In the face of the torture of the editor of the Wall Street Journal, Gu Biao analyzed reasonably:

"It is a well-known fact that one more step forward in truth becomes absurd, and any theory has its scope of application. When I wrote "The Innovator's Dilemma", I was certainly analyzing it in combination with several industries that I am more familiar with, but unfortunately many readers have generalized it to apply to the entire technology industry, which is not right.

The biggest bottleneck for disruptive innovation to apply is the coverage of this emerging industry. We have to expect that if the cost of a product is greatly reduced, or the ease of use and applicability are greatly improved, the global market size in the future can be an order of magnitude leap compared with the current state;

Then, bumpy innovation and generational overtaking are possible. And if the above point cannot be achieved, it will be difficult to complete the intergenerational overtaking of bumpy innovation, or at least it can only achieve improved innovation and rookies to catch up, but cannot completely destroy the original giants. ”

Editor Edmund Desmond tapped his pen slightly, adjusted the tape recorder at the same time, and continued to follow: "Can you give a specific example?"

Gu Biao: "Take the hard disk and game console industry in my book as a positive example. Why are these industries able to play like this? Because when the next generation of similar products kills the previous generation, the market share of the previous generation is less than one-tenth of the world's potential use rate:

Note that I'm talking about 'potential desires' here, not 'potential customers'. Because if I use the word 'customer', it is easy to create blind spots. For example, at a time when video game consoles cost at least $300 each, no market researcher would consider a black kid in Africa who couldn't afford to drink 'Nshima' corn cereal as a potential customer because they were too poor to be ignored.

But when I use the term 'potential user desire', the little black African kid who can't afford to drink corn paste fits my description, and although he is so poor that he can't even afford a game console, you don't think about spending power, and he still wants to play for free, and even such a poor person should be considered when we think about radical innovation.

Let's assume that there are some women, most of the elderly, and a few children in this world who really don't want to play games, and they don't play for nothing. Now that there are 5 billion people on the planet, let's assume that the potential number of people who want to play games is 3 billion.

If Atari had reached a market stock of 100 million units in 1983, which is equivalent to more than 10% of the potential population of all mankind who want to play game consoles based on the calculation of at least a family of three, then according to my theory, I would not be able to repeat it.

At most, it will only be surpassed by me, looking at the market value of Tiankun's stock price is two, three, five times higher than it, but no matter what, the old model will not be completely swept into the dustbin of history by me.

After all, if the new lane change and overtaking enterprises want to decisively grab the new customers, it means that it must at least be cheaper than the old giants in the industry, at least cut at half the price, and have an order of magnitude price or ease of use advantage. Otherwise, the price discount of seven or eight percent, or the user experience of tinkering, will not be able to complete the battle.

According to such an algorithm, your appearance itself has reduced the total imagination space of this industry in the future by two or three times, if you do not have a tenfold numerical scale advantage over the existing giants, how can you crush it?

In reality, the reason why Atari has room for complete death is because it has not yet covered the scale of '10% of all human beings who want to play game consoles', and it has only achieved 1%, so I still have a chance

Aha, here I also want to say to other console manufacturers on the planet, if you want to kill me like I did with Atari back then, then it's best to kill me before my Tiankun grows to more than 100 million users worldwide.

At present, the global shipment stock of Tiankun is already more than 30 million units, and if I increase it three or four times, you will be too late. At that time, no matter how well you do, you will only surpass me at best, but you will not be able to destroy me, and then you will have to consume it with me, until the game console category as a whole is swept into the dustbin of human history.

With this analysis, I think there is no need to repeat the hard disk and memory industry, you can read the book, we all until, the late 60s, the wave of memory manufacturers at its peak, they came to death, and only covered the computer storage media market equivalent to tens of thousands of personal computers.

In the early 80s, before the rise of PC computers, the second wave of memory companies that died, they only served a few hundred thousand. Close to millions of customers. So, companies in the memory industry can die for generations, until this kind of thing dies once when it is used by tens of millions of people, and twice when it is used by hundreds of millions, billions of people.

Of course, a handful of these companies are able to cross the generational discontinuity, and it takes as much determination to survive as one out of 20 generations as if you were jumping off a cliff to the opposite side. Therefore, it is not impossible to carry three generations of the same kind of death to the end, just multiply it directly, carry two generations to calculate one in 400, and carry three generations to calculate the universal rate on the earth.

If Americans and Bretonians don't care about eating garbage, then people in other countries on the planet certainly don't know how to eat either, so they invest in artificial meat, thinking that people on earth will accept the taste of artificial meat. These misunderstandings will lead to misestimation of the standard volume of whether an industry can have a disruptive innovation. ”

The examples have been cited from the most elegant to the most vulgar, and no matter how much you don't understand, you can't blame Gu Biao.

His remarks can be regarded as narrowing the previous misunderstanding of his attack, and limiting the scope of potential generational evaporation to emerging industries that "at least 90% of the people on the earth cannot afford to use them".

The technology industry that does not meet this condition, don't panic.

The Wall Street Journal asked Daniel Kahneman and others to ask a lot of detailed questions, and these experts were more knowledgeable and precise, not too easy to deal with.

After all, these economists have also been dealing with the herd effect for half their lives, and later won the Nobel Prize in economics.

Gu Biao is also very careful to limit the scope of his own opinions, trying not to comment rashly on unfamiliar majors, and not to fall behind.

However, this kind of conversation is a bit too professional, and it is all about picking words and drawing a circle of influence, which is boring.

After dealing with these experts, the Wall Street Journal's Edmund finally closed with an additional question:

"Gu, I think there is a question, NASDAQ investors must be very interested in your new book "The Innovator's Dilemma" since you released this new book, I see that you have also mentioned Wang An Computer and Apple many times on various occasions, and the stock prices of these companies have also fallen in this wave of market.

Can we understand that you are dealing with a potential competitor? Is there any attempt to enter the personal computer industry?"

Gu Biao: "You can learn about the background of the manuscript of "The Innovator's Dilemma", which was proposed by Mr. McNamars, the editor-in-chief of Time magazine, in October last year, hoping that I would write a monograph on entrepreneurship in the industry such as duplicate game consoles and other industries.

And the book was written at a normal pace, I didn't have any time points, it was officially published in China at the end of February, and then the English version came out in early April, you can understand the process. If I were targeted, do you think I would use it to thwart the imaginary enemy in today's big bull market in US stocks, especially in the general bull market in technology stocks?

On the contrary, I just want to be a moderate reminder that I am calm when others are fanatical, so I put this book out at such a time, and if I release it when the bear market is getting worse, then it is called an ulterior motive. ”

"Did Kun want to enter the personal computer business that day?"

Gu Biao: "This is a trade secret, I can only say that if the timing is right and the preparation is sufficient, it may be possible in a certain year in the future." As an electronic technology company that can mobilize billions of dollars in resources, it is understandable that Tiankun should make some defensive basic technology reserves in any surrounding adjacent technology field. ”