Dialogue with business tycoons and deconstruct "the right things": The WISE2024 King of Business Conference is coming!
On November 28, the two-day 36Kr's annual heavyweight business conference - WISE2024 King of Business, officially opened at 79 Can in the 798·751 Park in Beijing. With the theme of "Hard But Right Thing", the conference invited more than 100 business tycoons such as Kai-Fu Lee, Wei Dai, Ye Yin, Jingdong Jia, Weibing Lu, Peng Zhang, Shu Miao, Weishan Xie, etc. Through high-concentration business dialogues, it aggregated the problem-solving ideas of 11 popular tracks and more than 200 King of Business and enterprises to find the "right thing" for China's business development.
"Courage and persistence have become more important than ever - we encounter the era head-on, and the brave win in a narrow encounter. Only those who insist on doing the right thing will succeed. Feng Dagang, CEO of 36Kr emphasized in the opening speech, and shared 36Kr's observations and explorations on the industry, industry, investment, young people and other levels in 2024, summarizing the development and changes of China's business in the past year. Facing the present, Feng Dagang said: "In the more difficult moments, we should not discuss whether it is difficult or easy, painful or happy. We should not complain or give inspirational talk. We should discuss right and wrong, explore the right things we have done this year, and think about the logic of the right things."
Feng Dagang, CEO of 36Kr, delivers the opening speech
Business Tycoons Discuss AI, "Big Friends" Chat About "The Right Thing"
Compared with previous sessions, the content of this year's WISE conference is more focused on finding "problem-solving ideas". In the first half, with artificial intelligence as the core, the conference invited business leaders from the upstream and downstream of the industry to convey a voice that closely follows the times. In addition to the passionate sharing from industry tycoons, Feng Dagang, CEO of 36Kr specially hosted the "Big Friends" dialogue column, inviting Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, CEO of 01AIO and Chairman of Innovation Works, Weibing Lu, Partner and President of Xiaomi Group, and Shu Miao, Chairman & CEO of Xiaoxiandun Fresh Stewed Bird's Nest, Weishan Xie, Chairman of Junzhi Strategic Consulting, Kuo Yin, Founder & CEO of Canban Oral Care and other business leaders for in-depth conversations. With thoughts on business and visions for the future, they explored the "right things" in business development.
Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, CEO of 01AIO and Chairman of Innovation Works (right), and the host discuss the entrepreneurial spirit
In the first "Big Friends" dialogue, Dr. Kai-Fu Lee and the host discussed the changing times and the unchanged entrepreneurial spirit. When it comes to the right things in entrepreneurship, Dr. Kai-Fu Lee said: "We should adhere to our original intention, be brave to try and strive with all our strength. When one thing ends, we should be good at reviewing and reflecting, transform into a better self, and actively capture and embrace the next opportunity."
In the current era of the application of large-scale AI models, Dr. Kai-Fu Lee emphasized that the goal of 01AIO is to maintain the model performance in the world's first echelon through the "model + infra + application" trinity layout, and at the same time reduce the cost to a fraction of that of Silicon Valley giants. Only in this way can the applications flourish: "Significantly different from the resource-hoarding strategy of giants, the 'trinity' full-stack layout of 01AIO is our sharp weapon in competing with giants. The mechanism of start-ups concentrating resources to do big things also enables us to be more flexible in iterating and improving based on market changes. In the era of AI applications, what we should focus on now is how to make a very good model very fast and very cheap, so that everyone can afford and use it well, and then explore TC-PMF (Technology Cost × Product Market Fit), so that the era of AI popularization can come, and we can work together to build a prosperous and healthy innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem in the AI 2.0 era."
Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, CEO of 01AIO and Chairman of Innovation Works
Wei Dai, Senior Vice President of Lenovo Group and General Manager of China Solution Service Business Group said in the speech "Lenovo Baiying AI for Thousands of Enterprises": The most correct thing in this era is actually to firmly and quickly embrace AI. At the conference site, the new generation of Lenovo Baiying Intelligent Entity was released, which will help tens of millions of small and medium-sized enterprises and start-ups quickly connect to the intelligent IT infrastructure through AI capabilities, achieving open-source growth, cost reduction and efficiency improvement. Wei Dai believes: "We all call AI the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In addition to the technological revolution, the popularization of AI is a bigger proposition. Lenovo Baiying will not change its original intention. By creating the first entrance for small and medium-sized enterprises to enter AI, it will help thousands of enterprises to quickly and firmly embrace AI on the road of doing the right things."
Wei Dai, Senior Vice President of Lenovo Group and General Manager of China Solution Service Business Group
Ye Yin, CEO of BGI Group brought a wonderful sharing of "What Should We Do in the AI + BT Era? How Many Mysteries of Life Can We Unlock?". He pointed out that today, AI has begun to unprecedentedly promote the progress of human science. In Yin Ye's view, humanity without technology may be ignorant, and technology without humanity must be dangerous. In exploring the mysteries of nature, how life achieves ultra-low-energy information transmission, energy conversion, and material synthesis is something that today's IT and industry cannot do. So instead of humans researching by themselves, why not learn from nature? Explore more interesting answers from life, through AI + BT, and then endow love to make technology for the good.
