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The world has really changed.

From a macro perspective, the global environment is full of uncertainty, and private entrepreneurs lack confidence in development. The domestic economy has entered a new stage of development, and our key words have changed from "high speed" to "high quality." Innovation has become the footnote of the new era.

On the micro level, business logic has also undergone a major shift, and new changes and trends have taken place in business models.

You won’t be able to find the new world if you hold an old map.

In today's environment, what changes have occurred in the business world? What are the reasons behind them? Where is it going in the future?

We talked with Wu Sheng, founder of Scene Lab, about these issues and hope it will be of some inspiration to you.

Oral: Founder of Wu Sheng Scene Lab

Interview: Sun Yunguang, Content Director and WeChat Editor of Zhenghedao

Edit: Eleven

Source: Zhenghedao (ID: zhenghedao)

1. Business trends have changed

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You will find that many of the phenomena we see today are mainly related to two points: one is the change in technology, and the other is the change in people.

I believe everyone can clearly feel the changes in technology, especially this round of AI transformation, which we call the "new technology cycle."Just like the emergence of the steam engine, this technological cycle will bring great psychological shock to the public, and this psychological shock will also cause huge uncertainty.

For example, the market's confidence is now turning to large companies, while small companies seem to be less concerned. Take AI for example, people are more concerned about foreign giants such as Nvidia, Microsoft, and Google. The Matthew effect is becoming more and more obvious.

In China, despite the term "Four Little Dragons" and so on, the most important players are still Baidu, Tencent and other leading companies. Therefore, technological change has become the fundamental source of public uncertainty.

The changes in people are mainly concentrated in the aging population structure, but frankly speaking, we are not prepared.So you will find out why many young people today are interested in metaphysics and MBTI, and why they choose to burn incense between making progress and "being a salty fish". The logic behind this is precisely related to the entire social structure.

The aging of the population means that a large amount of resources are solidified. Many elderly people do not have enough consumption motivation, but they happen to have more social resources.

From these two points of view, the underlying logic of today's entire business is no longer a simple technical patching, but a "redo it all over again", which we call redoing AI and redoing aging.

There is a common support behind them.The technology lifestyle cycle,Or it can be called the digital lifestyle cycle. Combined with the many changes brought about by the epidemic, we can see that the globalized market and the anti-globalization mentality are in conflict.

What insights can these changes give us?

First, we must actively embrace the world's advanced technologies and actively connect with the world's advanced economies and industries.I think this kind of openness must become a capability system. In the past two years, the gap between us and the world in some aspects has widened, which is a further reminder that we need to go out and unite more.

This is not simply a question of whether or not to go overseas, nor is it a question of whether or not to go abroad after extreme involution.

Even if the policy of globalization is being "reversed", the global market and division of labor are irreversible. Why are China's rare earths mentioned again and again? It is because rare earths are key materials in the technology industry, and we are the world's largest exporter of rare earths.

But having rare earths does not mean having everything. Our external dependence on chips is still very high, especially when the US’s chip blockade against us is so severe.

Therefore, we must give full play to our own advantages, including scenario advantages, data advantages, population application advantages, and so on.In this new round of technology cycle, China's advantage lies in the richness of AI scenarios. In the field of autonomous driving and intelligent driving, many of our companies are among the most capable in the world.

We need to get used to the increasingly tight external environment and think about how to break through. Only when we have stronger ability to develop externally can we find more opportunities around the world.

Looking inward, the Chinese market remains extremely attractive, especially in terms of its irreplaceable value in the supply chain.Although we have seen factories including Foxconn and Apple's supply chain gradually withdrawing abroad, they still represent the highest level in the world in supply chains such as textiles and clothing and new energy vehicles.

Therefore, in the process of looking outward and inward, whether we can maximize the value of our own supply chain and create more Tik Tok brands is worthy of serious attention. This is also a new development logic of the global digital economy.

Secondly, changes in technology cycles and demographic structure mean that we need more patience to understand economic transformation and industrial upgrading, and we must also be mentally prepared enough to face long-term development cycles.

In some aspects, you can't rely on others, so you have to be self-reliant, which is what we call forced innovation."You have to pay for what you have done." Many things that could be bought with money or learned in the past no longer work, so we have to make up for them on this basis.

