China's network innovation worries

Absrtact: After 16 years of rapid development, China's Internet fruitful, but also faced with monopoly, imitation, homogenization of the competition in December 1998, a 26-year-old young man into Beijing Zhongguancun, a company called Sifang Litong, the application programmer. This is

After 16 years of rapid development, China's Internet fruitful, but also faced with "monopoly, imitation, homogenization of competition," the blame-

December 1998, a 26-year-old young man walked into Beijing Zhongguancun, a company called Sifang Litong, apply for programmers. This is the 5th company he has applied for. Before that, the young man, who had only a secondary school record, worked as a typist in a research institute.

Young man named Cheng, born in Beijing Mentougou He, gave up the opportunity to go to college to test secondary school, just to "get a city hukou." Just before he entered the quartet, the company completed mergers and acquisitions, a brand new Internet enterprise-SINA Network announced the establishment.

9 years later, the 35-Year-old Cheng resigned from Sina, holding all his possessions 3 million yuan, borrowed an office from a friend, with 6 people's technical team set up a social networking site-happy net. Over the next 3 years, his site grew rapidly into one of China's most popular social networking sites, with more than 90 million registered users.

Cheng's story is only one of many legends in the 16 years of China's Internet surging. It vividly explains the charm of the Internet: an ordinary low-level youth, only through their own intelligence, struggle and perseverance, can create a dream, rewrite the fate. And innovation, it is that the rewriting of personal destiny, the creation of the Internet miracle of the "golden Key."

16 years later, the rapid development of China's Internet, but encountered a "loss of innovative power" hidden worries.

Golden

10 years later, what people have been doing is still a miracle 10 years ago.

Cheng around for jobs, to enter Sina, it is China's internet industry in the early days of the rise, some people call the "golden Age" of Chinese internet entrepreneurship.

When the hands of time passed through the last 5 years of the 20th century, China's internet industry opened a legendary years. In those years, how many armed with colorful dream of twenty or thirty-year-old young people, gathered in the Internet this piece represents the new life and hope of the pioneer, for the ideal and future, holding a pioneering book on the March.

In August 1996, Charles Zhang, who returned from the United States, founded the "Love Special Information Technology Co., Ltd." (Sohu predecessor); June 1997, 26-Year-old Ding Lei, founded in Guangzhou NetEase, November 1998, 27-Year-old MA (micro-bo) in Shenzhen to set up Tencent, one months later, Zhidong (Weibo) set up Sina network; In June 1999, the 35-year-old zhejiang English teacher, Ma Yun, founded the Alibaba website in Hangzhou, only six months later, Li quit Silicon Valley's high-paying jobs Home, on January 1, 2000, founded Baidu Company. It is the rapid rise of this group of Internet enterprises, which has made the Chinese Internet map of today. They have defeated the foreign "master" in their field successively, occupy the main position in the Chinese market.

Over the past more than 10 years, the Chinese internet embraced the glory, but the dream seemed to be gone. The fact is that in recent years, China's Internet market has been hard to hear the entrepreneurial legend of the rise of grass roots. Some people to China's current Internet market structure by market capitalisation summed up as "three junior small." The so-called "three big", refers to Baidu, Tencent, Taobao, "Three small" is refers to: Sina, NetEase, Sohu. Looking back at the growth of the internet giants, they found that their rise was very similar-most of them were founded more than 10 years ago on the Chinese Internet, the golden age of entrepreneurship.

The internet has always been a myth-making industry. "Jiangshan generation has talent out, each lead coquettish two or three years". On the other side of the ocean, when the facebook,twitter of these American peers staged the rise of the shrimp as a big shark, the great drama of generational change, China's internet sector has maintained a market map for many years.

In recent years, although China's Internet field is still lively scenery, a variety of applications more and more, there are a number of rookie appeared, and tried to occupy a place in the market fight, the final leave is still in a good development posture, rare, and can shake the "three Junior" pattern, there is no one.

Small and medium enterprises and entrepreneurs, who are best able to embody the spirit of innovation and innovation, have encountered problems – data from the director of the Dcci Data center, yanping, showed a decline in the income levels and web sites of Chinese small and medium-sized websites and personal sites in 2009.

In the past more than 10 years, Robin Li and Ma Teng have grown into 40-perplexed middle-aged people, and today's youngsters find it difficult to grow and start their own idols.

"They are examples, but the path of example seems hard to replicate." "A young man who first entered the internet was feeling.

The chaos of the lake

From "Pioneer era" to "winner take All", big enterprises become the killer of innovation?

Where there are people, there are rivers and lakes.

China's internet industry, which has grown rapidly in the past more than 10 years, is quietly evolving.

And the beginning of a white paper-style "pioneer era" is different. Today, the Chinese Internet, which has been divided into the world by giants, presents a "winner takes all" situation.

Instant messaging, search, E-commerce, news, games, SNS, group buying ... Although the starting point of the business is different, but, along with the development, each company's business coincidence degree is getting higher, the internet giant all is running toward the whole business development pattern.

The "shanzhai" prevalent in China's electronics industry seems equally clear in the Internet arena. On the one hand, China's internet has always been on the back of the US internet peers, from portals to search, from social networks to microblogs, from group buying to lbs (location-based services), and what the United States does.

