with mass custom made suit, Daili Zhang (Chairman of RedCollar) answered that RedCollar was managed to find a new way to standardize body measurement, a pivotal part of custom made, with the help of “Internet Thinking”. Every suit made by RedCollar is different. RedCollar was able to simplify body measurement into 24 data points from 19 different body locations. With these data points, the assembly line can automatically produce custom made suit for a variety of different styles without significant increase of cost. Though a seemingly straightforward approach, it took them twelve years to build their unique data driven digitized manufacturing system, which was designed upon 3D-printing technology and German Industry 4.0 practices. The system is often referred to be a massive digital 3D-printing workshop. The key here is always data driven and customer driven. RedCollar management put so much confidence in the system that they feel it can do no wrong. So far so good.