In this process of making up for the lessons, this digital transformation and intelligent process reengineering are faster than traditional industrial upgrades.Why? Because we are “blank slates” with no burden.

For example, autonomous driving technology, whether in Changsha, Wuhan or Inner Mongolia, can make good use of the latecomer advantage to quickly carry out vehicle-road collaboration and operate intelligent transportation and smart cities in a more coordinated manner.

In the past development, many people believe that we have excessive infrastructure construction, coupled with the superposition of other factors, which has brought about some of the current difficulties in local finances.

However, if these infrastructures can be better integrated with new industrial technologies, perhaps a new direction can be formed in global social governance and smart city development. This system may be an important opportunity.

As for the irreversible trend of aging, the existing growth model and existing social fundamentals need to be transformed.Although the "silver economy" is frequently mentioned, we are actually not prepared for it.

There is another great opportunity behind the population. Just like the rapid development of the mobile Internet wave with WeChat, Alipay, Meituan, Didi, and Douyin, you will find that AI life may come faster than you think. For example, the popular Carrot Run some time ago was because our speed of embracing new technologies and our determination to try them out were far ahead of the world.

So, can we embrace AI more firmly and better combine China's rich application scenarios with big model technology? This is what I am very much looking forward to.

This wave of productivity represented by AGI may help more super individuals or digital natives enter new productivity and creativity cycles faster.It will allow more small and medium-sized enterprises and individuals to enjoy the real benefits of AI. Everyone will realize that they can also use their own individual databases to train their own small models.

At this time, individuals determine their own routes by adapting to changes, and with the help of good ecological solutions, new IPs are formed.

In this regard, I am optimistic. Why do we say that opportunities always come to those who are prepared? Because successful people are always looking for ways, and they only see the path. So we often say that pessimists are right, and optimists move forward.

2. This generation of young people has changed

When a society enters an aging society, there will be a phenomenon of low desire. At the same time, the liquidity of social capital and resources will enter a short cycle.We call it the "hardening stage".

This is not a long cycle, but it is reality. One generation is getting lost, and another generation is turning over a new leaf. You will find that there is a huge gap between these two generations.

The essence of this fault is the disconnection between the entire society’s order system and meaning system.Today's young people have no worries about food and clothing, and society provides relatively saturated material consumption, but the corresponding meaning system has not been constructed, that is, what we call the spiritual value system. This spiritual value system is in transformation and stratification, showing a highly discrete type.

In the past, this value system had grand scales such as scientists and entrepreneurs, but no real individuals. We call it a self-consistent system.

Now, the dispersion of this value system has made us see the so-called mourning, the so-called staying at home, and the so-called lying flat. But in fact, we prefer to see the part of "burning after mourning" - he will still burn after mourning.

It’s just that individuals are waiting, waiting for society to make adjustments, waiting for the initial construction and completion of this value system.

So you can still see a lot of young people queuing up to check in. Every city has celebrity check-in spots, and there are always people queuing up everywhere because they think checking in is meaningful.

We cannot say that they are emotional special forces and should be criticized. Rather, we should ask whether more businesses and consumption can get rid of the role of "labor in the new era" andAllow young people to create their own meaning system and achieve self-consistency while confirming their own identity.This consumption may be art, reading, music, or retail.

This kind of self-consistency and closed loop has not yet been completed. For example, special forces tourism, check-in consumption, or outdoor camping, sports and fitness, we are trying to put these consumptions into a new social evaluation system, and then define whether young people are happy or not.

This happiness system, like the path to happiness described by Russell, is not to seek outside, but to seek within. In fact, we are not yet fully prepared for this.Whether it is social psychology or media guidance, everyone's definition of success and happiness is relatively simple.

Not long ago, there was a movie called "Swimmer's Heart". From a universal perspective, the protagonist's extreme sense of self-challenge is definitely more respected than many kings and presidents.

This shows that the scale of success must have its diversity and diversification. We need to constantly make up for it in this regard, because modern society emphasizes more on the jungle philosophy that the winner is the king and the loser is the bandit.

It is difficult for us to understand why a person would go back home after studying at MIT to make bronze objects and handicrafts. We cannot imagine it and think, isn't this a waste?You see, this shows that society itself has not yet formed a strong system of understanding and tolerance. Most of the contemporary people's definition of happiness is an external evaluation system.

