Reborn Industrial Tycoon

In the enterprise forum, Li Weidong also warned relevant departments and many entrepreneurs not to believe too much in the global supply chain. As for whether they are willing to believe it and whether they will respond, it depends on their own destiny.

After the enterprise forum, Li Weidong came to Tsinghua University without stopping.

In the office, Professor Zhuang held a technical catalog and marked it.

After a while, Professor Zhuang returned the technical catalog to Li Weidong and said at the same time: "Chairman Li, these checked projects are what we can help you solve currently; these circled projects can help you through research and development.

solved; solved

Those with question marks may be able to help you solve them through research and development, but this is not 100%; there are only those with crosses, and I really can’t do anything about them, at least in recent years, I have been unable to achieve technological breakthroughs.”

Li Weidong took the technical catalog, looked at the large number of crosses and question marks on it, and smiled bitterly.

The sensor company Li Weidong invested in the special zone has been operating for some time, but so far it can only produce low-end products, which are still far behind mid-range products and even less close to high-end products.

The demand for sensors in the market is mainly mid-range. As for high-end sensors, although the quantity required is not large, the profits are very considerable.

In the low-end sensor market, competition is fierce and profits are thin.

Li Weidong invested more than one billion. Although it was only a drop in the bucket for the entire sensor industry, Li Weidong was definitely not willing to spend more than one billion just to make low-end sensors.

So Li Weidong contacted professors at Tsinghua University who were engaged in research in this area, hoping to get technical support.

Universities naturally welcome well-known domestic entrepreneurs like Li Weidong. Who doesn't like the God of Wealth?

So Li Weidong quickly contacted Professor Zhuang. Professor Zhuang is a professor in the Department of Precision Instruments of Tsinghua University and is considered an authoritative person in domestic sensor research.

However, the results did not satisfy Li Weidong. Domestic research on sensors still lags behind developed countries. Domestic scientific research teams cannot solve many of the technical difficulties Li Weidong faces.

Sensors were originally developed for industrial production. During the industrial production process, parameters on the production nodes needed to be controlled, which led to the development of sensors. Therefore, industrial sensors are mainly for flow, level, temperature and pressure.

Four major industrial parameters.

After entering the field of daily use, the detection information of sensors has been further subdivided, mainly including sound sensitive, light sensitive, heat sensitive, force sensitive, magnetic sensitive, gas sensitive, moisture sensitive, pressure sensitive, ion sensitive and radiation sensitive, etc.

The first generation of sensors are structural sensors, which mainly use changes in structural parameters to sense and transform signals. There is no technical difficulty in this thing, and anyone who studies applied physics can produce a lot of it.

The second generation of sensors is solid-state sensors, which use solid components such as semiconductors, dielectrics, and magnetic materials. Later, with the development of integrated circuits, integrated sensors also appeared.

Integrated sensors are also the most demanded type in the market. China can only produce mid- to low-end products, and 80% of high-end products need to be imported.

The third generation sensor is the so-called smart sensor, which has self-diagnosis function, memory function, multi-parameter measurement function, network communication function, etc.

Smart sensors have relatively high technological content and high costs. They are basically not used in the household field. They are basically only used in some high-precision commercial or military equipment.

China's sensors started relatively late and only started to develop after the reform and opening up. During the "Sixth Five-Year Plan", the Chinese Academy of Sciences began to study force-sensitive sensors made of silicon materials. At that time, only 10 mm by 10 mm silicon wafers were made.

It was not until the "Seventh Five-Year Plan" that 2-inch silicon wafer chips were solved, and only during the "Ninth Five-Year Plan" was 4-inch chips achieved. At the same time, Western developed countries have begun small-scale mass production of MEMS chips.

Therefore, at that time, China's sensors were indeed lagging behind those of developed countries, perhaps as much as the chip industry. Therefore, even the most high-end universities in China, such as Tsinghua University, could not solve the problems Li Weidong encountered.

Looking at the circles on the technology list, Li Weidong estimated in his mind that even if Professor Zhuang is given tens of millions of scientific research funds now, the problems that can be solved are very limited.

So Li Weidong asked, "Professor Zhuang, I took a quick look and found that there are far more crosses and question marks than check marks, which means that many technical problems cannot be solved. I wonder if you have any more

No other suggestions to help me resolve these issues."

Professor Zhuang thought for a while and said: "Technological research and development is always an accumulation process, but many times, even if you spend money and time on research and development, you may not get the desired results.

