Programmer, building your business consciousness (2)

In fact, this is a book that has not yet been published. So far, I only have time to write about 60 thousand words. A normal book requires at least 0.2 million words. I hope to hear more comments and suggestions. I will release a part of the article every day. You are welcome to give comments and suggestions!

Programmer, build your business Consciousness

 

Programmers represent technology owners who are more powerful than other groups. They can even say that they have the legendary golden finger. However, transition obsession with technology also makes it impossible for many programmers to get that secret. This book will tell the stories of programmers who have found the secret and help you analyze how they find the secret.

Xin Hui

1.3 importance of business awareness on software success

For a long time, our magazine tracked the development of Microsoft's Asia Research Institute and communicated with several presidents and different employees. In the outside world, Microsoft's Asian Research Institute is an ice-packed world. A group of tech-geeks are doing whatever they want to create and invent. They are completely the temperament of researchers, it seems that it has little to do with Microsoft's fight in the external market.

However, when you really walk into the Microsoft Asia Research Institute and learn about its development, you will change your understanding. Because, here, the president's guiding ideology and their business consciousness constantly guide the development and progress of Microsoft's Asian Research Institute. For every technical direction set by Microsoft's Asia Research Institute, detailed arguments are required, including whether there are any requirements in the market and how to combine them with existing Microsoft products, how can we ensure that Microsoft can launch more competitive products in the next few years. Since the first president of Kai-fu Lee, their industrial experience has kept Microsoft's Asia Research Institute moving forward along the business consciousness. Dr. Zhang yaqin once said that although Microsoft's Asian Research Institute may need to study the technology that will be used in the next five to ten years, it must combine the development strategies and directions of Microsoft, it is necessary to lay the foundation for Microsoft's long-term development. For example, Microsoft's Asia Research Institute has made great contributions to tabletpc technology because it needs a lot of new technologies in the future of human-computer interaction interfaces, at the same time, I have made great attempts in the field of smart Digital Pens. These technical studies are carried out under the company's big development strategy, microsoft's Asia Research Institute was recognized by Bill Gates and other colleagues. For the President of the Institute, it is their responsibility to select a proper direction under a large framework. Now, with the advent of Microsoft's Asian Engineering Institute, this business consciousness has been put into product development.

I have noticed that when talking to programmers who have been working for more than five years, especially the technical director who once led a product or project, their awakening to business consciousness often gives you a deep understanding. Especially when the product made encounters setbacks in the market, they find that it is neither their own technology nor the product development cycle, instead of fully observing market needs, we did not use commercial consciousness to guide ourselves in doing things.

When I interviewed Hanwang technology, I talked with the technical and product owners of three different fronts. Two directors have been working in Hanwang for ten years, they used their own experiences to verify the problems encountered in the development of Wang Han. At first, Wang Han's core technology was handwriting recognition. Liu yingjian, the company's founder, was also a very good technician. He has been studying the core technology of Handwriting Recognition for decades. However, in the early days of the founding of hanking, they had a very hard time and later had a very good opportunity. This was the rise of PDA. At that time, the boss of Henderson tech invited Hanwang to join us, however, Han Wang believes that PDA is a product that has no technical content and is not optimistic at all. In the end, he only gets his own technology license and usage fee, which is a huge gap from the later achievements of Henderson tech PLC, however, it seems that, as the PDA market quickly slides down, it is hard to clarify whether the decision was appropriate. However, Wang's later thought transformation has made a good return on the market. For example, after having the hand-written recognition technology, Hanwang began to consider how to use these core technologies to make products required by users on the market. "From core technologies to products" has become a symbol of the transformation of Wang Han.

There are two very representative examples of card communication and ghost king. In fact, OCR software has been around for a long time, and there are not only Hanwang companies with this technology, however, Han Wang made the first product to sell popular products in the market using these technologies. One-click registration is to solve the problem of frequent communication and too many business cards, but it is not easy to find. It is said that when the salesman of mingshoutong called the personnel of the Public Relations Department of Microsoft Company, he did not want to care about it at all. But after hearing the introduction and demonstration, he immediately bought several. A black/white scanner that costs less than RMB and a set of software are sold for more than RMB.

This is especially true for the text king. He initially proposed this idea as a technician of Hanwang. He said at the time that he saw a scanner in many units, but few people were using it. After research, he found that the use of OCR software must be professional. First, the scanning resolution must be used together, in addition, the scanned images still need to be corrected, although this is a piece of cake for programmers. However, these operations are not a small obstacle for office staff of potential consumers of scanners. Therefore, he put forward his suggestions on improving OCR software and scanners. In this way, Wang has invested in a team to develop and better combine OCR software with scanners, such as automatic correction and automatic identification, automatically output Word documents and other documents. The results obtained after listing are astonishing, and user feedback is enthusiastic.

This reminds me of the story of the original invention of PDA. Apple, which has always been an innovative company, has created the first handheld computer, Newton. However, due to its large size and slow computing speed, the problem of poor handwriting recognition performance lies in the market. However, one person saw the essence of the problem, starting with the recognition of handwriting software, because of the slow speed, it is very demanding to identify different users' handwriting operations, so he invented a set of input methods and defined a set of rules that "All characters must be written". Although this still requires learning for users, the learning cost is not great. Once learned, the recognition results will be very good. In addition, the computer functions are constantly reduced, and only a few necessary functions are concentrated, in this way, the volume has reached the point that users need. This product has achieved unexpected success after it is listed, and even has been split from 3Com to the market. This is palm.

Therefore, a company, as an ordinary programmer, must also have its own business consciousness. These consciousness is not to consider the company's operation, but not to turn to management, it is to improve the value of self-development.