Have you bought a house in Beijing? Which school does your child go to? What position do you hold in your company now? These are all external evaluation systems and have nothing to do with happiness.

Many of us never really face ourselves in our lives. I often joke,It is said that the most important thing for a person is to live his life to the fullest, and make sure that you live for yourself, not for others.In this process, the entire evaluation system and social psychological mechanism need to be transformed and adjusted. But today, there is a greater sense of disconnection.

This is a real issue for this generation of young people. As long as they can get out of it, they will know that they only need to live out their true selves and be responsible for themselves, and they don’t need to live within the evaluation system of others.

This is definitely difficult and it will always belong to the minority.What should we do? We need to adjust the social psychological mechanism in the new technological cycle, or we can say “new enlightenment”.

Through the first two technological revolutions, we completed the first generation of enlightenment called consumerism. Now we have entered a new technological cycle and still need the second generation of enlightenment called happiness values.

In the current period of transition, the enlightenment of such happiness values ​​is what the public is looking forward to.

3. What should we do in the face of changes?

Going back to the fundamentals of the issue, today we have indeed entered a period where growth seems to be less strong, confidence is less abundant, and economic certainty is less strong, and no one dares to have overly high expectations.

But often great companies rise in the cold winter. For individuals, there are still many opportunities to explore in this new wave cycle of technological and demographic changes.

For example, the consumption supply for the elderly is severely scarce. They also need to learn, socialize, and have content. It is not that square dancing is only for the elderly.

Old but capable - On the point of "capable", what we see now are a series of question marks, which require people with a heart to step in and answer them.

Chinese elderly people are always very shy. They are reluctant to admit that they are old and are afraid of burdening their children. In addition, the elderly do not have the right to speak on the Internet.This has led to the formation of an "invisible aging industry".Therefore, the elderly have no choice but to cater to and adapt to the existing consumption patterns.

However, the proportion of elderly people in the population structure does not match their consumption capacity.We need to see more people who were previously "invisible", including those who work hard and those who deserve to be understood again.

Another example is why the emotional economy has exploded in recent years. Because the value of emotions is not just about lying flat. When a young person goes to a concert, goes fishing, or goes to CityWalk,He may also be preparing for a counterattack in life.

We should not simply see only one side of things, but also see the competition and elimination that young people are facing today, and that the entire technological change has brought us more possibilities.

In the past, society emphasized that thousands of people were competing for a single-plank bridge. Take me for example. I was born in the 1970s. When I took the college entrance examination, the competition was really fierce. Why? You didn’t have a computer, you couldn’t get information, and you could only study hard. Especially in the countryside at that time, you had no choice but to take the college entrance examination and go to college.

Today, you see, I can take pictures of the scenery of my hometown in the mountainous area of ​​Guizhou, become a close friend and a big V on Kuaishou, and I can be a blogger on Xiaohongshu in Hangzhou, all I need is a mobile phone.

You don’t even need a 40,000-plus Sony camera to take the photo of Trump. A 1,000-2,000-yuan phone is enough. Just post the video on Kuaishou, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, or Weibo.

From this perspective, opportunities have not decreased as we thought, but increased. Many people now say that shopping malls are having a hard time and offline retail is difficult. Why? Because the era of making money in a stereotyped way is over.

There are so many brands in the mall, but I go to another mall and see that they are all the same, so naturally consumers have no desire to buy. For consumers, what they need is personalization and characteristics, which need to reflect our real life and be related to the local urban style, rather than putting up a certain city sign everywhere and then the mall will become popular.

Because we are now in an era of information overload, we can quickly learn about various information through social media such as WeChat Moments, Xiaohongshu, Weibo, etc. Through JD.com, Tmall, Pinduoduo, etc., we can understand the changes in the entire global commodity world.

In addition, no matter which tier of city it is, the overall material situation is at the stage of being selected.Everyone feels that people in fourth-tier cities are consuming Starbucks, while people in first-tier cities are buying Mixue Bingcheng, and this is not wrong.Rather, it means that everyone is trying to understand their own consumption structure and plan their own consumption capacity.

We cannot simply summarize this phenomenon as "sinking", and even such a summary is not in line with reality.

One possibility is that people who used to live in first-tier cities returned to their hometowns in fourth-tier cities, and at this time Starbucks in their hometown became a connection between themselves and their previous lives.

