Top of the big era

Zhou Buqi got good news. Microsoft has raised its offer to US$4.25 billion.

I really want to curse.

So rich!

However, he still did not agree, feeling that there was still room for negotiation.

In the evening, Zhou Buqi met Steven Sinofsky, a software guru who had just been fired by Microsoft, invited by Shen Xiangyang and Xu Liangjie in a small restaurant near Stanford University.

The other party's attitude is very clear, he will not join Ziweixing International.

Zhou Buqi smiled and said, "I know you have a non-competition contract with Microsoft. But it doesn't matter. I can help you handle this matter and I'll pay the liquidated damages."

Sinofsky shook his head, "It's not about liquidated damages."

Zhou Buqi said: "Don't worry, Microsoft will not express its position on the breach of contract. This matter will not be publicized and will not affect the spirit of your contract."

Sinofsky smiled and said: "Zhou, you really misunderstood. It is not these objective factors, but my personal reasons."

Zhou Buqi frowned, "You just don't want to join Ziweixing International?"

Sinofsky sighed, "I have worked at Microsoft for more than 20 years, and all my career achievements have been achieved at Microsoft. Microsoft is my home."

Zhou Buqi felt helpless about this.

The other person is not a newly graduated college student. He is an industry elite with a net worth of hundreds of millions of dollars. He no longer works for money.

At this time, inducements and so on lack weight.

Although Sinofsky was fired by Microsoft, he has worked at Microsoft for decades and his relationship is still there. Ziweixing International and Microsoft are competitors to a certain extent.

This is very difficult.

He is unwilling to betray Microsoft. Whether or not there is a non-competition agreement seems to be of little significance.

Fortunately, Zhou Buqi was prepared and said with a smile: "What do you think of cloud computing?"

Sinofsky said without hesitation: "There is no doubt that this represents the future."

"Where's the software?"

"Future software will also be mainly sold on the cloud."

"Is it just sales?" Zhou Buqi shook his head, not hiding his criticism of this view. "In the current IT industry, there are still many misunderstandings and prejudices about the cloud software model, and most of them are catering to trend."

Sinofsky's appetite was immediately whetted and he said solemnly, "I would like to hear the details."

"I have some ideas, but they need to be verified." Zhou Buqi waved his hand, but did not say clearly, "By the way, there is one thing I am curious about. Microsoft is the world's largest software giant, but decades have passed. Why does Microsoft have no products in the fields of graphics processing and color management?”

"How not?"

Sinofsky is a little helpless about this.

From the first day he joined Microsoft, he was engaged in software work, in the Windows business. Later, he was gradually promoted and eventually became the president of the Windows department.

Similar graphics processing and image management software also belong to the Windows Division.

Under his unified leadership.

Sinofsky said: "There are probably... seven or eight models of this type of product that I have dealt with. Most of them did not pass the internal beta test and were killed internally. Two of them passed the Windows system After it was launched, the effect was very poor, and there was a huge gap with Apple’s system.”

"Where's Adobe?" Zhou Buqi then asked, "Why didn't you compete with Adobe?"

Sinofsky said: "The difficulty is even greater. In fact... I think it has something to do with Microsoft's system. There are many factions and bloated departments. There has been a great trend of rigidity internally and lack of creativity. And in graphics processing , color management and other aspects, it is actually a creative industry.”

Zhou Buqi was curious, "Can you tell me more about it?"

Sinofsky said: "In my opinion, engineering projects in the IT industry are mainly divided into three categories. One is market-led, the other is engineer-led, and the other is designer-led. Microsoft is market-led. For a large-scale enterprise, creative products must be led by designers. There are conceptual differences here.”

Zhou Buqi secretly cheered.

I feel like I learned something.

This is indeed a master. He summed up many social phenomena in one go.

Market leadership means sales leadership, and it is the market that speaks.

99% of companies in the world are market-led.

The market provides the demand, and enterprises discover and solve the demand.

Just like a smartphone.

iPhone has launched a new model, and countless consumers like it very much. But the price of iPhone is too high and I can’t afford it. What should I do?

At this time, demand appeared in the market.

Many Android manufacturers will quickly follow up. According to this demand, they can provide mobile phones that look similar to the iPhone but cost much less, so that they can cater to the market and gain profits.

But how was the iPhone born?

Behind the scenes are designers.

