bookbashuk #505 - Format disputes and mechanism changes
#505 - Format disputes and mechanism changes
Entering the booming technological era of the sixties, the rapid emergence of new technologies made Ren Zhong feel like he was spinning like a top, becoming even busier.
There was no other way; there were just too many things to pay attention to now.
Many things lacked any historical technical accumulation at Dongda University. If he didn't bring back some practical knowledge from the main world, Dongda wouldn't even have the slightest idea.
Although cameras were just a small product, they were crucial to the development of optical technology. They were also the best way to realize the benefits of optical technology and support its own development. They were an indispensable part of the future development of chips, space exploration, and military advancements. Therefore, Ren Zhong put in some effort to help Dongda's Optical Technology Research Center reach out and win over Zeiss, a perennial optical company, even if it meant temporarily sacrificing some profit.
Just like Rolls-Royce, even if Dongda surpassed them in individual products through cheating and taking shortcuts, their overall ability to develop new products still far exceeded that of Dongda. Once Ren Zhong couldn't find useful knowledge from the main world, the gap in research and development would become apparent.
The same was true for optics. Dongda now had some solid materials and a promising market for new products. Attracting an optical technology giant like Zeiss was still very appealing, and they were willing to squeeze every last drop of their capabilities.
Looking at it now, the effect was indeed good. The previously stagnant lithography machine development achieved a breakthrough almost immediately. The new generation lithography machine, the L-100, was successfully researched and put into mass production.
This was a new generation of step-and-repeat lithography machine. Compared to the original technical route, it achieved record-breaking improvements in chip production efficiency and yield.
This quickly updated Dongda's chip manufacturing process to a mass production level of 2 microns, gradually phasing out the original reflective lithography mode and directly destroying the old 8080 technology that competitors had just acquired through less-than-honest means.
After all, there was no comparison in terms of production efficiency and yield. Competitors had only solved the problem of having the technology, but were far from solving the problems of quality and cost.
After the introduction of Dongda's new generation technology into chip production, the production cost of the 8080 was reduced by an order of magnitude. Dongda quickly announced that it would significantly reduce the price of the 8080 in the middle of the year. As a result, the use of the 8080 was greatly expanded and began to enter mass industrial control application scenarios. Compared to the original production process, the new 8080 chip area was greatly reduced, and the memory chips were also updated synchronously. This made the produced industrial control motherboards smaller and easier to install in machines.
Many mechanical devices, including automobiles, began to use 8080 chips in batches to improve intelligence. After all, the original price of several hundred dollars was unbearable for products that only sold for a few thousand dollars in total. But now, after the price reduction, the overall cost of a single industrial control board could be reduced to within one hundred dollars, which was a price that could be absorbed by large products like automobiles.
In this wave of chip upgrades, the first to benefit were program-controlled switches in communication networks.
After using the new 8080 and 8086 chips, the 10,000-line program-controlled switch became more sophisticated and stable. Because the new processors and memory had lower heat dissipation requirements, the computing performance was greatly improved. This made the algorithm run faster, and the switching time for call transfer and hold was shorter. For users, this meant lower latency, significantly reduced waiting time, and fewer dropped calls.
This made Dongda's 10,000-line program-controlled switch more cost-effective.
In the previous version, it had already formed an overwhelming advantage over crossbar switches. Now, with the new generation of switches, the advantage over crossbar switches was even greater.
However, even though European countries now had very close relations with Dongda regarding this core equipment for telephone communication, they still chose to wait and see. Major cities continued to develop crossbar switches. There was no other way; several traditional European telecommunications product companies, such as Siemens, Philips, and Ericsson, were still working hard to develop program-controlled switches. They hoped to give these companies a buffer period to wait for their new generation of switches to be developed.
However, some cities had to introduce Dongda's program-controlled switches to supplement their telephone networks. There was no other way; Dongda ET Company's program-controlled switches were too cost-effective, reducing the cost per line by four-fifths compared to crossbar switches!
With such a huge advantage, every telecommunications equipment manufacturer in the great powers was now obtaining Dongda's first-generation 10,000-line program-controlled switch through various channels for physical research.
They were preparing to apply these "research" results to their own "new product" development.
In the Bright Sword world, it was the turn of these Western powers to reverse-engineer Dongda's products. Although it sounded uplifting, in terms of actual benefits, Western counterfeit numerical control switches, in order to avoid Dongda's telecommunications equipment patents, began to jointly develop another set of European standard telecommunications signaling systems!
As a result, Dongda ET Company's program-controlled switches were incompatible with European standard telecommunications switches!
When they developed a 3,000-line program-controlled switch, they also took advantage of the sharp price drop in Dongda's 8080 chips to reduce the cost per line of the switch to the $100 range!
This was close to the cost of Dongda ET Company's first-generation 10,000-line program-controlled switch!
In this way, the European countries took advantage of their late-mover advantage and began a large-scale, comprehensive promotion of program-controlled switches in Europe. In the early stages of Dongda's program-controlled switch promotion, these countries only carried out partial replacements in large cities with high population densities to meet the problem of rapidly increasing local telephone communication. After all, after Dongda's ET Company lowered the price of program-controlled switches, even if these countries wanted to protect their domestic telecommunications equipment manufacturers, they couldn't stop the operators' pursuit of lower prices.
Faced with this situation, Dongda Telecommunications' ET Group was caught somewhat off guard.
