Enlightenment Of High Growth Enterprises

Editor's note

Since November 17, the 21st century economic report has launched a series of special topics, "on high growth enterprises: discovering the sample of gazelle" in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao Bay area, and plans to launch ten consecutive issues. The series of reports were jointly planned and implemented by the headquarters of Guangdong Hong Kong Macao big bay district of China Central Radio and television, the center of Guangdong Hong Kong Macao big bay area and the southern finance and economics Omnimedia group.

This series of reports focuses on the high growth enterprises in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao. Through in-depth first-line interviews and field research, we try to present the group stories of "Gazelle" enterprises active in the strategic emerging industries in Dawan District, excavate the explorations, discoveries and efforts of Dawan entrepreneurs in their respective industries, as well as their struggle, choice and thinking.

In the 10th issue, let's summarize this series of interviews and research activities in the form of apocalypse, hoping to provide more innovative enterprises with growth experience and provide reference for the government to further improve the innovation policy system.

In today's new era, China's enterprises are facing new challenges in the new era of economic development. At the just concluded Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, the CPC Central Committee put innovation in the core position in the overall situation of modernization, and took self-reliance in science and technology as the strategic support for national development.

Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Guangdong Province has actively implemented the innovation driven strategy, and has cultivated a number of innovative enterprises such as "little giants", invisible champions, gazelle enterprises and unicorn enterprises. The headquarters of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao Bay area of China Central Radio and television, the center of Guangdong Hong Kong Macao Bay area and Nanfang finance and economics all media group recently jointly planned and implemented a series of reports on high growth innovative enterprises, and selected nine gazelle sample enterprises in the first batch.

Gazelle enterprise is a high growth small and medium-sized enterprise that has just passed the death valley, driven by innovation and has certain technical advantages. The more gazelle enterprises in a region, the stronger the innovation vitality and the greater development potential. This series of interview and report activities let us have a more in-depth understanding of Dawan District gazelle and other high growth innovative enterprises, and also showed the vigorous scientific and technological innovation vitality of small and medium-sized enterprises in Dawan district.

The times call for innovative entrepreneurs

According to the survey, most of the founders of high growth small and medium-sized enterprises, represented by gazelle, have professional technology and industrial background (as shown in the figure), and have obvious characteristics of becoming a new generation of entrepreneurs. However, only professional and technical background is not good, and it also needs to be combined with market operation ability to promote technological innovation, realize commercial application, obtain commercial profits, feed back technology research and development, form a virtuous circle, and walk out of the death valley of start-ups.

After the reform and opening up, China's first generation of entrepreneurs in the era of shortage seize the market demand, rely on personal courage and ability to organize production and sales, to break a path. After 1992, the second generation of entrepreneurs is mainly composed of personnel with certain knowledge level, mainly relying on copying the developed countries' enterprise management, business model and production mode, etc., to exert their strength in the field of manufacturing and service industry. At the turn of the century, some young entrepreneurs learn from the Internet technology and application of Silicon Valley, carry out business revolution through localization, and open the Internet era.

The first and second generation entrepreneurs mainly organize large-scale production and build commercial networks with marketing as the leading factor. In technology, they are generally obtained through imitation and purchase. In particular, the core technology, materials and parts need to be imported to a certain extent. In the 1980s, some large enterprises had a debate on the development route, that is, whether to choose the mode of trade, industry and technology that promotes research and development by market, or the mode of technology, industry and trade, which promotes production and sales through technological research and development and achievements. Huawei chose the latter.

The phenomenon that some of the old generation entrepreneurs attach importance to sales and production but despise R & D is related to China's development stage. The low-end incremental demand of large-scale and the lack of innovation resources cause the limitations of some entrepreneurs. However, after entering the new era, China's per capita GDP has exceeded 10000 US dollars, the demand structure and production function have undergone significant changes, the internal circulation of the production system is not smooth and the phenomenon of disconnection between supply and demand is obvious, "neck sticking" problem is prominent, and consumers have put forward higher requirements for product quality, performance and service level. To solve this development contradiction, we need to rely on innovation New drive, constantly improve the quality and level of supply, to the high end of the production chain and value chain.

In the new stage of development, the traditional manufacturing and service industries have been saturated, and the supply quality has not yet met the needs of industrial and consumption upgrading, the era calls for more innovative entrepreneurs. They should undertake the task of breaking through important products and key core technologies, so as to realize the security of the industrial chain supply chain and realize the independent and controllable development of the industry; they need to devote themselves to the strategic emerging industries such as biotechnology, new energy, new materials, high-end equipment, green environmental protection, aerospace, artificial intelligence and other strategic emerging industries; they should improve the modernization level of the service industry and promote the digital development 。

Therefore, the new generation of entrepreneurs need a higher threshold of professional technology. They should not only be good at organizing production and sales as traditional entrepreneurs do, but also have the ability to organize innovative resources, develop original technologies, adopt new business models or generate new forms. Enterprises become the main body of innovation, while entrepreneurs become the organizers of technological innovation, which will inevitably require the new generation of entrepreneurs to understand technology and industry and be good at organizing innovation elements. The founder background of sample enterprises shows the basic quality of the new generation of innovative entrepreneurs.