On the other hand, the domestic peers, a popular product, a popular application out, will quickly appear many similar web site herd, to start the homogenization of competition. The group buying site is an obvious example since the beginning of this year, the U.S. groupon.com model was introduced into China, to this July, a short period of half a year, China has emerged a large and small about thousands of group buying sites, including new entrants to the Internet field of new entrepreneurs, there are Ali, Tencent, Baidu and other rivers and lakes big guy.

Social networking sites have just been popular, each site in the "stealing food", micro-blog prosperity, the sites have played a micro-Bo card ... On different websites, netizens can always see the familiar interface.

"China's Internet copy of the wind is quite prevalent, not only the big copy small, there are small copy big." The new economy lacks new ideas, and the novel is caught in the blink of an eye, which, to some extent, means ' made in China ' rather than ' Chinese creation ' in the traditional economy, presenting a Shang genetic state in the new economic era. "In the recent" 3Q World War and network black Hole symposium, "said Xiaolin, president of the blog Union Community website.

Imitation brought about homogenization competition. In this case, with funds, users and many other advantages of the Giants have a natural dominance. For small and medium-sized enterprises, the most worrying is the crowding out effect. Along with this, is the joint public, blog China, Rice and other innovative small sites are gradually declining.

"Three Mountain" (refers to the big enterprise) appellation began to circulate in the industry. Some small and medium-sized enterprises complain that their innovative space is squeezed by big companies, even call it "the natural enemy of innovation."

Sohu President Charles Zhang has in his own microblog, "plagiarism and monopoly has become China's Internet industry development of the biggest problem."

"There are big companies in the United States, there are a steady stream of new companies to subvert large companies, relatively speaking, China's Internet premature aging, you copy me, I copy you," 360 company chairman Zhou said, "in the Chinese Internet to build a culture against plagiarism, encourage innovation." We need all the industry people to reflect together and work together. ”

The change of mindset

From idealism to utilitarianism, want to do hundred years old shop, we still lack what?

Zhou so miss more than 10 years ago when the entrepreneurial situation: "A bit like Feng song called" Spring ", that era, ' no credit card without her, no 24-hour hot water Home '", "no money, but there are some good things, people because of ideals and adhere to.

Now, "seemingly prosperous, but this prosperity is hidden behind the crisis, is a lack of innovation." Zhou worried.

In the United States, when big Internet companies are bullish on the technology of some internet companies that are in the start-up phase, business models or ideas often take the form of investment, or acquisitions, while China's internet giants are increasingly leaning on another path-mimicking the business and using their market dominance to promote it.

"Big corporate acquisitions are benign for industry, investors and entrepreneurs can get money after acquisitions, and the whole industry's innovation activity is activated." "said Xingdong, chief executive of the Internet researcher and blogger China website. The practice of some Chinese Internet enterprises makes the small and medium-sized companies lack the space and power of continuous innovation and development.

With the rapid development of Internet industry, there are still some places to be perfected in China's current law, Chen, a researcher at the Center for Law and Information research at CESL. "In the internet age, when creativity becomes more and more valuable, more and more scalable, replicable, and replicable, how the law gives better protection is really a challenging topic." ”

In fact, compared with more than 10 years ago, today's Chinese Internet is facing a great improvement in the external environment of innovation.

On the one hand, it is the expansion of the market and the number of Internet users, in the Microsoft Asia-Pacific research Group Chairman Zhang, this is the biggest advantage of China's Internet innovation, "can quickly value innovation." Second, the capital is increasing. "It is estimated that China has more investment money than Silicon Valley. "Xingdong said.

However, the change of mentality, the prevalence of utilitarianism is increasingly becoming an obstacle to innovation. Cheng admits, "in the early days, China's internet atmosphere and practitioners are more simple, and now, more and more utilitarian and commercial."

Imitation is one of the embodiment of this utilitarian. Because innovation often faces great risks, the cost of imitation is the lowest. To occupy a certain market dominance of the internet giants, following, imitation, local innovation, and then through the advantages of surpassing, it becomes the safest market strategy.

Utilitarian characteristics, also reflected in some investors. In the United States, VCs will be concerned about the long-term development of the enterprise, will also give guidance to entrepreneurs, and in China, some VCs are concerned about when can be listed to get more returns. "Some investors and investors are the same mentality, as long as the rise on the line, no matter what else." "Xingdong said.

The result of utilitarianism is to pay too much attention to the superficial innovation which can bring the commercial return directly, but not to the underlying innovation. "China's mainstream VCs are now switching to traditional industries, with little early technology to invest in the internet," he said. Can't complain about VCs, several big companies are a bit lays to this industry. "said one CEO in the industry.

Microsoft Senior Vice President, Research director Rick Rester in Shanghai in October this year in the 21st Century Computing conference speech, said: "Why do basic research?" Companies with basic research departments can, to some extent, "predict" what will happen in the future, so that early warning systems can be built.

For want to become "Hundred years old shop", want to have the world influence of Chinese Internet enterprise, this kind of long-term vision, obviously is necessary.