Later generations of economists once asked a question: why does the price of a bottle of mineral water exceed a pound of rice?

Mineral water is not a necessity, but rice is, at least in Asia, where we all eat rice, but a bottle of ordinary water, which is available everywhere, exceeds the staple food.

In the same way, I don't know if you have noticed: on the street, the price of a bottle of milk tea is often more than a fast food.

Diamonds are of little use other than ornamentation, but they are extremely expensive.

The same is true for many luxury goods.

This phenomenon cannot be explained only by a simple balance between supply and demand, but more importantly, some products can give people spiritual satisfaction.

Games have been a battleground for merchants since ancient times, from ancient kites, keju, rattles, to modern puppet toys, simulation equipment, etc., which are more or less to meet people's spiritual needs.

When electronic technology evolved from traditional transistors to integrated circuits, cutting-edge business people were already discovering the role of promoting games, and Atari was born five years ago to specialize in the development of video games.

Everyone knows Apple's Jobs, but most people don't know that Jobs was actually in charge of developing video games at Atari before he founded Apple, and the game he developed was actually played by many people: Arkanoid.

In 1972, Steve Jobs, who dropped out of school, was hired by Atari as an electronics engineer at $5 an hour ($5 an hour, no message for that income).

Although he has a strange temper and doesn't know anything about electronics (that is, he doesn't know anything about it, and he doesn't know how to interview him). However, with the cooperation of technical master Woz, he successfully developed Arkanoid, which has a long bar at the bottom of the game, which can change the direction of the falling ball, so that it can go up and shoot down the upper block.

In the eyes of later generations, this kind of game was extremely boring, but it is very popular in this day and age.

The game that Xu Zhi wants to develop also has a lot to do with cubes, and Midea's first task is the most famous game in history - Tetris.

Actually, the name of this game is ArixTetris, but when translated into Chinese, it is simply Tetris because its creator is Russian.

Now that it will be born in Hong Kong, it is natural that the name should be down-to-earth: HongKong square and snake.

In fact, in this era, compared to Xiangjiang cubes and snakes, shooting games are the mainstream, and these two block games are not suitable for the arcade that Midea is about to start developing, but more inclined to the future handheld game console Gameboy or family game console, it has no exciting fights, and there are no colorful images, the whole picture is a drawing that I don't understand, and then some squares in it are constantly moving.

But classics are always classics, just like many online novels in later generations, some people are very excited to read the first time, but after reading it, they immediately forget the plot, and they are not interested in reading it a second time, and after a few years, when they look back, they can't help but almost slap themselves: how could Lao Tzu read this kind of book before.

And the classics will always be classics, even after ten years, Han Lao Mo has become Han Ranran, but he still never gets tired of watching it.

What's more, it's still the end of the 70s, even if it is a few years later, some cool games in the game hall in the later generations will not be able to be created, and the block game can make future generations of people still want to play when they are bored, even if they can't be the first in this era, but it is better to be stable, for the company of the United States, it can be regarded as a non-stop cash flow, arcades, home game consoles, handheld game consoles, computers, feature phones, and smart phones can survive.

And more importantly, these two games have a simple design and have lower requirements for chips, while the design of the motherboard will be much simpler. If you develop a game like Super Mario from the beginning, it is estimated that the money will be burned out and you won't even make a map.

But even so, this kind of thing is not something that Xu Zhi, an outsider who knows nothing about electronic products, can solve, and after registering the 7 shapes of the Xiangjiang square with global patents, Xu Zhi began to convene a team to be responsible for the research and development of this piece.

Although he doesn't understand electronic technology at all, thanks to knowing the future, the headhunting company recruited a total of more than a dozen electronic engineers for Xu Zhi, but there is one person who Xu Zhi strongly asks to dig at any cost.

Looking back at the Chinese entrepreneurial heroes of the entire electronic and Internet era, two of the names must be familiar to future generations: Wang An and Yang Zhiyuan.

In the 80s, Wang An's computer once threatened IBM's hegemony in the field of industrial control computers, with annual sales of more than 3 billion US dollars at its peak, making him the richest Chinese in the world at that time. And Yang Zhiyuan is also familiar to everyone, the co-founder of Yahoo.

Looking at the history of Xiangjiang in the 80s, it seems that in addition to real estate, it is still real estate, but there is one person who is definitely the most legendary self-made business history.

This person is He Guoyuan, born in 1950, immigrated to Xiangjiang in 62, and later graduated from the Department of Electronic Engineering of Chenggong University.

He was born in a poor family in Xiangjiang and had excellent grades, but in order to save money, he chose to study abroad, and after graduation, he could have gone to Europe and the United States to work and returned to Xiangjiang for his family.

After working for several years, he worked as a quality control computer engineer, production management, material planning control, quality control, etc., and later joined Xiangjiang Philips as a manufacturing supervisor.

But fortunately, this is a historical process, when Xu Zhi sent people to poach people, he had not yet entered Philips, and after several contacts, He Guoyuan agreed to join Midea.

Xu Zhi gave him the position that he was very satisfied with - the position of general manager.

In 1980, he joined Xiangjiang Wang's Electronics Company as general manager, in just 3 years, Wang's Electronics developed from a small company of 100 people to the largest electronics company in Xiangjiang with more than 2,000 people, and He Guoyuan's annual salary has risen from more than 100,000 Hong Kong dollars to 500,000 US dollars, which is almost second only to the large class of listed companies such as large banks or foreign banks in Xiangjiang.

But that's not the beginning of the legend.

In 1983, He Guoyuan immigrated to Canada, he took out all his savings, established ATI company, after nearly 20 years of development, almost monopolized the global market in graphics cards, and in 2002, the base camp of Samsung Group, ATI controlled 60% of the entire Korean graphics card market.

However, due to health and the lack of a suitable successor, ATI was sold to AMD for $5.4 billion in 2006, ending He Guoyuan's legendary entrepreneurial life.

When reading the novel in the previous life, many readers complained that you had crossed over why you would give an important position to a working emperor in the later life.

But from Xu Zhi's point of view, he doesn't know anyone, but he can make a name for himself in the future generations, at least there is a great possibility and potential.

This is the same as many people complaining about why some large companies only look at academic qualifications when looking for a job, in fact, the reason is very simple: there are too many candidates, I don't know any of them, of course, I have to start with a high degree of education, after all, people with ability and no education will exist, but I am too lazy to look for and discern.

Xu Zhi's invitation to He Guoyuan is also for this reason, at least this person has been awesome in later generations, and the potential is still very huge, and people who can create the world's top enterprises must have a series of abilities, these abilities cannot be obtained in recent years, and training from childhood accounts for at least most of the reasons.

Of course, it is stupid to invite such a recent graduate to be the general manager when your own business is very large, even if the other party is Bill Gates, but it is not a problem when the company is small.

Regardless of whether He Guoyuan will lose the ability to start a business, but from 80-83 years to build a small company into the largest electronics group in Hong Kong, then at least in terms of management has unparalleled ability, which is enough.

PS: You can check this Chinese entrepreneurial hero on Baidu, and it is estimated that there are not many people who know that this person exists