Characteristics of gazelle Enterprises

First, innovation is the core.

The sample enterprises have core technology and the ability of continuous research and development, and through a large number of patents to establish a moat, so as to occupy a place in the fierce market competition, and even some enterprises' technology has reached the domestic or international leading level. For example, Huake Chuangzhi has broken cambios's monopoly on silver nanowires and solved the problem of "neck sticking" in domestic related industries. In the field of power battery recycling, Bangpu cycle has achieved the international leading position in technology, occupying half of the global market and leading the formulation of relevant industry standards in China.

Technology R & D and innovation account for a large proportion of enterprise expenditure. Small and medium-sized enterprises with technological innovation have the characteristics of light assets, mainly invest in the field of R & D, and most of the production departments can be outsourced. For example, the R & D expenses of hipoulos in 2018 accounted for 70% - 80%, and about 40% in 2019. The average age of maxhub employees is under 29 years old, and the proportion of technicians is about 60%.

The innovation network with its own characteristics has been constructed. Each enterprise has its own technology research and development leader and innovation platform. On this basis, some enterprises use external brain to promote industry university research cooperation to form an innovation network. Bangpu cycle has established a national "enterprise technology center", and has reached special research strategic cooperation with Tsinghua University, Central South University, Hunan University, South China Normal University, Chinese Academy of Sciences, etc., and has built academician workstation and "national innovation center". Huake Chuangzhi cooperated closely with Professor Zhang Yi of School of chemistry and chemical engineering of Sun Yat sen University to obtain the exclusive patent authorization, and built academician (expert) workstation with Academician Cao Yong of South China University of technology. The main research direction is flexible OLED lighting technology.

Cross border cooperation has become a source of innovation. At present, innovation involves more and more disciplines and industries. At the same time, innovation is not only the task of researchers and research institutions, but also the cooperation with the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain and even cross-border cooperation has become an important force to promote innovation. Li Guangyuan, founder of indium offshore engineering, believes that the strength of his R & D team is to be good at finding ideas and methods across borders. He thinks that many technologies have not been applied across borders due to the natural isolation of the industry. In fact, both ideas and technical methods can also be well applied in other industries, so they should be good at learning from them. Hapoulos cooperates with research institutes of Peking University, South University of science and technology, as well as hospitals such as people's Hospital and Peking University Hospital to create a R & D model with one plus one greater than two or even more than three.

Second, market-oriented.

Research and development of technology is only the first step. How to commercialize technology and realize commercial application is also very important. If industrialization and marketization can not be realized, then enterprises will not be able to obtain profits through the market to survive, and it is difficult to continue to feed R & D.

After possessing the core technology of nano silver wire, Huake Chuangzhi must meet the requirements of enterprise application. It took tens of thousands of experiments for many years to solve the technical problem of commercialization of silver nanowire. Therefore, the success of Huake Chuangzhi is positioned as "a good combination of technology and market". After Yuntian lifeI entered the security market, in order to meet the requirements of better use, the AI technology team and the police team cooperated for two years to polish the project.

Innovative enterprises must grasp both technology and market, both of which are indispensable. Therefore, we see a phenomenon in the sample enterprises. If the founder is a technical expert, he will find a person who is familiar with the industry and the market. If the founder is an industrial market-oriented one, he will certainly take the industry pain point to find R & D talents cooperation. For example, Yu Dongxu, co-founder and chairman of Huake Chuangzhi, found that ITO, a key material in the IT manufacturing industry for more than ten years, was monopolized by Japanese enterprises. When he met Wen Weijia, a professor of physics at the Hong Kong University of science and technology, they founded the company. Zhou Wei has been engaged in the sales of medical devices for a long time. When he got to know Wu Xiaoguang, a doctor of Tsinghua University and a senior engineer of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the two began to cooperate to start a business.

Third, business model innovation.

The biggest challenge for innovative enterprises is that they have no mature market, lack of application scenarios, or the market needs to be developed by themselves. Therefore, innovative enterprises need to have the ability of business model innovation and be able to explore and develop two-way in technology and market.

When Jifei technology turns to agricultural UAV, they should first solve the technical problems of UAV agricultural application. After numerous experiments and technical problems are solved in Xinjiang, they must create a commercial application mode. First, establish a direct service team, and finally let the market accept it. Peng bin believes that "we should not only look for industries for technology, we should look for technologies for industries."

