All ambitious enterprises in Fang Jun will strive to find and cultivate future business before the recession comes, but even the best enterprises may be at a loss. For enterprises trying to find new business, strategic management expert Andrew Campbell gave advice: caution is more than optimism, choice is more than experiment, patience is more than recklessness. The pursuit of growth is a marathon, not a sprint. After years of growth, many leading enterprises in China began to see the growth prospects slow down, trying to open up new major businesses in order to continue their previous success after the decline of the old business. In the corporate history of China, there are many cases of chasing one hot industry after another, which are successful and then quickly defeated, such as the experience of some home appliance manufacturers in color TV, VCD and mobile phones. On the other hand, despite these often discussed failure cases, those leading enterprises that have achieved success because of their concentration have begun to realize that they should seek transformation before the industry declines after decades of development. This is bound to be a rather difficult process, and there is no simple answer. Even the best enterprises may be at a loss when looking for new opportunities. Intel, for example, saw the decline of CPU business many years ago. Since 1999, we have been trying to develop a second product line besides microprocessor CPU. It sets the company's vision as "PC Plus" strategy based on network and around PC. Up to now, the platform based on chip has been integrated, but so far, CPU is still its main source of income. The situation at Microsoft is very similar. It has launched various new services, such as Xbox and MSN, but it has never been able to change the situation that its business core is still operating system and office software. Microprocessor mentality: the obstacle to success Campbell tried to emphasize the fact that "most companies can't successfully develop businesses that drive new growth after their core businesses mature." According to the research of the Enterprise Strategy Committee, less than 65,438+00% of enterprises can restart their growth after the core business growth slows down, only 3% can continue for more than three years after the restart, and only 65,438+0% have achieved new growth by creating new growth platforms. Professor Donald Su of London Business School pointed out in Commitment to Excellence that an enterprise needs to make firm commitments in five aspects: strategic framework, resources, processes, relationships and values. However, when the company needs to transform, these success equations will become obstacles: strategic framework will become an eye patch, resources will harden into milestones, processes will become routine operations, relationships will become shackles, and values will become rigid. As for Intel, Campbell agrees that Intel's problem lies in the deep-rooted mentality of every manager, which is called "microprocessor mentality". They hope that the new main business can be as successful as CPU, which is a near monopoly business and a leading technology. They are extremely paranoid about competition and refuse to become suppliers with other manufacturers. In management, many people will emphasize lofty goals. For example, Jim Collins repeatedly emphasized that "bold goals" are the key factors for the success of enterprises in his best-selling book "The Foundation is Evergreen". However, when looking for new business, ambitious goals can be harmful. Campbell wrote that if managers are faced with familiar fields, ambitious goals really help broaden their horizons, expand their territory and change their habitual thinking; However, when faced with unfamiliar new business, what is needed is caution, not deviance. Managers are usually optimistic about the future, but ambitious goals in new business may make them unable to think rationally. "mentality of rescue at sea": there are few suitable new opportunities. It may be unrealistic for Intel to find a new and successful business like CPU and McDonald's to find a new business like McDonald's restaurant. Campbell's view is more cautious, and a fundamental fact of business is that "there are few suitable good opportunities". He believes that compared with those who think that more experiments and more new businesses can help the company grow, frankly facing "few suitable good opportunities" can help the company succeed. Peter Waters, the former CEO of British Petroleum Company (BP), once wrote an article entitled "The Biggest Mistake I Made", which described that after the oil crisis in1970s, BP entered the fields of nutrition technology, information technology, mining and so on for development because of worrying about the bleak prospects of the oil industry. Waters finally concluded that if we put half the energy into our core business as we did in our new business, we would have already created growth. If we can agree with the premise that there are few good opportunities, we can further promote them. The biggest loss is not the money lost on them, but the distraction of the original core business. Usually, when many leading enterprises start looking for new business, their original business does not begin to decline, but in the long run, "the future is not as good as the past." However, if resources and energy are not properly allocated between the old business and the new business, the decline of the original business may be accelerated. "It is very likely that it will take five years, 10 years, or even 15 years, before a truly suitable opportunity will appear." Campbell said. Therefore, the first principle of finding new business is to continue to invest in core business. As there are few new opportunities, many people will compare the process of finding new opportunities to finding a needle in a haystack. When they talk about this metaphor, they usually have a subtext: as long as they have enough patience, they will find it one by one. Campbell thinks this metaphor may be misleading, and the situation of finding new business is closer to waiting for rescue at sea: looking for a rescue signal at sea, sometimes there is no signal, sometimes there seems to be nothing, and it can only be determined when a rescue boat appears. If you wait patiently for this moment, you won't run out of flares, but you can also keep your strength and try to attract the attention of the rescue boat. With the mentality of looking for needles in the straw pile, the company may look at every straw to find opportunities, but it may be difficult to use straw as needles. Campbell said: "The current business is sinking much slower than expected. Moreover, this hole can be repaired. When the growth of core business slows down, it is imperative to make it last for a long time. Only when you are sure that you can board something safer can you give up. " "Venture mentality": Because it is difficult to find good growth opportunities by operating like venture capital, many people will try to operate like venture capital, screen a large number of projects and invest in a small number of projects. Finally, as long as one tenth of the projects are successful, they can get all the returns on them. The business community has such a successful example. Branson's Virgin Group is like a venture capital company. Branson said that every time he crossed the Atlantic, he received many new business plans. However, for most companies, this may not be the right strategy. Campbell's survey found that only 5% of enterprises can succeed by adopting this model. However, the fundamental reason is that the venture capital model is not suitable for successful enterprises. The first reason is that the basic logic of venture capital is that most of them will fail and only a few will succeed. It is impossible for enterprises to fully support these new businesses in the event of expected failure. Secondly, the resources within the enterprise cannot support multiple projects like venture capital. Thirdly, there is a famous saying in venture capital-only three factors are considered when choosing investment projects: management team, management team and management team. However, within the enterprise, it is difficult to form enough entrepreneurial teams to operate multiple projects at the same time, and successful enterprises usually have few entrepreneurial leaders. In order to develop in the future, enterprises need to find new business. But as Campbell said, enterprises should enter a "pragmatic era", rely on low-growth businesses and wait patiently for future opportunities. He believes that in the pragmatic era, many enterprises will not waste too much time and resources on new business, so that they lack patience and resources to invest in truly promising opportunities. In a pragmatic era, business leaders are more patient to evaluate and develop the advantages of enterprises. Before discovering new business, they will also pay more attention to the existing business and dig out the greatest value from it. According to the research of the Enterprise Strategy Committee, in 10, about 80% of the world's top 50 enterprises have a growth rate of less than 2%, and about 50% of them have experienced long-term negative growth. Low growth is the normal state of business. Campbell said that managing low growth is the most important ability of an enterprise. So his advice to enterprises is: caution is more than optimism, choice is more than experiment, patience is more than rashness.