Once again, not everyone has the ability to innovate. Many people do not love learning; they are empiricists, and the knowledge and skills they possess may still be stuck in ten years ago. Just think about it: making decisions about the need for innovation today with the understanding, knowledge, and skills from ten years ago, their so-called innovation is bound to be a replication of the past.

I have a friend who has been in business for many years. Not only has he not made any money, but he also owes a huge debt to the bank. So I feel very anxious about his way of doing business and want to help him. However, every time we talk, I find that his thinking, his understanding, his knowledge, and skills have remained at the level of ten years ago. He finds it very difficult to accept new things. Later, when I visited him, he had recruited a professional manager who came from a state-owned enterprise. This professional manager discussed things that were not relevant to the present moment but talked about what achievements he made in 1994 and how he did it, trying to replicate what was done back then to the present. Just think about it, can this succeed? I was very skeptical at the time; how could a marketing method from the 90s be applied to the year 2020? Moreover, 2020 also faced a new factor like the pandemic.

Of course, this friend in business is also a very hardworking person. He works for more than ten hours a day, and it is common for him to be on the road at two or three in the morning. It is precisely because of this internal consumption of his body that he developed health issues, and later, the hospital could not cure him. This person no longer exists.

It can be seen that it is not that there are no innovative methods, nor that the correct paths for innovation do not exist in this world. Even if they come before us, we may not be able to recognize them, thus rejecting and excluding them in various ways.

For example, in the past, when I was discussing with some bosses related to the internet, when we talked about the user level, I mentioned many details. However, the other party did not have that kind of feeling at all and still spoke vaguely about traffic and traffic thinking. Just think about what value such discussions have? Everyone cannot resonate on many details of user management. By the end, the level of understanding is the same as at the beginning. What is traffic thinking? Is traffic something you spend money on? Does traffic not need to be managed? Can traffic be sustained?

So even if you have a good plan, you will definitely not be able to implement it because the stage itself does not have the conditions for implementation. Moreover, since various industries are quite competitive now, many platforms hope to achieve results through innovation, but often they simply want to take without wanting to give, wanting to push all the risks onto others while having no risks themselves. This kind of thinking is fundamentally wrong. Are there people willing to do innovative things with you? Of course not.

Of course, innovation is not random; it must exist at a certain level of knowledge, a certain level of ability, and even a comprehensive ability to understand various factors at the present moment.

Years ago, when I went to a fertilizer company, I actually had the idea to work there for a long time, but in the end, I did not go, and there are many reasons for this.

If a company does not have accumulation, this accumulation is not just about the money the company makes or the money the employees make, which makes everyone happy. This is one aspect. More importantly, the accumulation of a company includes multiple dimensions, not only the gradual change of its business model but also the accumulation of its business culture, the management and operation of its users, and the atmosphere and culture of its employees. I actually did not see or feel this because every time we talked, it was just simple exchanges. During every conversation or when I observed, their employees talked about trivial matters and did not discuss business at all, let alone how their business needed to innovate. Everyone seems to dislike understanding these things. Just think about how to implement innovation in such an environment and under such basic conditions? Even if you come up with an innovative idea, it still needs this group of employees to approve it. What level can they understand? Although you may be given a position, which gives you certain permissions, in reality, their company's meetings are greater than any permissions. This means that any decision is a form of democratic consensus that needs to be reached, and in this case, the real decision-making power belongs to the least capable person. Because according to the barrel theory, it depends on the shortest plank.

Finally, I want to say that if a company wants to break through the situation of internal competition and wants to adopt innovative methods for rapid advancement, many aspects need to change, including their views on recruitment and employment. A person with ten or eight years of work experience, or even longer, is indeed a talent, but if you want him to innovate, the possibility is very low because his success comes from experience, not from innovation. Innovation often comes from new employees with innovative abilities, not from experienced old employees or experienced new employees.

There are many platforms like this, and many startup platforms or platforms that have been operating for a long time still face this serious phenomenon. The seriousness of this phenomenon indicates that the company has not adopted the optimal development method but has taken a relatively arduous development approach. In this development model, experience and ability become the main factors, and of course, there are other aspects such as relationships, backdoors, and unspoken rules, which are another aspect.

Changing this situation is actually not difficult, but in reality, very few are willing to change. I have not worked in Shenzhen for long, so I am not very familiar with Shenzhen's companies. However, since Shenzhen is an innovative city, I imagine that those who make the right decisions must have the greatest power. Because in an innovation-driven organization, it tends to be more dictatorial. The person who masters the innovative plan or path will not gain the recognition of all employees, and may not even gain the recognition of the vast majority of employees. They will raise various opposing opinions and can only see a glimpse of the situation, getting entangled in certain details and not letting go. At this time, the key depends on the characteristics of the company. If the company operates in a conservative manner, then this plan will definitely be discarded. If the company has a certain tolerance for mistakes, then this plan may be implemented after being modified from various aspects.

Of course, for the boss to gain the dividends of innovative development, he also needs to have a mindset of being willing to take losses. In other words, if you want to succeed in a certain project, you need to decide how much loss you can bear on that project before considering other factors. If you do not want to lose a penny on a project that requires innovation to be realized, then this project will definitely not succeed.

So the boss should not think about making money immediately; instead, he should think about how much loss he can bear before making a profit. Because many innovative things achieve brilliant results precisely because of the necessary losses they incur.