When maxhub produced the first generation of conference tablet, this field was still a no man's land. Maxhub had to develop its own market, provide the products to some key customers for free trial, and constantly increase the functions, so as to gradually open up the market awareness. Although its R & D of waste materials is cheaper in the global market, it has no doubts about the quality of recycled batteries in the global market. Therefore, they communicated and coordinated with the relevant departments and the standards committee, and became one of the drafting units of the national battery recycling standard. After establishing the monitoring method and quality standard system, they opened up the market. Moreover, the investment of Ningde times was introduced into Bangpu cycle, which locked in the largest suppliers and customers, and realized synchronous iteration through technical cooperation, and finally greatly improved the technical level and market scale at the same time.

Fourth, adhere to the professional line.

Almost all the sample enterprises emphasize that they will stick to the specialty and take the new route of specialization, specialization and specialization. The future development goals are benchmarked by global industry leaders. Huake Chuangzhi has spent many years researching the key technologies of nano silver wire and CPI, and their vision is to become a world-famous material company such as DuPont of the United States, BASF of Germany, Sumitomo chemical of Japan, etc. Jifei technology has put forward the company's vision of "improving the global agricultural production efficiency", with John Deere and Kubota as the targets, which are the global agricultural machinery giants.

The engineering field of jingin offshore engineering needs a long time of technology accumulation. Li Guangyuan said that the enterprise does not have the ability to overtake on the curve, but it will focus on catching up with the international leading enterprises. If it fails to catch up with the world's leading enterprises in 10 years, it will take 20 years. It needs patience and can't rush for quick success and instant benefits. As long as you do things honestly, there will always be gains. Hapoulos said that in the future, it will focus on tumor gene testing, which is the most reliable, scientific and medical company in China. It hopes to be the first in China and a leading life science and technology company in the world.

Innovation and development advantages of Dawan District

Dawan district is a market-oriented global large-scale manufacturing center, forming a business culture characterized by manufacturing and marketing. At the same time, Dawan District lacks the basic capacity of scientific and technological research and development, and the application technology field dominated by enterprises is relatively developed. In the high-quality development stage characterized by technological innovation, the lack of innovation resources may affect the future industrial development of Dawan district.

However, through the survey and visit of gazelle enterprises, we found that Dawan district has a strong environmental advantage, which is attracting innovative talents and resources from all over the world to become an innovation highland. Among these enterprises, two have led or participated in the formulation of national industry standards in relevant fields, and two have broken foreign monopoly and realized domestic substitution. Some have created a new industry with strong innovation.

There are two main reasons why these entrepreneurs choose to start a business in Dawan district. First of all, Dawan district has the best business environment and policy environment to support innovation in China. Dawan district is one of the areas with the highest degree of marketization in China, with the characteristics of marketization, legalization and internationalization. Guangdong provincial government and local governments such as Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Foshan have issued a large number of policies to support innovation, providing services for enterprises in all aspects. Regulatory authorities are also highly inclusive of innovation. For example, Jifei technology is involved in the safety of agricultural UAVs. After communication with the regulatory authorities, the enterprise quickly obtained the first cloud license of agricultural UAV from CAAC.

Secondly, Dawan district has the best industrial, commercial and capital advantages in the world. Innovative enterprises should complete the three links of R & D, production and sales at the same time. Although the R & D resources of Dawan District need to be further strengthened compared with Beijing and Shanghai, it has the most efficient and comprehensive industrial manufacturing advantages in the world and the global trade advantages. It means that the production chain in the R & D area is not perfect, which can help enterprises to solve the production problems quickly. In particular, the main application customers of some new materials and new equipment are concentrated in enterprises in Dawan district. Being close to customers and market is conducive to R & D efficiency.

At the same time, the business network of Dawan District radiates to the mainland and the world, and its commercial culture is developed, which helps enterprises to enter the market faster and better. Shenzhen and Guangzhou are also one of China's financial centers, which gather a large number of financial institutions, venture capital funds and industrial funds, which can provide more efficient financial support for innovative enterprises.

Dawan district has policy advantages, industrial advantages, business environment advantages, financial advantages, commercial advantages and so on, forming a strong attraction for innovative resources and talents. Xu Mingyan, who returned from the United States to start a business, says that this is the most silicon valley like place in the world, and even surpasses Silicon Valley in some places. Dawan district should strengthen the existing advantages, continue to improve the business environment and the level of legalization, consolidate the advantages of industrial manufacturing, promote financial innovation, and attract more innovative entrepreneurs and innovative talents to develop in Dawan district. In the stage of innovation driven development, economic development has changed from "attracting investment" to "recruiting talents". Therefore, Dawan district should continue to improve and improve the quality of public services such as education, medical treatment and culture, reform the factors affecting the flow of talents such as residence and household registration, and create a livable living environment so that more entrepreneurs and technical talents can have both career and better life in Dawan district Live.

