Double Innovation Economics and the Future of China
Entrepreneurs usually have no time to study the right and wrong of entrepreneurship itself.More than a month ago, I was invited to give a speech at China Europe International Business School. The topic given by the organizer "China Europe Business Review" was "Observation and Thinking on the Entrepreneurship of the Whole People". At that time, I was still stunned:Is it necessary to reflect on mass entrepreneurship at the beginning?
In preparation for my speech, I began to search for information. To some surprise, I did see many opinions on mass entrepreneurship. For example, "sports innovation", "New Great Leap Forward", "If the government can’t solve the employment problem, let college students start their own businesses", "If taxpayers’ money is used as a venture capital fund, who will be responsible for hitting Shui Piao" and "encouraging impetuousness" are all mentioned, and even some economists are questioning it.
A magazine in the south that is famous for its fresh ideas, the cover report in September is called "What the hell is entrepreneurship?" ",the main idea is that we need a bucket of ice in the enthusiasm and loss of the whole people’s" selling iron in a pot "business. The article wrote:
"Entrepreneurship is becoming a national movement. Everyone will hear the entrepreneurial legend of classmates Li Lei and Han Meimei, colleague Ma’s salary increase, and Pharaoh next door getting rich overnight."
"Everyone wants to be a Chinese partner. If you don’t dress like a technical dog, you don’t have a few business plans in your hand, you don’t sit in a coffee shop with an Apple computer on your back, and you don’t press PPT twice. You are embarrassed to say hello to others."
"Now even going to the toilet is going to be’ internet plus’. Impetuousness, hype, over-packaging, deception and false concepts pervade the entrepreneurial circle. 90% of college students fail to start a business, and many people die on the road to entrepreneurship in less than one year-they are killed by feelings, killed by internal friction in team differences, abused by investors, stupid by one-track thinking, bullied by giants, despised by the market, and killed by investors.
I am also an entrepreneur in the internet plus era. At first, I didn’t think it necessary to respond to these questions.Because the people who accuse the public of starting a business are basically not entrepreneurs themselves, not those who dare to take risks, but more "risk neutral" or "risk averse".However, as an old media person and a new media entrepreneur, I think it is necessary to speak frankly about my views, and also to discuss with the skeptics of mass entrepreneurship.
one
"Do you know why the Soviet Union can let Gagarin go into the sky, but the people can’t eat delicious bread?"
The first astronaut in the world: yury alekseyevich gagarin.
This is a question asked by the teacher when he took an economics course in Fudan in the 1980s.
The teacher’s answer is: to make Gagarin the first earthman to go into space can be solved by concentrating national resources to do great things, and the Soviet system has the ability to gather outstanding scientists to focus on tackling key problems. The bread problem needs decentralized decision-making, and people in every place have different tastes. The Caucasus, Moscow, Siberia, the elderly, pregnant women and children have different tastes, so they can only learn about it nearby and rely on countless scattered suppliers to meet them one by one. It is impossible for the country to develop a super formula to solve it uniformly.
There are many reasons for the disintegration of the former Soviet Union, but it cannot solve the bread problem, which may be the most fundamental.
If a country wants to develop, it can adopt a centralized planning system in some fields; In the early stage of economic development, we can also encourage "takenism" through the guidance of industrial policies and take the road of reference, imitation and introduction. The centralized decision-making and industrial guidance of the country are reasonable, but history also proves that the government is not smarter than the enterprises in a certain market in the choice of specific industries and projects. No one can know the changes in consumer demand in advance, but can only explore and grasp through the market mechanism in the transaction interaction of thousands of buyers and sellers, which is always changing today and tomorrow.
市场经济之所以越来越复杂,是因为人的需求越来越复杂,越来越个性化。就像彭麻麻在国际舞台上每一次优美亮相,一个小时后淘宝上就会出现同款服装,几十、一百件小批量试水,这需要多么灵敏的反应速度!怎么可能由某个层层都要汇报批示的“官僚体系”安排好呢?