So we cannot simply say that this is a kind of sinking of Starbucks, because its target population has not changed much. It is still the same group of people in Beijing's Zhongguancun, Shanghai's Lujiazui, and Shenzhen's Nanshan District.

People who are still in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen have all kinds of convenient infrastructure, which also includes technology, information, logistics, capital, etc. For example, Douyin, Meituan, JD.com, etc. are also infrastructure.

No matter which city he is in, he can better magnify his own uniqueness. Just like many friends often buy local specialties from their hometowns on Pinduoduo and Kuaishou because they are authentic and original. This convenience has made people's lifestyles no longer limited to specific destinations.

This "flowing space" and "disappearing territory" have brought a rich and inclusive soil to Chinese business in the past few decades. For changes such as rational consumption, sinking market, small city effect, etc., we need to have a more realistic cognitive framework for this flow, which is also the basic premise for understanding this round of changes.

Another reason I'm optimistic about the chances.The reason is that many people have begun to give up their obsession with buying a house.Then, he can use such a large amount of money on his own interests. This interest may be concerts, figures, anime, motorcycles, vinyl, etc. Consumption based on interests is actually much more extensive than we think.

This also means that the powerful supply formed around such diverse interests and diverse lives is far from exhausted.

In addition, in the future, many boundaries between life, office, employment, and entrepreneurship will dissolve into each other. For example, you can be an editor-in-chief, a book review blogger, or a KOL who reviews fruit products in a certain place.

This wave of change has brought more diversity, and many of us are not yet fully prepared, and the secular disciplines of society have not yet released enough possibilities. However, in cities such as Shanghai and Beijing, this trend has already begun to rise.

We are all becoming world citizens and global citizens. When you are born local, you are also born global. You can turn the information of globalization into your own business, into your own model for making a living, and even truly go out and embrace the world.

I know a friend who travels around the world for free. Why? Because he can carefully write down his experience in every hotel he stays in and every attraction he visits, which becomes the basis for many people's travel decisions.

As Charlie Munger said, we cannot control the macro, but we can definitely do something about the micro.Today, if you insist on having an obsession and stubbornly believe that you must do something, you will inevitably get hurt. You must understand that the only constant is change, so that you can have more results and form a rational thinking framework.

We often see someone changing careers, but we need to see the underlying logic behind it. Changing careers is just changing the application scenario.

For example, the tourism industry as a whole is still relatively traditional. If we are engaged in tourism, can we combine e-commerce and mobile Internet with it to reconstruct the people, goods and places?In the elderly care industry, can we apply some game methodologies and parent-child parenting methods to the elderly care scene and turn them into products and mechanisms for communicating with the elderly? These areas are still blank.

Today is indeed a major change that has not been seen in a century, but this change actually gives us more opportunities for business innovation.Embracing opportunities does not mean rushing into the game recklessly, but rather understanding how to choose your track and industry, and how to plan your life.

If your child is applying for a major in the college entrance examination, you will find that you should be wary of knowledge-based subjects (such as translation). You may want to think that there are two basic types of subjects that are relatively safe: one is mathematics, physics, and biology, and the other is sociology, philosophy, psychology, and other humanities subjects.

In this era, we must not make a mobile USB flash drive or make "simple knowledge-based" plans, because we will easily be eliminated by ChatGPT.

Nowadays, you can find your own niche in different dimensions. The most important thing is to be yourself. You must be yourself and you must be unique.

Even with artificial intelligence, your data cannot be repetitive and homogeneous.It is highly personalized and unique data that is valuable.To become unique data, you first need to live out your true self.

IV. Conclusion

The weather is very hot now, and we have entered the dog days of summer. But you should know that when it seems to be the hottest, it is actually approaching autumn.

From the perspective of seasons, the real world is not the same as the world we perceive.

What is the Summer Solstice? During the Summer Solstice, the daylight hours in the Northern Hemisphere are the longest of the year. However, starting from the Summer Solstice, the daylight hours begin to gradually get shorter each day.

Therefore, we need to see the long-term changes instead of just focusing on what is happening in front of us in order to make more appropriate decisions.

See the unchanging in the changing, and see the changing in the unchanging.

typesetting| Cao Buhua | ElevenRotationEditor-in-Chief| Xia Kun