So isn't there a saying that has been circulating, "It's better to buy than to make". Since we can't make it ourselves, we just spend money to buy it! If possible, purchasing mature technology directly from abroad is the most convenient and probably the lowest cost.

way.”

"I have also considered introducing advanced foreign technology, but many core technologies in sensors are in the United States. Even if we want to buy them, American companies are unwilling to sell the technology to us. More importantly, there is the Wassenaar Agreement.

."

Li Weidong took a long sigh as he spoke, and then said: "The Wassenaar Agreement defines sensors as key technologies and is listed as a separate item. The content about sensors reaches more than 40 pages. There are "Wassenaar Agreement"

"Now, it is difficult for our Chinese companies to obtain high-end sensor technology."

…

During the Cold War, in order to impose embargoes and trade restrictions on socialist countries, Western countries established a "Paris Coordination Committee", also known as "Batum". This organization established a separate China Committee in 1952, which is said to specifically target China.

The agency enforcing the embargo.

China has also been stuck in Batumi. In addition to weapons, cutting-edge technology products and rare materials are also on the embargo list, with a total of tens of thousands of products. Back then, China relied on abacus to calculate the parameters of the atomic bomb.

Because Batumi banned the sale of computers to China.

Batumi is a product of the Cold War. After the end of the Cold War, the Soviet Union disintegrated, and various member states of the Soviet Union, including Russia, also tried to move towards the West. Batumi had lost the value of its existence, so Western countries did this

The Wassenaar Agreement.

As far as the terms of the "Wassenaar Agreement" are concerned, there is actually no formal list of countries subject to control. Moreover, the "Wassenaar Agreement" also has a so-called "each country handles its own affairs" principle, that is, member states can refer to common controls.

Principles and lists determine the measures and methods for implementing export controls on their own, and approve their own export licenses on their own.

But in actual operation, this "each country will handle it on its own" is nonsense, and the United States must have the final say. Therefore, even if the member states of the Wassenaar Agreement decide to sell a certain technology to China on their own, the United States will intervene.

In the fields of science and technology and military affairs, the Wassenaar Agreement has stuck in China's neck and seriously hindered China's development. Just like the chip industry, it is the industry most severely affected by the Wassenaar Agreement.

But this "Wassenaar Agreement" also forced China to carry out independent innovation, and finally achieved complete independence in many fields. When China's technology matured, it took away the Western market.

From this perspective, the Wassenaar Agreement is not completely negative for China. Without the Wassenaar Agreement, China may still be unable to be self-reliant in many areas.

Although the Wassenaar Agreement was aimed at China, it also stimulated China's technological innovation and development. In the long run, the Wassenaar Agreement forced China to be self-reliant, which can be regarded as helping China.

However, there is one country that is a pure victim of the Wassenaar Agreement, and that is Japan.

In the 20th century, Japan was not inferior to the United States in terms of science and technology, and even surpassed the United States in scientific research in many fields. Even after the "lost thirty years", Japan can still rest on its laurels and stand out in many high-tech fields.

At the forefront of the world, this also shows from the side how powerful Japan's technology was back then.

However, scientific and technological development must ultimately serve the economy. If the results of scientific and technological research cannot bring economic benefits, the significance of scientific research will be greatly reduced.

Although Japan's science and technology is powerful, Japan's domestic market is too small. Even if more than 100 million people are high-income groups, it still cannot bring enough economic benefits to scientific research.

This also determines that Japan’s scientific research results need to be put into other markets in order to generate sufficient benefits to maintain the sustainable development of scientific research.

Therefore, Japan is keen on investing around the world. While they invest overseas, they also bring a lot of technology abroad, using the huge foreign market and Japan's own technological advantages to obtain high profits.

There is a folk saying that in addition to Japan, there is another Japan overseas. This refers to Japan's huge profits overseas.

But no matter how rich Japan is, it can't bear the United States' leeks every day. The "Plaza Accord" in the 1980s cut Japan's domestic leeks, and the Asian financial crisis in the 1990s cut Japan's overseas leeks.

After these two crops of leeks were harvested, Japan's vitality was severely weakened and it needed new growth points to maintain its original development trend. China was obviously the best place for investment at that time.

China's economic growth in those two decades is unprecedented in human history. If Japan can invest their world-leading technology into the Chinese market and take advantage of the rapid development of the Chinese market, it will surely receive huge returns, which will then feed back to Japan.

technological development.

Moreover, if Japanese technology goes to the United States or Europe, it will inevitably encounter fierce competition. After all, the technology in the United States and Europe is no worse than Japan.