经济越往前走,模仿空间越小,越需要自己创新。而创业、创新往往都是在一次次尝试中包括对错误的调整中实现的,有时甚至是误打误撞找到了一条路,这扇门被关掉别的地方又开了一扇窗。因为是分散决策,有输有赢有起有落很正常,每个“经济人”也会及时改变。谁也不会傻到明明碰到南墙,头还硬往上撞。失败和调整不是什么浪费,而是必须支付的创业创新成本。不走市场配置资源的道路,指望政府有个超级大脑洞悉一切,不仅不可能,也是给政府过高期望和过大压力。历史上由于政府的某些不合理产业政策,明知南墙也要撞、撞得头破血流的例子还少吗?政府应有的职能不在这里。
2
Last year, at the National "Two Sessions", when Li Keqiang participated in the group discussion, he recalled the years of "educated youth" in this way.
"In those days, I jumped the queue in Fengyang, Anhui Province. I was the’ head’ of the production team and the secretary of the brigade branch. At that time, I got up very early and slept very late every day. The production tasks of everyone in the production team, this person transplanting rice and that person carrying the burden, were all arranged. "
"But the villagers still don’t have enough to eat. When the production team is seriously short of food, it even needs to take the official seal of the brigade to prove to the women and children in the village that they have escaped from the spring shortage."
"As a result, the contract system was pushed away, and the production team basically ignored it. Farmers cultivated their own fields and planned what they wanted to plant and what to plant, and the problem of food and clothing was solved within a few years! Reform is indeed the biggest dividend, because it has mobilized the enthusiasm of thousands of people in Qian Qian, stimulated the vitality of the market and released the creativity of society. "
In the winter of 1972, Luwan District, Shanghai Gymnasium, was the scene to send off the educated youth who went to the countryside.
The memory of youth has a profound influence on Li Keqiang. In his article published in Qiushi magazine, he also talked about this story.
I don’t know if the old man in history ten or twenty years later will come to such a judgment when describing China’s economic history from the late 1970s-this is the largest entrepreneurial tide in human history, which occurred in a country with the largest population and lasted for fifty or sixty years.
Some people say that the country can’t solve the employment problem before letting college students start businesses. To solve the "employment difficulty", all parties should work hard, but is it necessary for the state to allocate jobs today? We must know that reform and opening up are forced out: in rural areas, it is "hunger-driven"-if farmers do not have enough to eat, they will have a contract system; In the city, it is "unemployment-driven"-there are so many educated youths returning to the city, and there are no jobs. They can only start from a small business of opening a hotel hair salon, making watches and clothes, and making furniture for maintenance. A history of reform and opening up is also a history of China’s entrepreneurship.
It is not easy to start a business. If you can be reborn in a luxurious home, all your desires can be satisfied at once. It is estimated that not many people want to start a business. However, the world is mostly civilians, and if ordinary people want to change their fate and make themselves live better, richer and freer, entrepreneurship is undoubtedly the only way.This simple power is so powerful that no matter how hard and tired it is, generations of entrepreneurs still jump in. This jump, China and the love of the market economy began, and never separated.
Mass entrepreneurship is to give everyone the freedom to choose to change their destiny.It is a new formulation, but it is not a new phenomenon, but an economic theme that runs through the whole past 30 years.
such asAs a result, the reform and opening up began with the liberalization and decentralization of the "double release", so today’s "double innovation" can be said to be the inheritance and re-development of the "double release" from a new historical starting point. China should create new dividends and rely on entrepreneurship; We should go beyond the "imitation trap" and rely on innovation. "Double innovation" is not only the source of economic vitality, but also the way of transformation and upgrading.
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In the United States of last century, there was a "roaring twenties". People who wake up after World War I believe that modern science can make everything possible, economy and technology have unlimited potential, trains, cars, telephones, radios, new consumer goods, infrastructure expansion, stock investment, population explosion and urbanization, all of which make people firmly believe that a completely different era is coming.