This is the soul that Jobs brought to Apple. This is not a market-oriented company, but a design-oriented company. It doesn't matter whether there is market demand or not. The important thing is that we make cool products and then create demand for them in the market.

As for engineer leadership...the most typical one is of course Google.

Engineers have the greatest say in products.

This makes Google's products the most technologically advanced, but always problematic. If the design is not cool and attractive enough, it will not be able to create market demand; if it does not follow the suggestions of the marketing department, it will not be able to cater to market demand.

The difference between these three types is huge.

In market-oriented companies, the marketing department discovers needs and then transfers them to the product department. The product department coordinates designers and engineers to create products.

Design-led companies invent and create based on the inspiration of designers, produce the conceived product styles, and then pass them on to engineers for them to implement.

Just like iPhone.

This is what Jobs and a few designers designed. They used foam to make a template of what the phone looked like. They were very satisfied with it... and then handed it over to the engineering department.

The engineering department must follow this template to make the mobile phone!

This can easily lead to a breakdown.

How are the circuit boards inside the mobile phone arranged? The mobile phone is designed to be so thin and light that a traditional circuit board cannot fit in it. What should I do? And how to place the signal receiving line? Without a signal receiving line, it is easy to cause the product's signal to be poor...but the engineering department's suggestions were useless.

Apple is a design-led company that would rather sacrifice engineering quality to ensure design integrity. This results in Apple's products always having some very low-level technical quality problems.

At Apple's level, it's certainly not impossible to solve such a simple technical problem. Even many small mobile phone manufacturers do not have product failures, but Apple's products have repeatedly appeared. This is ridiculous.

The fundamental reason is that they are unwilling to sacrifice product design in order to solve engineering problems.

This is a typical Jobs-style obsession with perfectionism: “Only on the back of the cabinet can you see your quality.”

This means that when a carpenter builds a cabinet, the front effect cannot represent the quality of the product. Only the invisible back of the cabinet can reflect the quality of the product.

Jobs demanded that the iPhone look beautiful, which is actually relatively easy to achieve.

The difficulty is that he requires that "the back of the cabinet must be beautiful," which means that the internal circuit board design must also be artistic enough. Once the user removes the casing of the product, he can also feel the beauty of technology through the internal design.

This has stumped countless engineers.

Smartphones are so complex. It’s easy to implement all the functions, and the design must be simple and beautiful enough to fit the overall feel of the product... This is too difficult, and it may cause engineering to give way to design, leading to some Function is castrated or limited.

Because of this, many top engineers have left Apple. They are really unwilling to develop a "defective product" that only looks beautiful and has hidden dangers.

This is caused by the attributes of the enterprise.

Apple is a design company, and engineers have no say.

After Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, the biggest change he brought to Apple was to transform Apple from a market-oriented company to a design-oriented company.

It probably has something to do with the fact that he took Pixar on the market, attended several Oscar awards shows, and was influenced by the culture of Hollywood.

As for engineer-led companies...

Basically nothing good ends.

It is really difficult to rely on a group of technical engineers to make a world-class great product and a great company, and only a handful of people can survive.

Ziweixing International is also a typical market-led company, which is the path with the least risk.

This also gave Zhou Buqi a wake-up call.

He wants to enter the field of creative design software and compete with Adobe!

Prepare for a rainy day when the contract expires in ten years.

But from this point of view, this new project really cannot be handled by Ziweixing International. This must be a design-led company, not a market-led one.

If it dominates the market, it will never surpass Adobe.

Ziweixing International is also a big company now.

As long as the scale becomes larger, many inevitable problems will inevitably arise.

Shen Xiangyang said it before.

Behind the advantages of resource integration, there is also the devouring of creative design.

Zhou Buqi took a deep breath, "Steve, I have a project in hand, but after you reminded me like this... I think this project should be separated from Ziweixing International. I mean, I'm not inviting you. Join Ziweixing International, but cooperate to complete a new project, an entrepreneurial project.”

"Huh?" Sinofsky knew what he meant immediately, "New project? Software project?"

Zhou Buqi smiled and said: "Of course, it's a software project. Everyone knows that you are the best software god in Silicon Valley."

"No...no..." Sinofsky did not dare to accept such high praise, but he also guessed the direction of this software project from the context, and said in shock, "It competes with Adobe." Software project?”