East pulling west tugging: Visiting Innovation Works - Playing the lute to a cow | Playin’ with IT - Hongbo's Prejudice | keso.me

It has been almost a year since Lee Kai-Fu left Google China to found Innovation Works, and during this time, I have never been to the Innovation Works located in Tsinghua Science Park. Today at noon, I had the free lunch there for the first time —— it is not as rich and high-end as that of Google China, but very homely and delicious.

The office environment of Innovation Works can be said to be crowded, but it seems to have a kind of magic. The colleagues like to stay here, perhaps this is the feeling of starting from scratch. However, soon they will move to the Third Pole Building, with an office space four times larger than the current one.

Innovation Works has borne a lot of doubts since its first day. Lee Kai-Fu seems not to care, he just wants to realize his own wish, originally not for eliminating others' doubts. Although he also admits that many aspects of Innovation Works' development over the past year are different from the initial plan. For example, there were not as many senior talents from multinational companies joining as expected, nor were there many middle and upper level talents from large Internet companies joining. Meanwhile, internal incubation has not become the mainstream of Innovation Works, the mainstream is to join with projects, and Innovation Works is responsible for allocating personnel and resources, optimizing business models. However, Lee Kai-Fu said that according to the original plan, Innovation Works should score 70 points after one year, but now he is willing to give 95 points —— far better than expected.

At the beginning, everyone was accustomed to understanding Innovation Works in the mode of an incubator. Lee Kai-Fu said that Innovation Works is actually a role between an incubator and a venture capital firm. He hopes that among every 100 projects invested by Innovation Works, two or three can reach a scale of 1 billion US dollars, and dozens can reach a scale of tens of millions to 1 billion US dollars. Even if seven out of ten projects fail, Innovation Works is still successful. However, at present, he requires all projects to prioritize survival.

Including interns, the staff size of Innovation Works has reached 170 people, and it is likely to reach 300 people in the near future. There are more than a dozen projects currently in operation, most of which are related to mobile Internet. The first one publicly disclosed is豌豆荚——an Android phone management software. The project leader of豌豆荚is Wang Junyu, who entered Google China right after graduating from university. When asked about the difference between working at Google and running his own project now, he answered: fast. Fast development, fast progress, and fast changes.

I asked Lee Kai-Fu what the biggest difference is between starting his own business and being an executive in a multinational company. Fast. Lee Kai-Fu gave the same answer. At Innovation Works, it seems that everyone is moving forward at four times the speed. My friend Huang Jixin is an analyst at Innovation Works, he looks for and examines projects everywhere every day like he's on hormones, extremely excited. Although he likes the atmosphere in the office, he often dare not stay in the office, once his boss Wang Hua finds him, he will be criticized: how can analysts stay in the office?

The projects of Innovation Works vary in size, small ones have only a few people, and large ones have dozens of people. For example, the Android-based mobile OS project may soon reach 70 people. Lee Kai-Fu showed me a phone installed with their OS, there is no big search box on the standby screen, because Chinese mobile phone users do not have the habit of searching when picking up the phone, they prefer to directly open a certain application. The OS of Innovation Works integrates some applications favored by Chinese users, such as mobile reading, photo editing and beautification, etc.

Innovation Works pays attention to Android for two considerations. First, Android will enter the large-scale popularization stage in China; secondly, replacing Google's built-in applications actually means a huge market space. However, specific mobile phone manufacturers and operators find it difficult to make a good mobile OS, because they will try to build in their own services and exclude competitors' applications. The mobile OS of Innovation Works can meet the needs of second and third-tier mobile phone manufacturers and even operators with a more open attitude.

As a platform, the mobile OS can also provide development space for other projects, for example,豌豆荚can seamlessly integrate with it. E-commerce is the same, Innovation Works does not want to invest in a website that directly sells things, it prefers to invest in a platform, a platform that can better connect users with enterprises. Lee Kai-Fu believes that the general group-buying model is a difficult-to-sustain model, but if it can provide continuous customer relationship management for enterprises, it becomes a platform.

There is a major difference between Innovation Works and Google China, which is the attitude of the government. In the eyes of the government, Google China is always an outsider, but Innovation Works has received strong support from the government, from tax reduction and exemption, low-cost office space, to Beijing household registration for employees, and it is even possible that the fund of Innovation Works will include money from the government.