Beheadings during the French Revolution. (I promise this is relevant, just keep reading)
I have made no secret of my personal distaste for Qihoo 360 CEO Zhou Hongyi and his obnoxiously belligerent PR tactics. But whether I like it or not, Zhou has achieved impressive success with Qihoo, and he sat down with the IT Times recently for an exclusive interview in which he shared his philosophy on running a startup and the best ways to innovate.
I often tell entrepreneurs about two concepts, subversion-style innovation and micro-innovation. The latter is a technique, the former is a direction. I have always approved of the subversion-style or destructive-style innovators in American business school textbooks; this kind of constant subverting and being subverted pushes an industry forward. It pushes innovation in technology and in products. This is why America’s Silicon Valley is constantly innovating, because the [people running] American internet [services] are basically a new group of people every five to ten years.
In the philosophy of Silicon Valley-style innovation, subversion and destruction are positive words, but in China they are considered negative because China values harmony, the doctrine of the mean, and Confucian values. Maintaining a stable situation is beneficial for tycoons, but it isn’t beneficial for entrepreneurs or for the industry as a whole, because tycoons don’t have the power to innovate, they prefer to make gradual improvements while protecting their advantageous position.
It might be occurring to some of you that this is a bit odd to hear coming from someone who essentially is a “tycoon,” the head of a massive software company with his own interests to protect. To his credit, Zhou recognizes that Qihoo is big enough to be vulnerable to subversion from startups, and he had this to say about Qihoo’s current approach and his strategy for defending the company’s position:
Often, if you don’t want to be subverted by others, you must bravely subvert yourself. We have seen too many examples like Blackberry, Nokia, Motorola, etc. where their success becomes a burden. We encourage challenging ourselves, self-subversion, and personally because I enjoy undermining others I often think about how I would subvert myself. If you’re pushed into a revolution you can end up getting your head cut off; if you start the revolution you can end up with a new world.
For example, because some people who aren’t too good with computers installed 360 and still felt that their problems weren’t fixed, we sent people to their homes to resolve issues for 30 RMB ($4.75), and we made more than a hundred million RMB doing this. But then some people said that 360 is just doing this for the money; intentionally making bad software so they can earn money from the repair fees. Some of our competitors, because they were smaller scaled, offered free in-home service, so I painfully decided to make everything free, [losing money] but increasing our market share and denying competitors an opportunity.
If you’re really interested in getting into Zhou’s head, you may enjoy reading the complete interview with him.
[IT Times via Sina Tech, Image source]
The post Zhou Hongyi Talks Innovation, Destruction, and Defense appeared first on Tech in Asia.