But in China, Japanese technology not only leads the way, but also sets China apart by several levels, and is bound to quickly seize the market.

It is also possible that China has slowed down the pace of independent innovation in scientific research because of Japan's advanced technology, and may eventually form a situation in which all science and technology depends on Japan.

This is not alarmist. China has engaged in independent innovation for so many years, but now many high-tech equipment or materials still need to rely on Japan.

If Japan had really put their technology into the Chinese market without any scruples, relying on one step ahead and leading step by step, but Chinese companies themselves could not catch up and were accustomed to Japan providing technology, then China's current technology field would really

will be fully controlled by Japan.

Fortunately, there is a "Wassenaar Agreement", and Japan cannot bring their high technology to China. Without a large enough external market, Japan's science and technology cannot maintain sustained development, and in the end, it can only slowly rest on its laurels.

As an island country lacking resources, it has lost its technological advantages and its economy will inevitably fall into recession.

At the same time, the United States used its huge domestic market to put scientific research results into application, and then invested in scientific research after making profits, achieving a virtuous cycle of scientific research, and then quickly widened the gap with Japan.

Thirty years ago, Japan's technology could rival that of the United States. However, thirty years later, Japan lags behind the United States in terms of R&D, corporate foundation, scientific research indicators, number of patents, technological product innovation, etc.

Just look at the stock markets of the United States and Japan. The top companies in the United States by market capitalization have changed several times in the past thirty years, from automobile companies to financial companies to technology companies. However, the top companies in Japan by market capitalization are three.

Little has changed in ten years.

This shows that Japan's industrial structure has not changed in thirty years. The innovation and development of science and technology in these thirty years have not produced large-scale economic benefits in Japan.

Although there are many reasons for the decline of Japan's science and technology industry, in the final analysis, it still lacks economic driving force. The "Wassenaar Agreement" was born to target China's science and technology field. In the end, it did not interrupt the backbone of China's science and technology development.

But it blocked the path of Japan's technology industry.

Many times when we look back at a country's development path, we will find that things that originally restricted the country's development will become the driving force for the country's development, and things that originally assisted the country's development will instead become a burden to development.

At this time, I have to sigh, maybe the thing "national destiny" really exists!

Closer to home, in the Wassenaar Agreement, sensor-related technology is listed as a separate item, and the relevant content is more than 40 pages long.

Obviously, Americans are still very strict in controlling technology in this area. This is mainly because sensors are of great significance for military purposes.

To give a simple example, a gyroscope can be used as a signal sensor, such as the route of a fighter jet, the guidance of missiles, and the positioning of satellites. Such sensitive components that can be used for military purposes will certainly not be used by the United States.

Will let China get it.

Therefore, it is simply impossible to obtain high-end sensor technology through purchase.

Since you can't buy it even if you have money, you can only find other ways.

Professor Zhuang pondered for a few seconds, and then said: "Chairman Li, since we can't directly introduce technology, we can only introduce technical personnel. The Wassenaar Agreement only controls the export of technology, but does not control scientific researchers."

flow, right?

So I suggest that you can introduce scientific research talents in this field from abroad and form a dedicated scientific research team. Although it will cost a lot of money and time, you can achieve the results you want."

"This is a way." Li Weidong nodded, and then continued: "Professor Zhuang, when it comes to scientific research, I thought you would ask me to provide scientific research funds to domestic scientific research teams. I didn't expect you to suggest

I form a dedicated team.”

"There are indeed many scientific research institutions in China that are engaged in research and development of sensor projects. For example, we at Tsinghua University have several project teams. However, there is a big difference between the scientific research conducted by our universities and research institutes and the scientific research conducted by enterprises themselves.

"

Professor Zhuang sighed softly and said rather melancholy; "Industry-university-research cooperation has been going on for some years and has achieved very fruitful results. However, scientific research projects in universities like ours are mainly aimed at the academic community, not

Service companies.

For us, publishing several heavyweight papers and then being recognized by the academic community is more important than bringing profits to the company. As for those scientific research institutions, the main work goal is to meet the scientific research goals set by superiors, nor is it

Serve the enterprise.

Therefore, I always feel that powerful enterprises should conduct their own scientific research, take the road of independent innovation, and directly serve the development of the enterprise with scientific research results. To put it bluntly, scientific research is for the purpose of making money and generating income, without any other purposes.

From an economic perspective, it may be more beneficial to the entire industry."

…

Scientific researchers are professional talents. If you want to recruit professional talents, you naturally have to find a specialized headhunting agency.

