1novels #506 - New Mechanics
#506 - New Mechanics
Although Ren Zhong didn't find a direct answer, he at least had some ideas in terms of direction.
In his mind, he already had numerous templates of successful business masterminds, from George Eastman, the camera tycoon close at hand, to Jack Welch, who was still studying for his doctorate.
Each of them was a true legend.
Ren Zhong was absorbing the growth trajectories of these giants and their ideas for successful business management.
Next, Ren Zhong planned to pilot these ideas in his own companies.
Fundamentally, the talent cultivation mechanism for senior management in enterprises needed to be changed.
First of all, the path of directly selecting talents from research institutions to run enterprises was gradually going to be abandoned. Ren Zhong had already seen that in business management, although those with technical backgrounds weren't absolutely incapable of running businesses, the majority of companies where the helmsman was directly dispatched from the technology R\u0026D department were increasingly proving to be unviable.
Today's entrepreneurs should be recruited and selected widely from the social level, preferably through the cultivation of multiple seed players, and the final leader should be selected through a horse-racing mechanism. Although the cycle may be a bit long, ranging from three to five years to possibly ten years or more, the entrepreneurs produced by this horse-racing mechanism can ensure the development of a company for twenty or thirty years, just like Welch did for General Electric, leading GE to glory for two decades.
No matter how long or difficult it is, he must persevere. In this regard, Ren Zhong didn't intend to rely entirely on himself. In his mind, he already had a grand plan for cultivating high-level talent. A talent selection committee would be established at the level of Dawn Research Institute, selecting 5 to 7 leading committee members from well-known entrepreneurs, practical experts, and university professors. An office would be set up under the committee to specifically handle the collection of information on the cultivation of each reserve talent, forming a report that would be submitted to the committee for evaluation. There would be approximately 2-3 candidate talents for each position, and these candidates would be evaluated annually.
Finally, upon confirming that they possessed the ability to independently take charge of a region, promotion recommendations would be given, granting the candidate talent a 1 to 3 year transition period in the next higher position. Only if they completed all performance goals during the transition period would they be formally promoted to leader.
Such a strict mechanism may seem somewhat bureaucratic, but it has low risk, as all promoted talents have demonstrated their abilities in actual work.
Another mechanism is to poach talent from other emerging high-level corporate executives, directly digging out the leading seedlings from mature companies in society and placing them in important positions for training. From an efficiency perspective, this method is fast, and it may only take half a year to a year from screening to hiring. However, it is relatively risky. On the one hand, if the poached talent's field is inconsistent, whether this talent can adapt to the switch between different fields of enterprises is a big problem, because if it is within the same industry, basically no domestic company can compare with the companies under Dawn Research Institute in this field.
As a technology leader, the companies under Dawn Research Institute are usually the leaders in a field, and rarely fall out of the top three. In this way, either talent is poached from smaller companies, or talent is poached across industries from other types of companies. Regardless of which type, on the one hand, the feelings of the candidate's original company must be considered, and on the other hand, the adaptability of the parachuted senior executive to the company must be considered.
Therefore, Ren Zhong felt that this mechanism was risky, and in his mind, it was placed in a supplementary position, to see if he could gather a few outstanding management geniuses from society to take the lead in the companies under Dawn Research Institute.
This is in terms of personnel. Ren Zhong felt that through these two channels, even if he couldn't completely solve all the high-level management problems of his research institute, it would create huge external pressure on unqualified managers, prompting them to update their knowledge and abilities.
Instead of being complacent and becoming a mechanical manager who simply executes procedures.
At the management level, appropriately introducing external forces to stimulate the catfish effect is fundamental to business management. Ren Zhong must find a way to move forward no matter how difficult it is, and when implementing this policy, he should observe the effectiveness of these methods from the perspective of an outsider, rather than personally taking charge.
In order to produce results as soon as possible, Ren Zhong even tries to transport samples from the main world as much as possible, if the volume and weight of the samples are not very large.
Although this method greatly shortens the product development cycle, fundamentally speaking, this kind of research does not have much effect on the cultivation of the project team members' innovation ability.
This is also the reason why Ren Zhong needs to find ways to bring Zeiss, Rolls-Royce and other top companies to jointly research.
In terms of basic technology accumulation and formal new product R\u0026D experience and processes, these companies are the top players in their respective fields.
For example, in the field of aero-engines, even if Ren Zhong provides the aero-engine research team of Dongda University with more detailed technical data in the research of the three-rotor turbofan engine, the progress of the part responsible by Rolls-Royce is much faster than that of the Dongda team!
Relatively speaking, Ren Zhong provided Rolls-Royce with design specifications and some ideas, but even so, their implementation efficiency is much higher than that of the Dongda team. This is the difference in technical background.
Although Dongda University has completely replicated the turbofan-9, the current top turbofan engine in the Bright Sword world, and has gained a lot of valuable engineering experience, in the process of researching the three-rotor engine, these experiences have not been fully integrated, and the understanding of many innovative aspects of the new engine is much shallower than that of its peers. If Ren Zhong hadn't required that the provision of information to the outside world be more conservative, and only the Dongda team had detailed information, while the Rolls-Royce technical team was only given very large specifications and design ideas.
It is equivalent to saying that Dongda has almost the complete picture of an actual three-rotor engine after it is formed, but Rolls-Royce only sees a part of it. Under unfair conditions, Dongda's progress is still somewhat unable to keep up with its partners.
This is the aftereffect of forced growth. Ren Chong is well aware of the drawbacks of this research method, but in the initial stages, he must import some things from the main world to take shortcuts if he wants to overtake others on the curve. He can't afford to worry about forced growth for the team.
