Seven dimensions of gray law for Internet products

Ma has summed up Tencent's internal transformation and experience gain and loss to create "gray law" of biological organization : 1. Demand, customer demand is the core of the product; 2. Speed, rapid realization and then a single point of breakthrough; 3. Flexibility, the key to rapid iterative products is active change; 4. Redundancy, tolerance of failure, allow moderate waste; 5. Open collaboration; 6. Innovation; 7. Evolution.

The chairman of Tencent's board, MA, issued an open letter to partners, explaining his understanding of Internet product innovation from seven dimensions, such as demand, speed and flexibility.

"In the process of product development and operation within Tencent, one word has been repeatedly mentioned, that word is" grayscale. Ren has previously written "management of Gray", and he advocated the gray, mainly internal management of the compromise and tolerance. "And Ma Teng said, in the end should be how to find the most appropriate grayscale, in both to maintain the normal operation of the Enterprise at the same time , also allows innovation to have a flexible environment; let innovation not be stifled, and innovation will not go into a dead alley, This should be the most need for internet companies to think deeply about the problem.

Ma Ma from the ecological perspective of thinking, in the past 14 years, Tencent's internal transformation and experience gain and loss are summed up as the "gray law" of the biological organization, which includes 7 dimensions, such as demand degree, speed, flexibility, redundancy, open cooperation degree, Innovation degree and Evolution degree.

The following is a detailed explanation of the seven dimensions in the open letter:

1, the demand: customer demand is the product core, product to the needs of the embodiment of the extent of the ecological needs of enterprises

You may think that the user is a bit of a cliché, but I have repeatedly emphasized this point on different occasions because the simplest things are the hardest things to do.

Product research and development of the most likely to make a mistake is: developers often make their own brains to create products like children cherish, care, think that this is his painstaking crystallization. A good product is a soul, beautiful design, technology, operation can reflect the concept behind. Sometimes developers design products always feel the more powerful the better, but the good products do not need the so-called particularly powerful design or what, because they feel particularly powerful people will deliberately make some embodiment of their own, but the user does not need something, that is trifles.

Tencent has also taken a detour on this. Now very popular QQ mailbox, the previous market is not recognized, because of the user is very cumbersome and difficult to use. Later, we had to recycle it, from the user's use habits, needs to study, what is the function they need most? In the research process, Tencent has formed a "pro rule": Product managers must do 10 user surveys per month, focus on 100 user blogs, Collect feedback 1000 user experiences. This method looks a bit stupid, but it works.

What I want to emphasize is that there is no short cut in the study of user needs, and do not assume that you can take the user's habits for granted. For example, some people think that positioning in the low-end user's products, do not want to abuse cartoon head and some fancy page decoration, that is to meet the needs of users, since the position of the high-end user's products, and like aloof. In fact, these are not respect for users, not user-centered embodiment. I believe that the user group has objective differences, but there is no so-called high-low-end points. Regardless of age and background, all people like clear, simple, natural, easy to use the design and products, this is the most natural feeling and pursuit of beauty.

Today's Internet products are not the early days of stand-alone software, more like a service, so that designers and developers have a strong sense of user. Be sure to be a loyal user of your product while extending your tentacles to other users to feel their true voice. Only in this way can down-to-earth, never perfect to perfect a little closer.

2, Speed: The rapid realization of a single point of breakthrough, angle, sharpness, especially speed, is the product in the ecological development of the fundamental

We often see these kinds of phenomena:

Some people come up to make a big stand, eager to cover all the way to the Bureau;

Some people are accustomed to the pursuit of perfection, always to the product repeatedly polished to think of perfection before the launch;

Some people are very aware of the importance of innovation, but worry about failure, or cause waste of resources.

These practices often have no good results in practice because the market is never a patient waiting person. In the market competition, a good product is often from the imperfect start. At the same time, do not think that the first to enter the market can sleep without worry. I believe that in the internet age, no one is more stupid than 5 seconds. Your opponent will soon wake up and catch up soon. They will even do better than you, and your security boundaries may be breached at any time.

My advice is "step fast, quickly iterate." Perhaps every time the product update is not perfect, but if you insist on discovering every day, fix one or two small problems, less than a year to the basic work of polishing out, they have a product feel.

So, here is the innovation of Gray, the first is to achieve a single point of breakthrough allow imperfect, but to fast to perfect approximation.

3, Flexibility: Agile Enterprises, the key to rapid iterative products is the active change, the active change is more important than the adaptability

With the rapid change of Internet ecology, we usually think that adaptability is very important. But actually the ability to change actively is more important. Managers, product technicians and not just market personnel, if you can foresee problems earlier, active change, will not be in the market into a passive. While maintaining the foundation, maintaining and enhancing the core competition, the flexibility of the enterprise itself is crucial, and the active change should become the norm in an ecological enterprise. This is not only the usual talk of real-time enterprises, 2.0 of enterprises, social enterprises so simple. Internet enterprises and their products and services, if not to maintain sensitive tentacles, flexible posture, the same will be big business disease. Before 2011, Tencent had actually started to have this problem. Prior to our division BU System, through the formation of a business column of practice so that different business units to maintain a certain degree of flexibility, but now seems to be far from enough.