Ye Yin, CEO of BGI Group
Jingdong Jia, Vice President of vivo Brand said in the speech "Bury Your Head in Planting the Seeds and Crossing the Cycles": The essence of doing the right thing for an enterprise is to do fewer incorrect things. For vivo, there are three difficult but correct things on the entrepreneurial road. The first is the long slope and thick snow, that is, the industry to enter should be large enough and last long enough; the second is the moat. After entering the industry, there must be a strong moat, or even several moats, to ensure that it can continuously win in the fierce competitive environment; the third is the ordinary heart, that is, when facing short-term failures or successes, and when facing pressure and temptation, keep the original intention, be able to resist all superficial phenomena, and continue to make the right decisions.
Weibing Lu, Partner and President of Xiaomi Group shared the decisions and thoughts of "How to Go Global with the 'Vehicle-Person-Home Full Ecology'" in the special dialogue of "Big Friends". He said that currently, Xiaomi's three growth curves have all been formed, including personal devices with mobile phones as the core, home devices with TVs, air conditioners, refrigerators, and washing machines as the core, and travel devices with automobiles as the core. Behind the growth logic of the full ecology, the right things that Xiaomi has done are, first, to have a unified Xiaomi strategy; second, to have a unified management system based on the strategy, including processes, systems, and organizational construction; third, to definitely build a common back-end capability for management. These have constructed the "OS" of Xiaomi's management, and all businesses are like APPs on this OS. Under the strict rules of the unified OS, each business can give full play to its own characteristics to support the stable and rapid development of Xiaomi's multiple businesses.
Weibing Lu, Partner and President of Xiaomi Group, and the host discuss the "Vehicle-Person-Home Full Ecology"
Peng Zhang, CEO of Zhipu shared his thoughts on generative artificial intelligence through "GLM Large Model and the Road to General Artificial Intelligence". He emphasized that from the perspective of the development of this wave of artificial intelligence, there is no sign of the acceleration curve of technological progress slowing down, and artificial intelligence will be able to solve more and more complex and diverse problems. In Peng Zhang's view, the development path of Zhipu has actually been benchmarking against the international advanced level represented by OpenAI. The new generation of Zhipu model will use more comprehensive model capabilities, including not only language capabilities, but also multimodal capabilities, code capabilities, and Agent capabilities. The upgraded Agnet will be able to connect the intelligence of large models and more end-side devices, thereby promoting a new revolution in human-computer interaction.
Peng Zhang, CEO of Zhipu
In the last "Big Friends" session in the morning of the first day, Feng Dagang, with the industry's thoughts and prudence on the new consumer era, sharply questioned Shu Miao, Chairman & CEO of Xiaoxiandun Fresh Stewed Bird's Nest, Weishan Xie, Chairman of Junzhi Strategic Consulting, and Kuo Yin, Founder & CEO of Canban Oral Care, three consumer goods industry leaders. Shu Miao said that Xiaoxiandun has always believed that value innovation around the needs of customers is the most correct and continuous thing the brand has done in the past ten years, and it is also the core that leads Xiaoxiandun to gain consumer mentality and achieve business success. Kuo Yin said that making the right choice is to look at a more long-term perspective. For example, whether the organization's construction can do more long-term things, for example, whether leading the market trend can make long-term investment and correct decisions. In Weishan Xie's view, in the new consumer era, the right thing for enterprises to do is to definitely find the reason why customers choose you instead of your competitors. This is the most effective way for enterprises to deal with the big cycle, the price war, and the surplus economy.
Special Dialogue of "Big Friends": The Right Thing in the New Consumer Era
Thousands of Industries Embrace AI, Enterprises Solve the "Right Thing"
If the first half of the conference on the first day is the diverse thinking of leaders on the "right thing", then the second half is the "right thing" that those innovators from thousands of industries have done to promote the rejuvenation of the industry empowered by AI and to actively participate. On the afternoon of the 28th, 36Kr focused on enterprises that embrace changes and self-innovate in the AI wave, inviting pioneering entrepreneurs from different tracks such as traditional energy, education, smart home, robots, low-altitude economy, smart cars, AI large models, marketing, and design industries to share the experience of "industry rejuvenation" and bring the "correct problem-solving ideas" verified by practice to more track players and industry newcomers.
Jiang Nan, Chairman of Beijing 798 Culture and Technology Co., Ltd., the representative of the co-organizer, delivered the opening speech for the second half. Jiang Nan introduced the history and value of the 798·751 Park and 79 Can, as well as the thoughts on the rejuvenation of the cultural and creative industry in the new era. He emphasized: "It is not difficult to do one right thing, but it is very difficult to always do the right thing."