First, get it done, then think about how to do it well and thoroughly.
This research method, when reflected in the mechanism, reveals a particular reliance on Ren Chong's provision of information, ideas, and technical routes for implementation, rather than the research team coming up with new technical routes themselves!
Another aspect is that after the current technology is developed and commercialized, should the research and development of the next generation of technology and products continue to be placed in the research center, or should it be transferred from the research center to the enterprise, establishing a new research center within the enterprise to be responsible for the iterative optimization of the next generation of products?
Currently, this aspect is also not very clear, because Ren Chong is now unable to simply place technology research in the enterprise, or continue to place it in an independent research center under the Dawn Research Institute. Both of these have unavoidable drawbacks.
If placed in the enterprise, the current enterprises, after starting up, definitely do not have the powerful technical strength of the research center under the Dawn Research Institute, which will inevitably lead to a severe prolongation of the evolution cycle of the next generation of products, and may even prevent the evolution of the next generation of products.
For products with high investment and high technology concentration, such as aero engines, it is almost impossible to start from scratch and establish a new research center.
Therefore, for this type of product, it is necessary to rely on the original research center to continue to develop and evolve the next generation of products. This model is a joint research and development model of enterprise + research institution. The enterprise earns profits through productization and feeds this part of the profit back to the research center to invest in the development of new products. In this way, research and development and the enterprise form a subtle situation of mutual restraint. From a mechanism point of view, this research and development model has a certain rationality. The core research and development still needs to be placed under the Dawn Research Institute, responsible for major basic technology research.
Currently, most of them adopt this model.
However, this model has certain drawbacks, that is, the product direction is also extremely dependent on Ren Chong's decision.
Rather than reaching an agreement through consultation between the enterprise and the research center.
In terms of results, this model obviously has no way to continue to be implemented well in the post-Ren Chong era.
Therefore, Ren Chong feels that this model definitely cannot continue like this after him. After him, the new successor will inevitably fall into a dead end!
Not everyone can travel through two worlds and obtain valuable technical information and experience in development and application from different historical time and space.
So, although it is still necessary to maintain Ren Chong's authority in research project approval, next, it is also necessary to pilot and improve this mechanism, and it is necessary to allow people from the research center and the enterprise to start to be driven to propose new research topics.
Therefore, in terms of the establishment and evaluation of new research topics, enterprises must have a certain evaluation right to avoid the research center's slackness. Enterprises must also have a team for product application research, carrying out some specific research work on the front line, and outputting new products that can be sold through micro-innovation and micro-modification in basic technology or basic products.
Especially in the field of civilian products, Ren Chong believes that the leading role in the development of new products in this area should be placed mainly in enterprises for research. The research center should focus on major basic innovation research to ensure that the next generation of products is launched ahead of competitors.
For example, in household appliances such as cameras and televisions, the specific products to be launched should now be researched and innovated by the internal research and development center of the enterprise. The research center under the Dawn Research Institute should shift to research on revolutionary technologies such as liquid crystal technology, new generation motors, new generation photosensitive materials, and new generation lithium battery technology.
As well as major technological breakthroughs in the production of related production line equipment.
In order to ensure the sustainable development of research and development, in terms of hard investment in research and development expenses, Ren Chong directly and roughly determined that more than 20% of the revenue of technology-based enterprises must be invested in scientific research, of which most of the investment (15%) must be allocated to the research center that developed this technology, and the remaining research expenses of the enterprise must ensure more than 5%, up to 30% of the listing.
Through this high-intensity research and development investment, the intensity of research is maintained, in order to maintain long-term technological competitiveness.
The leading power of these funds expenditure is in the research center, but in terms of assessment, if the research center has not researched new results according to the progress plan, and the results are not as good as the enterprise's own research center, according to a three-year cycle, the next round of scientific research funding allocation ratio will be adjusted according to the output results ratio. If the results of the enterprise research center are more than the results of the Dawn Research Institute research center, then the funding ratio for the next three-year research and development cycle will be adjusted accordingly.
These tasks are placed in the results appraisal committee for judgment. The Dawn Research Institute will have a 5-person or 7-person results appraisal committee for each industrial field to appraise the relevant technical achievements in this field, and judge the technical leadership, market potential and many other dimensions to ensure that each technical achievement has a relatively objective evaluation result.
Among them, the technical dimension is divided into 1-5 levels, and the market dimension is divided into five levels: below one million, 1 million - 10 million, 10 million - 100 million, 100 million - 500 million, and above 500 million.
Although the assessment may have some discrepancies, relatively speaking, this is already a fairly fair model.
Finally, in terms of profit sharing, the current short-term behavior model is also changed. Under the new mechanism, a three-year rolling income must be used as a benchmark. If the total growth in three years is lower than the previous three years, the profit sharing will be reduced to less than 60% of the normal standard. Only by achieving a minimum annual growth of more than 10% can there be a 100% profit sharing opportunity.
On this basis, enterprises also need to achieve innovation requirements in dimensions such as new product sales accounting for more than 15% of total sales within three years.
For traditional enterprises such as steel, chemical industry, and shipbuilding, at least 5% of sales revenue must also be invested in product innovation and research on new materials and new product varieties, and they cannot eat their own capital indefinitely.
After Ren Chong absorbed the opinions of experts from the main world and gradually formed a complete plan, he began to prepare for pilot projects in enterprises under the Bright Sword world.
While he is still not too old and has time to improve this new mechanism, Ren Chong is preparing to carry out a major optimization in enterprise management of the Dawn-based industries in the Bright Sword world to ensure that these enterprises can maintain their evergreen foundation after him.