Innovative factory products are coming soon

Regarding the recent situation of innovation workshop, Kai-Fu Lee said. We have invested 9 companies, 9 companies and 100 engineers, and have started to create interesting products, some of which are available. The business of these companies is mainly around the mobile internet and e-commerce. (Photo of Innovation workshop Kai-fu lee map)

After attending the TMT China Internet and Mobile Communications Summit Forum concurrent speech. Kai-Fu Lee accepted the "China Daily" interview, a comprehensive account of the latest progress of innovation workshop, corporate culture, goals and prospects.

Excerpts from the interview are as follows:

Q: Can you give me a brief introduction to the latest developments in innovation workshops?

A: We are building a very good team with 100 engineers, who are the top talent in the industry. We've invested in 9 companies, some of the ideas we've come up with in-house, others are entrepreneurs who have found us. The 9 companies and 100 engineers have started to create interesting products, some of which will come out this year. The business of these companies is mainly around mobile internet and e-commerce.

Q: As far as I know, there are three major projects in innovation workshops: E-commerce, mobile computing and cloud computing. Is your team averaging or focusing on these three areas?

A: We are more focused on mobile computing, with 7 of the current 9 projects on mobile computing and the other 2 on E-commerce. We are still very interested in cloud computing, but I think this is a field that can wait. and mobile Internet and E-commerce development is very fast, whether in terms of the number of users, applications, opportunities, competitors and markets are changing rapidly, if we do not move quickly, we may miss the opportunity. Cloud computing is developing at a slower pace, and I think we can go into that area when we are more prepared.

Q: Is one of the biggest concerns about cloud computing a security issue?

A: The cloud computing market includes two main aspects, one is that the company relies on cloud platform services to outsource its enterprise services, as you said, security is a problem in this case, and companies are concerned that they will disclose the data. The second is to transfer the existing application software to the cloud platform, the past people need to buy software, pay licensing fees, now only need to log on to the site, we believe that the application of cloud computing market opportunities, optimistic attitude. But I repeat, cloud computing is less urgent than two other areas.

Q: What are the biggest challenges or difficulties you have encountered since the establishment of the Innovation Workshop?

A: We have not encountered any difficulties, everything is very smooth. But if you ask me which is a bit surprising, I think we found that the time needed to hatch the project was much longer than we had expected. So we need to expand the scale to accommodate more projects, and we need to turn our attention to external projects. So we are negotiating with a much larger number of outside entrepreneurs, and I think as time goes on, our external projects will be significantly larger than the internal projects. This is the 1th difference we've found.

Second, the best entrepreneurs are often hard to find because they may be more low-key, they may be successful, they may not want to get too much attention, and may not be willing to ask for your help. Many entrepreneurs, perhaps half the best entrepreneurs, must find them and discover them. You can't just open the door and say, send your resume and business plan. Many of the best entrepreneurs have their own form of fixed patterns, they will only contact you when they feel fit. If you want to be their investor, you have to find them, not just wait for them to come to you.

So we've done a lot more work than we expected. We tell the team not to come to the office, to go out and meet the local entrepreneurs, to listen to the opinions of the people we trust, to be recommended, to meet everyone, and to meet the best people. Participate in various activities and solicit business plans from people.

What we want to do is to grasp the possibility of becoming the next Baidu or Tencent company in ten years, we do not want to miss the opportunity, we hope to seize some of these enterprises, preferably most, at least some. If you look at the history of China's Internet, the most successful companies, such as Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent. If we just sit and wait for the opportunity, the next Robin Li, Ma Yun or Matt may not be able to find us. But if we go out and look for talents everywhere, we increase our chances of finding the next horse or MA.

For example, last year we went to college to recruit 30 employees who now work in these start-ups. We are likely to recruit 150 people this year and we are optimistic that excellent engineers and we will be very fit. If you come to the innovation workshop, you will see and feel the passion here.

Q: Do you think the model of innovative workshops can be done in China?