Four systems escort Entrepreneurship

Innovation is a kind of high-risk activity. How to promote the whole society from system or cost arbitrage to innovation activities, provide support for innovation and reduce the risks brought by innovation to enterprises and entrepreneurs, we need to establish incentive system, stimulate the Entrepreneurship with innovation as the main connotation, and consolidate the foundation of China's innovation driven development strategy.

The first is the patent system. In order to obtain technological advantages, enterprises invest huge costs in innovation and patent research and development. The reason why entrepreneurs dare to take risks is that on the basis of intellectual property rights can be protected, they can transform technology into commodities to obtain commercial returns. Intellectual property protection is the cornerstone of scientific and technological innovation.

Nearly half of the enterprises have been infringed on their intellectual property rights. In order to prevent technology leakage, bang Pu cycle has implemented a strict confidentiality system. Electronic products with camera function carried by outsiders must be sealed with film. China should establish a more mature intellectual property protection system to provide protection for innovators and encourage innovation investment and intellectual property transfer.

The second is antitrust. The monopoly of large enterprises poses a major challenge to the innovation of small and medium-sized enterprises. First of all, some state-owned enterprises are monopolized by the industry, and it is difficult for some small and medium-sized enterprises to enter the procurement process of the administrative system and strive for the opportunity to provide services. Secondly, some large enterprise groups monopolize technology by means of technology, patent and standard, which limits the independent innovation of some small and medium-sized enterprises. They monopolized the upstream resources and downstream markets respectively, which made SMEs face innovation obstacles. After some SMEs achieved innovation results, large enterprises eliminated their competitors through access restrictions and mergers and acquisitions.

This situation may affect the full docking of innovative small and medium-sized private enterprises with the areas that need to be broken through urgently by the state, and fully communicating with the high-end market dominated by multinational companies and large-scale science and technology enterprises, which will narrow the scope of innovation of small and medium-sized enterprises, and reduce the innovation vitality. A more just and comprehensive anti-monopoly will help promote the independent innovation of small and medium-sized enterprises.

The third is bankruptcy protection. Innovation is a high-risk exploration activity without precedent to follow. If there is no bankruptcy law to provide protection for entrepreneurs who fail in innovation activities, it will greatly increase the risk of innovators and reduce the innovative spirit and investment of entrepreneurs.

The risks brought by innovation are two-way. Innovation brings about technological progress, industrial change and business model evolution. Sometimes, it can produce subversive results, leading to a large number of enterprises being eliminated. At the same time, innovators face great challenges and risks, and may die in the process of innovation. However, innovative talents, resources and technologies are still available, and they can continue to start their own businesses after bankruptcy.

At present, there is only "enterprise bankruptcy law" in China, and "personal bankruptcy law" needs to be promulgated. The national development and Reform Commission's "accelerating the improvement of the market subject exit system reform plan" mentioned that the establishment of natural person bankruptcy system will be carried out step by step, and the establishment of qualified consumption liabilities of natural persons can be reasonably exempted according to law, and finally a comprehensive personal bankruptcy system will be established. Perfect bankruptcy legislation can reduce the worries of innovators, and the certainty of personal bankruptcy settlement agreement will accelerate the natural person to return to the normal track of innovation and entrepreneurship.

The fourth is the financial system. Entrepreneurs need huge investment to transform technology or creativity into products and realize industrialization through research and development. However, entrepreneurs often only have knowledge, technology and ideas. Therefore, they need financial capital to support business transformation. However, for traditional financial institutions, innovation has three important characteristics: long cycle, high uncertainty and high failure rate. Most enterprises lack physical assets, so it is difficult to obtain financing from traditional financial institutions.

At present, China already has some venture capital and industrial investment funds from the market and the government to support innovative projects, and has prepared exit mechanisms for these capitals, such as the science and technology innovation board and the growth enterprise market under the registration system. However, the current financial system needs to be further improved to better play the role of supporting innovation. We should change the current situation that the financial system is dominated by banks and the proportion of capital market is small, and give full play to the pivotal role of capital market in promoting the high-level circulation of science and technology, capital and the real economy.

Several of the sample enterprises have encountered financing difficulties, and even nearly closed down due to the interruption of the capital chain. Among them, the refined indium offshore company, which pays more attention to research and ignores assets, is often faced with the challenge of financing problems. Foshan launched the financial innovation of intellectual property securitization, which matched the characteristics and financing needs of such enterprises as jingindium Offshore Engineering Co., Ltd., and effectively solved the problems for the development of enterprises. Zhang Liwei, chief researcher of Nanfang finance and economics Omnimedia group