4, redundancy: Tolerance failure, allow moderate waste, encourage internal competition internal trial and error, not try to fail without success

Just doing that is not enough. In fact, in the product development process, we will also have a confusion: the product of their own to do in case of failure?

My experience is to allow modest waste in the face of innovation. How do you understand that? It is also acceptable to have one or two teams developing a product at the same time as resources permit, as long as you think the project is strategically necessary. Since last year, many people have seen the success of the micro-letter, but we do not know, in fact, in Tencent, there are several teams at the same time research and development of mobile phone based communication software, each team's design concept and implementation of different ways, the last micro-letter by more users of all ages. Can you say this is a waste of resources? I don't think so, no competition means the death of innovation. Even if the last team fails in the competition, it is still the source of inspiration for successful people, which can be understood as "internal trial and error". Not all system redundancy is wasteful, failure to attempt fails without success, and it is difficult to achieve reality without creating all kinds of possibilities.

5, open cooperation degree: Maximize the collaboration, the Internet many vicious competition can turn to collaborative innovation

One of the great wonders of the Internet is that more people are involved in collaboration. We can also feel that the more people participate, the greater the value of the network, the more satisfied the user needs, and the greater the benefit of each organization participating in the collaboration. Therefore, the appropriate grayscale also means that, while focusing on their core values, as far as possible deepen and expand the social collaboration.

For entrepreneurs, how to use a good platform to collaborate, is a question worth pondering. Before doing Internet products, users have to accumulate one by one, procedures, databases, design and other experience skills to be explored from the beginning. But after the trend of platform start-up, the big platform undertakes the responsibility of infrastructure construction, the cost and burden of starting a business is reduced greatly, we can concentrate more on the core innovation.

For me personally, since 2010, 2011 and 2012, it has become increasingly aware that Tencent's connection to the Internet is a greater responsibility, meaning and value for connecting to users and connecting to each other. In this process, we want to achieve the transformation is, before doing a good job for themselves, now and later is a good platform for everyone to do. The essence of the Internet is to connect, to open, to collaborate, to share, and, first of all, to be beneficial to others.

For Tencent, I have repeatedly stressed internally and externally that we as a platform-level enterprises must be something. A good ecosystem is necessarily that different species have different division of labor, and finally form a tie, not all species evolve in one direction.

Under this new idea, many vicious competition of internet can turn to collaborative innovation. It is an important direction of gray-scale innovation to use the advantages of the platform and to cooperate with each other horizontally or vertically.

6, Evolution: to build a biological organization, so that the organization itself in the uncontrolled process of self-evolution, self-organization ability

Over the past year, I have also been thinking more and more about a problem: what type of enterprise should be structured to build its organization? What kind of organization determines what kind of innovative grayscale it can tolerate.

The essence of evolution is the ability of an enterprise's culture, DNA and organization to evolve independently, grow autonomously, repair itself and purify itself. I would like to cite a Kodak example. Many people know that Kodak is the film industry's giant, but little known is that it is also the inventor of digital cameras. However, this excavation film image industry tomb, so that many enterprises rapid development and expansion of the invention, in Kodak was shelved.

Why? I think it's the rigidity of the organization. In the traditional mechanical organization, a "heretical" innovation, it is difficult to obtain sufficient resources and support, and even because of the organization's past strategy, the advantages of the conflict is rejected, because enterprises in pursuit of precision, control and predictable, many innovation difficult to find space for survival. This situation, like the biology of the "green Desert"-a large area during the same period to plant the same tree, the forest is very dense and the same height, the result of shelter has the sun, not only the other lower vegetation can not grow, and its own disaster resistance is very poor.

The only way to change it is to build a new form of organization, so I tend to be a bio-organization. The truly vibrant ecosystems that appear to be chaotic and out of control are actually organizations that evolve in nature, looking for innovation. Those so-called failures and waste are also the biological diversity that must be involved in the evolution of complex systems.

7, Innovation: Innovation is not deliberate, but full of possibilities, diversity of the biological organization of the inevitable product.

Creativity, research and development is not the source of innovation. If an enterprise has become an ecological enterprise, open collaboration degree, Evolution degree, redundancy, speed, demand degree are relatively high, innovation will flow out from the gray space. In this sense, innovation is not the cause, but the result, innovation is not the source, but the product. Enterprises to do is to create biological organizations, expand their gray space, so that the reality and future soil, ecology full of possibilities, diversity. This is the living space of gray scale.

The internet is more and more like nature, pursuing not simple growth, but transition and evolution. Tencent's recent organizational structure adjustment is to maintain the vitality and dynamism of innovation, and from the "big" to "small".