Innovation is justified, imitation is right

Recently I saw an article by Wang Shi at a business forum themed "Transformation and Innovation", lamenting that China lacked innovation in the past, and the corporate management strategy was always "following the line". Now China is so big that there is no object to imitate, and innovation is necessary. Wow, what a big breath! Wang Shi mentioned that Sun Hung Kai Properties, a very successful company in Hong Kong, sent people to Vanke to learn how to manage the company's real estate business in the mainland. It is not surprising that Hong Kong businessmen ask their mainland counterparts for advice. He also mentioned that Paldi in the United States was once the target of Vanke's imitation, but after the 2008 financial crisis, the total value of Vanke's industry has surpassed this company. Paldi is just an intermediary and management company in Los Angeles. Its main business is located in California, and it is not ranked in the United States. Compared with it, Vanke has downgraded itself to a local company?

95% of Vanke's business is in China. For it, foreign countries are the source of supply of building materials such as wood and steel. It is bought for its own use, and the only concern is the cost. As for the management factors of foreign success, they turn a blind eye. In recent years, Chinese real estate tycoons have indeed been listed on Forbes' rich list again and again. China has shifted from a planned economy to a market economy. The real estate tycoons created during the transition period are different from other international counterparts. Moreover, the appreciation of the RMB since the exchange rate reform in 2005 Added 25% in value to their industry despite rising tides. The ranking in US dollars, even if the price of domestic real estate remains unchanged, converted into US dollars, it will increase by 20 to 30%. When Wang Shizhi is smug and arrogant, it is best to look at how many of the factors of success come from seizing the opportunity of the first pot of gold brought by the transformation, as well as the appreciation of the RMB, and then be humble.

Imitation and innovation, the old topic of the dual paradox seems to have no debate. Innovation is so glorious. As a Chinese with backbone, we must strive for innovation. When I mention the cottage, I can't lift my head up, this shabby hat must be taken off. This is the old tune that we hear calluses in our ears. Tsinghua University, where the author used to teach, has set a goal to produce a Nobel Prize winner in science by 2020. This kind of incentive method is reasonable, but when innovation is elevated to a fetish, its alienation from reality often produces a mentality that swings between the extremes of defeatism or arrogance. For entrepreneurs, this is an unnecessary psychological restraint.

The first thing to understand is that imitation is the path through which innovation must go, and innovation is vaguely defined and often discussed with invention. Apple's Steve Jobs didn't invent a single piece of hardware, but his clever use of existing technology to package it into a sought-after consumer product is innovation. There is a book in the United States: "The Copycat Economy - How Imitation Stimulates Innovation", one of the authors, Kal Raustiala, a jurist, gave a lecture at Fudan University in 2012 to discuss the copycat phenomenon in different fields. For example, it is not illegal to imitate fashion design styles, and only the trademark/brand of the clothing is protected. So on the night of the Oscars, the imitation fashion production company could not take their eyes off the clothes of the stars who appeared on the red carpet, and immediately copied and pasted them. Their own trademarks are much cheaper than the original ones. They are very popular with a group of consumers and flood the market in a short period of time, prompting the original designers to speed up the introduction of new designs. Without these imitators, the product cycle would not be so fast, and the industry would not will be so vibrant. The same reason can also explain the booming mobile phone manufacturing industry with Android system centered in Shenzhen.

The legal expert pointed out that all intellectual property law recognizes that innovation is difficult and that the way to reward it is to confer the economic benefits of a monopoly. China has a vast territory and a large population, and many folk geniuses are discovered from time to time. For example, farmers who manufacture helicopters are rewarded for a while, but they are rarely introduced to the market, and most of them have not been written down. It is a pity. Innovation is the goal pursued by many private entrepreneurs, but imitation is also a magic weapon to increase efficiency and shorten the innovation process.

Compared with Wang Shi, Feng Lun, another real estate celebrity famous for his "meat jokes", set sail to the international metropolis of New York to work hard and set up a "China Center" in the new World Trade Building there. aroused my curiosity. In the 1980s, Japanese real estate developers aggressively acquired American real estate, the most famous being the Rockefeller Center in downtown Manhattan, and other real estates in California and Hawaii. Damaged and sold for cheap. Twenty years later, the Chinese have come, will they repeat the same mistakes? Feng Lun compares himself to the experience of living in the city just from the countryside. Everything is expensive at first sight. He advises Chinese people who want to invest in New York to double their budget; his comment on the real estate industry in New York is "complex and hypocritical." There is no leeway in local laws, unions are powerful, and labor costs are staggeringly high. He humbly said that as a "village person", he doesn't even know what the standard of good things is, and he is discouraged from doing high-end restaurants. This is like Grandma Liu's candid reaction when she entered the Grand View Garden. It came from Feng Lun, who has flown to New York more than 60 times in the past 12 years. It can be said to be sincere. After reading it, the author is a little relieved. The tuition fee for internationalization has to be paid, but smart people spend less money.

Feng Lun mentioned that it is a difficult issue to manage the real estate after purchasing the property and renovating it for environmental protection. He frankly said that in the China Center of the New York World Trade Center, there is a factor of "face". "Lizi" can achieve the highest realm, and how much money can be made is unknown, so good!

China's manufacturing industry goes global is a trend. The industrial upgrading of the manufacturing industry itself has encountered many bottlenecks, and the growth rate of foreign trade exports has declined, and it has continued to increase. The brilliance of foreign trade in those years was largely due to the free ride of globalization. According to WTO statistics, in the first 30 years of the financial crisis in 2008, the growth rate of global trade was twice that of the global economy. In the past three years, trade Growth is lower than the rate of economic growth. The appreciation of the renminbi has pushed real estate tycoons to the top of the world, while foreign trade companies have suffered. Since the exchange rate reform, they have maintained considerable growth and maintained market share, which is admirable. In this big environment, we continue to fight, and the competition is the product design and operation mode. At present, the product cycle is short, persistent innovation, and great risks. Leading innovation with creative imitation is the way to break through.

Zhou Naiping, Editor-in-Chief of CEConline, Visiting Professor of School of Media Design, Sun Yat-Sen University. Ms. Zhou taught East Asian history at American University and financial news at Hong Kong University. She was a senior reporter for Reuters, the founder and director of the Global Finance Project at the School of Journalism and Communication of Tsinghua University, and the author of International Financial News Knowledge and Reports. Op-eds represent personal views only.