So Li Weidong found the famous headhunting company Heidrick & Struggles.

The business scope of modern headhunting companies not only recruits people from enterprises, but also includes corporate management consulting, corporate reform, structural optimization, personnel optimization and other projects. Many headhunting companies have the attribute of "corporate doctors" and can even save a company that is on the verge of bankruptcy.

enterprise.

Heidrick and Struggles is one of the top five headhunters in the world and is known as the "purest headhunter company." In terms of corporate doctors, Heidrick and Struggles is not the best, but if we purely talk about the headhunting business, Heidrick and Struggles is definitely the best in the headhunting field.

Nanbo Bay.

Moreover, Heidrick and Struggles is very good at headhunting for technology companies. One of the most successful cases was to recruit Kai-Fu Lee from Microsoft to Google. For this reason, Microsoft also fought a lawsuit with Google.

In order to recruit talents as quickly as possible, Li Weidong also offered very generous benefits, with no upper limit for top talents. Heidrick and Struggles also made a special plan for this and gave it to Li Weidong for review.

"Chairman Li, based on your request, Heidrick & Struggles has specially formulated a headhunting plan. Please take a look at it." The person who spoke was named Liu, and he was a leader among Chinese headhunters.

"Manager Liu, I am not very familiar with the headhunting business, so I would like you to briefly introduce your plan to me!" Li Weidong said.

"Okay." Manager Liu nodded and continued: "What you need are professional scientific research talents in sensors. Most of these talents are concentrated in European and American countries. But most of the technical talents in European and American countries are

Those who are unwilling to come to China to work.

Therefore, from the perspective of cost input and efficiency output, we first recommend that you build your R&D center in the United States, which will make it easier to recruit talents and reduce the cost of human resources."

For people from developed countries in Europe and America, working in developing countries is like exile. Especially Americans, they are not willing to work in Europe or Japan, let alone come to China.

For many poor and backward countries, the United States has not sent ambassadors for decades. It is not that it does not want to send people, nor that it cannot afford it. The important reason is that no one is willing to go. This is the level of national diplomacy, let alone ordinary people.

When it comes to working abroad, no one wants to go to poor countries and suffer.

After all, Americans are not as hard-working as the Chinese. If it were the Chinese, as long as they gave them more money and were willing to go to the poorest places in Africa to build roads, malaria and cholera would not be a problem.

Li Weidong decided to engage in R&D on his own, just to avoid being stuck in technology. If the R&D center was placed in the United States, it would obviously not be able to solve the problem of being stuck. So he said: "Manager Liu, thank you very much for your suggestion, but I

Or decided to keep the R&D center in China."

"In that case, let me introduce the headhunting plan we have formulated." Manager Liu opened the folder in his hand and continued: "Since technical personnel from European and American countries are unwilling to come to work in China, we will start from some Central and Eastern Europe

The country is looking for the right talent.

The income in Central and Eastern European countries is much lower than that in Western European countries. If they are willing to offer high salaries, they should be able to recruit talents in this field from Central and Eastern European countries. Especially some CIS countries, which have the industrial base left by the Soviet Union, still have

A certain amount of technical ability.”

Li Weidong thought for a few seconds and then said; "The CIS countries have the old foundation left by the Soviet Union, but even the Soviet Union was not as good as the United States in terms of sensor research. And it has been so many years since the Soviet Union collapsed.

I don’t know how much of the technology that has come down can still be used. So I still prefer to recruit talents from the United States.”

"Most Americans are unwilling to come to work in China. If they insist on recruiting talents from the United States, they may have to pay two or three times the salary before they are willing to consider it. And they only consider it, because they may take a salary

With this better condition, I can ask my boss for a raise."

Manager Liu continued: "So we have formulated a plan specifically for this. We will focus our recruitment on Chinese or Chinese scientific research talents. These people have Chinese backgrounds and are relatively willing to work in China. According to our

I understand that there are still many Chinese in the United States engaged in scientific research."

"Yes, this is a good direction. After all, Chinese people have more similarities in culture." Li Weidong continued; "One more thing will be added at that time. If you bring your family with you, we can solve it.

Issues such as spouse’s job and children’s schooling.”

Manager Liu took the notes and then continued: "There is another thing, which is for high-level scientific research talents. Such high-level scientific research talents are bound to have some special requirements, not just in terms of money or treatment.

You need to make the connection in person."

"No problem!" Li Weidong smiled and nodded: "As long as the other party is really capable, there is no problem in letting me visit the thatched cottage!"