Tao Te Ching and Wuwei Management

Chapter 42 3 "Be cautious at the end": only 18 months away from bankruptcy
You can never rest, or you will rest forever.

Be as cautious as the beginning, and nothing will fail.

—— "Tao Te Ching" Chapter 64
There is no such thing as failure if you treat the end as seriously as the beginning.To be "cautious at the end as in the beginning", entrepreneurs are required to always be as cautious as when they first entered the industry, always trembling and walking on thin ice, "cautious in the beginning" and even more "cautious in the end", then we can really do "then Nothing goes wrong".

There is a well-known "Moore's Law" in the computer field, which was developed by the famous chip manufacturer - Gordon?Moli was proposed on April 1965, 4 after long-term observation. The basic theorem of "Moore's Law" is:
1.The number of circuits integrated on an integrated circuit chip doubles every 18 months.

2.Microprocessors double in performance and double in price every 18 months.

3.The performance of a computer that can be bought for one dollar quadruples every 18 months.

The trends described by "Moore's Law" have continued to this day, and are still unusually accurate.It confirms the glorious history of Intel's rapid growth, and at the same time, it is also one of the secrets of Microsoft's continued evergreen development.Microsoft is recognized by the world as one of the greatest successful companies, but Bill Gates still does not forget to warn his employees to always have a sense of crisis that "only 18 months away from bankruptcy".

There is a sentence that may accurately express the thoughts in Gates' mind. This sentence is also a part of Microsoft's corporate culture that Gates likes very much: "Wake up every morning, think about Wang An Computer, think about Digital Equipment Corporation, Think about Compaq, they were once big companies, and now they have disappeared. Once they are acquired, you know they are over. With these lessons, we should always tell ourselves-we must To innovate, you have to break out of yourself. We have to develop the kind of Windows or Office that you think is worth going out and paying for."

Gates has always talked about Microsoft in a pessimistic tone. Even in the heyday of Microsoft, he has repeatedly emphasized that Microsoft is only 18 months away from bankruptcy.When Microsoft's profit exceeded 20%, he emphasized that the profit may decline; when the profit reached 22%, he still said it would decline; to this day, he still said it would decline.He believes that this sense of crisis is the driving force behind Microsoft's development.Microsoft's famous slogan "No matter how good your product is, you are always only 18 months away from failure" is the embodiment of this sense of crisis.

Microsoft's sense of crisis makes it find the only way for sustainable development, that is, continuous innovation.In fact, Gates has never stopped innovating. No matter on any occasion, as long as the software can play its benefits, he will let Microsoft take care of it.So Microsoft develops software for watches, software for phones, and Microsoft products for televisions and cars.But some of these things take a long time to be accepted by the public.Microsoft's software for cable television networks, for example, has been in development for more than a decade, and it's only in the last few years that it's begun to win a significant number of customers.

In Gates' eyes, the development of every new technology is a boon for Microsoft.Because of these new technologies and new products, Microsoft can quickly enter these new fields by developing new software.Gates said: "One of the secrets of Microsoft's success is to speed up and get ahead of others when conditions permit."

At the end of May 2004, when viruses and information security problems repeatedly plagued computer users, Microsoft announced that it would start selling a network security software that could be pre-installed in servers by computer manufacturers, thus officially kicking off its entry into the network security software market. .Out of concern for technological progress, Microsoft has never lacked market sensitivity.Since the beginning of 5, Microsoft has continuously improved the security and reliability of the operating system, and in 2002, it acquired the anti-virus technology of a Romanian software company, and has since embarked on the road of developing anti-virus software.

Developing antivirus software is not Microsoft's strong point, but Gates knows better that technology is one of the main factors that dominate the market.As an enterprise, technological innovation is always an essential means of survival.The result of chasing the trend is to promote the continuous design and production of various new products that the market demands.Whether an enterprise can continuously carry out technological innovation and product innovation, and develop new products that meet market demand has become an important issue that determines whether the enterprise can achieve sustainable and stable development.Especially in the new economic era where the development of science and technology is changing with each passing day and the product life cycle is greatly shortened, the challenges faced by enterprise products are more severe. Failure to update products in time may lead to the demise of the enterprise.

The successful experience of the two computer giants Microsoft and Intel can give us a lot of useful inspiration, and at the same time warn that the era of competition is changing rapidly, and any enterprise will face the possibility of bankruptcy if it is slightly negligent. Entrepreneurs must always maintain a sense of crisis. As in the beginning", as a manager in Silicon Valley said: "You can never rest, otherwise, you will rest forever."

(End of this chapter)