"Currently, the telecommunications market faces incompatibility between European standard telecom equipment and our own. This situation has led to many regions adopting European standards, making them unwilling to accept new standard switches. From the operator's perspective, the cost of maintaining two types of equipment simultaneously is obviously higher, and there's no need to increase operational complexity by choosing two different standards," the ET President stated bluntly while reporting current telecom market expansion issues to Ren Zhong.
"Given the current market situation, should we reduce the output of 8080 chips to Europe or increase the export price of 8080 chips to raise their costs?"
Hearing this, Ren Zhong glanced at him.
This vision is somewhat limited. It seems the ET President's position may not be suitable for this person. However, Ren Zhong wasn't thinking about addressing these issues right now. Instead, he listened while reviewing the report, gaining a certain understanding of the basic situation.
"Do we have anyone engaging with European counterparts to discuss the possibility of forming a unified global telecommunications standard?" Ren Zhong asked, looking up.
The ET President paused, his mind quickly scanning his memory, confirming that no one had mentioned it to him. "Dean Ren, we haven't done anything like that yet."
"Then talk to them first. If our company wants to go further, it shouldn't be about restricting competitors from obtaining upstream component supplies. We need to look to the longer term. You need to examine yourselves and ask why you can't compete with your rivals even with the same or even prioritized chip supply. I think the past few years have been too easy, and everyone has become somewhat complacent. I haven't seen a new generation of switches based on the ten-thousand-line program-controlled switch emerge. With the new chips, when can we develop a hundred-thousand-line program-controlled switch?"
Ren Zhong's words caused the ET President's back to break out in a cold sweat.
When the ET-10K was selling well, everyone in the company acted like they were picking up money. They couldn't even keep up with production and market expansion. Research and development were significantly weakened, and many people were even transferred from the technical center to provide on-site technical support.
Currently, the company and the research center's progress in researching the next generation of telecommunications equipment can be considered quite slow.
"Dean Ren, we are working hard to develop the next generation of large-capacity backbone switch, the ET-100K. Currently, we are doing prototype design and theoretical verification. The specific research plan is constantly being adjusted, and we expect to have a finished product within two years," the ET President said, recalling a previous report he had received, remembering the general content.
"Your progress in research and development is a bit slow," Ren Zhong frowned and said. "Research and development and maintaining rapid technological iteration are the foundations for a company's long-term success. Don't think that our program-controlled switches are currently leading the world, because that foundation is very weak and unrealistic. You have already seen competitors rapidly catching up to us. Now, they are even swallowing up our early market advantages. These are all lessons. You need to organize internal discussions to conduct in-depth research on this situation and propose countermeasures. If this continues, ET may not even be a leader in a few years."
Ren Zhong's words caused the ET President's back to be almost completely soaked. To him, this was already a very serious criticism from Ren Zhong. The ET Group has been moving very fast in recent years, and everyone from top to bottom has inevitably become somewhat complacent. There is no leader who is truly dedicated to planning for the future of the ET Group and doing solid research on new products. Everyone is busy and only thinking about doing the things in front of them.
This path is inevitably going a bit astray.
After dismissing the ET President,
Ren Zhong had someone bring over the complete corporate situation report for ET Company. After asking people to understand more about the situation, Ren Zhong pondered for several days.
He felt that something seemed to be wrong with the current mechanism.
The original intention of leaving 20% of the stock dividends for technical personnel and management was to encourage technology and management to move upward, but now, for companies like ET, it seems to have become all about money!
Everyone seems to value short-term corporate benefits more, because dividends are based on the current corporate profit and loss data, and 30% to 40% of the company's profits are distributed as dividends each year.
In this way, it seems inevitable that the company will pay more attention to obtaining current benefits.
Ren Zhong returned to the main world, wanting to find answers from the top companies in the current world.
But unfortunately, Ren Zhong didn't find a panacea for management. No matter what kind of corporate mechanism it is, it seems that there is no perfect effect now.
More successful cases are when a company has a good leader to achieve great development.
Behind almost every hugely successful company, there is a great entrepreneur.
Ren Zhong saw that only a lion can lead a group of sheep to achieve brilliant results, not a group of sheep that can reach the peak on their own.
In the companies he started in the Dawn Faction, the current product development routes are almost all following his plans. Logically speaking, Ren Zhong is the soul of these companies' development. Once he doesn't pay attention, the company will soon go astray.
So, at the root, it now seems that he, Ren Zhong, is limiting the development of these companies.
His planning and design are the upper limit of the company's development.
If something unexpected happens to Ren Zhong, no one knows where the development of his companies will go.
It's easy to do something, but it's really hard to do it well.
Ren Zhong didn't realize that he had already opened up a new history in the Sword-Brightening World. The current situation is just a problem in the development process, but for Ren Zhong, the emergence of such a problem is already a very serious sign.
Ren Zhong crammed on some corporate management from the main world, and then consulted many corporate management experts to discuss the problems encountered in the Sword-Brightening World. Now Ren Zhong is also a small, well-known billionaire in the main world, and he already has several companies with sales of hundreds of millions or even billions, so the problems he raised are also reasonable.
However, the prescriptions prescribed by the experts varied.
There is no universal formula that can be applied, but Ren Zhong has grasped the two core points.
The first point is to choose entrepreneurs with leadership charisma and vision, that is, to choose a good leader among a group of bears. The leader must be chosen well.
The second point is that, in terms of mechanisms, the dimensions of observation or assessment should be more comprehensive, and one cannot simply evaluate based on the current benefits. Dividends that focus too much on current interests will inevitably change.