Time and space switch. After 100 years, the tide of "double innovation" in China is like a mighty river, based on the huge market, with the Internet as the starting point, and relying on emerging consumption and new lifestyles. In this process, the government just pushes the hand, not the main body, but every ordinary entrepreneur. In 2014, there were 12.93 million new market players (including private enterprises and individual industrial and commercial households) in China, and this year, there are basically 10,000 new registered enterprises every day. Although the new subjects have to explore, it is impossible to become the leading force of the economy in a short period of time, but in time, they will surely become the new pillars to boost China’s economy.
The essence of entrepreneurship is to find opportunities that can better meet the needs of consumers and put them into practice.In practice, entrepreneurs will "generate" knowledge that books can’t learn. The more people start businesses, the more new knowledge they generate, and gradually form a chain reaction and network effect. Entrepreneurial opportunities will not be exhausted with the use of entrepreneurs. On the contrary, every opportunity will collide and create another opportunity. From a deeper perspective, the engine of economic growth is not investment and consumption, but the institutional and cultural environment that helps to "capitalize" entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs’ opportunities. It is the spirit of entrepreneurial innovation, not any kind of capital, that can provide the most fundamental driving force for economic growth.
Shuangchuang is also forcing reform. Historically, wherever the property rights system is weak and the rule of law is lacking, entrepreneurs tend to seek rent from regulators, engage in "unproductive activities", or turn to the underground economy, or even castrate themselves, which stifles entrepreneurial spirit. It can be asserted that if China, the biggest entrepreneurial tide in human history, can promote her great rejuvenation, it must be supported by a grand and profound institutional change. Too much management will lead to death, only when it is released can it be invigorated, and only when it is simple and respectful to the people can China write a magnificent and energetic new chapter.
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China has suggested that,We must put innovation at the core of the overall national development, optimize the allocation of labor, capital, land, technology, management and other factors, stimulate the vitality of innovation and entrepreneurship, promote mass entrepreneurship and innovation, release new demand, create new supply, and promote the vigorous development of new technologies, new industries and new formats.
From the perspective of economics, China’s thinking today is not to keep expanding its balance sheet, so as to continue to be locked in by the traditional development model; It is to enlarge and strengthen human capital, create fresh and effective new supply, adapt to new demand and lead new demand by giving full play to everyone’s enthusiasm and creativity. In this process, economic resources will be more allocated to emerging forces, to creators and to the future. As long as the allocation of resources is constantly optimized, we will be able to get out of the new time tunnel and usher in a new horizon.
From the economics of innovation, we can also derive sociology of innovation, pedagogy of innovation, and politics of innovation … No matter which direction or field, we need to seek a breakthrough in the spirit of innovation, get rid of the shackles of existing stereotypes and create unprecedented increments. Only in this way can tomorrow be better and we can be better.
Double creation is the spiritual gene from which each of us can draw strength today.
The current government is facing the downward growth and structural adjustment of China’s economy, the historical burden and the inertia of vested interests. Although it has a lot of courage, it is inevitable that there will be a lot of helplessness on the road to governance in reality. It’s too early to talk about the gains and losses of the government, but I think that just putting forward and vigorously promoting the "double innovation economy" will go down in history and last for a long time.
I am an entrepreneur, and my entrepreneurial experience may be shallow, but I believe that countless entrepreneurs will deeply remember this era of double innovation.China’s economy is not only a big ship economy, but also a Qian Fan economy, not only a big tree economy, but also a wanmu economy. Only when all kinds of frost compete for freedom can an innovative country be built.
There are thousands of ways to start a business and innovate. You can learn first and then create, create while learning, and cooperate with others to create. Everyone has a path to participate, which does not mean that everyone will drop out of school and start a company. However, the spirit of entrepreneurial innovation should be respected by the whole society and promoted in the whole society.
As entrepreneurs, we may fail and be frustrated, but when we encounter the historic opportunity of innovation, we are proud to make such a choice-we would rather fall on the road to the future than be parasitic on the path dependence on the past.
This is a nation with a history of 5,000 years, and our mission today is to create a more beautiful future for China through entrepreneurship and innovation.