IoT Ecological Brand Standards: The Evolutionary Theory that Haier Sends to the World
Author:Qin Guan
Time:2020/10/01
阅读：4151
The Internet of Things has become a watershed in the development of the times, and countless brands are exploring the growth path to adapt to the times. On September 20th, the world's leading insight and consulting company […]
The Internet of Things has become a watershed in the development of the times, and countless brands are exploring the growth path to adapt to the times.
On September 20, Kantar Group, the world's leading insight and consulting company, joined hands with Saïd Business School of Oxford University and Haier Group to release the "White Paper on IoT Ecological Brands". This is the world's first ecological brand standard in the Internet of Things era, which means that there are "standards" to follow in the evolution of global corporate ecological brands. This is the silhouette of Haier's exploration in the Internet of Things era, and it can be called a growth manual for the corporate world .
Time travels and times change.
The wheel of history is rolling forward, and the pace of global industrial progress and development has not stopped.
In the tide of global industrial change, too many companies have gradually declined with the change of the times. There is no other reason, and it may only be called "the death of the times". Just like when the retail giant RT-Mart was acquired, people in the industry expressed emotion, "It has competed with all its peers, but lost to this era."
Coincidentally, the CEO of Nokia also expressed similar emotion when he was acquired by Microsoft, "We didn't do anything wrong, but we don't know why, we lost."
Why are these enterprises declining, and how should enterprises maintain their vitality in the face of a new era? Inquiring about the times may not give you a standard answer, but we hope that through this kind of continuous questioning, we will try our best to be a companion of the times and maintain the vitality of development.
Today, the dividends of the Internet economy are gradually fading, and a new era of the Internet of Things is accelerating. Just as former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said, the Internet is about to disappear, and a highly personalized, interactive and interesting world - the Internet of Things is accelerating.
Zhang Ruimin, Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of Haier Group, has a more unique view on the judgment of the trend of the times. He once publicly stated that in the era of the Internet of Things, companies must either transform into leaders of ecological brands or become partners of ecological brands.
Evolving into an ecological brand is Haier's answer to the question of the times, and it is also a specific path for Haier to follow the pulse of the times and keep pace with the times. In this regard, Felipe Thomas, an associate professor at Saïd Business School at Oxford University and a researcher at the "Future Marketing Initiative", said, "The concept of IoT ecological brand represents the future development direction. Every part of the IoT ecological brand system The value of a brand is thus enhanced."
For the question of the era of the Internet of Things, business circles, academic circles, and research institutions seem to be giving an increasingly clear common answer, that is, ecological branding. At the just-concluded Rendanheyi Model International Forum, Kantar Group, Oxford University and Haier jointly released the "White Paper on IoT Ecological Brand Standards" which just illustrates this point.
This white paper condenses the top wisdom from the business world, academia and consulting circles, and it can be called a guide for the development of the Internet of Things era. Its authority is self-evident: Kantar is a company with data research as its core. A consulting company with in-depth research on global industrial development; Oxford University has ranked first in the 2021 World University Rankings for five consecutive years, and Saïd Business School is known as the fastest-growing business school in Europe.
In this white paper, the IoT ecological brand has a clear definition for the first time, "The IoT ecological brand is to jointly create with users and partners, continuously provide unbounded and continuously iterative overall value experience, and finally realize lifelong users and A new brand paradigm of win-win symbiosis for all parties in the ecology and creating a value cycle for the society."
It is interesting to note that, obviously different from traditional brands, IoT ecological brands have two key points: one is unbounded co-creation, and the other is win-win symbiosis. Unbounded co-creation is to face the complex user needs in the Internet of Things era. Enterprises must innovate together with users and partners to meet user needs. Win-win symbiosis emphasizes that in the process of co-creation, all parties in the ecology can achieve value-added, continuous Create new social value and ecological value.
At this moment, ecological brand becomes the winning way for enterprises to stand at the forefront of the Internet of Things era. And this white paper comes at an opportune time.
In Zhang Ruimin's view, in the future economy, if an enterprise is not an ecology, or even an important part of the ecology, it will "doomed for sure".
When the times abandon you, they won't even say goodbye to you.
The era, with its unique cruelty, forces companies to be vigilant all the time, and constantly seek to step into the rhythm of the times.
It is still an unknown mystery where the global industry will go after the Internet of Things era. After continuous exploration, Haier seems to have explored a path of transformation for this era that can be used for reference, at least a development path that can be used for reference by the times. According to Steve Denning, former knowledge management director of the World Bank and Forbes columnist, “Haier has always been at the forefront of organizational operation, not only in the leading position in the management mode of the 20th century, but also in the management mode of the 21st century. Frontier." He believes, "This is not a walled garden, but a borderless ecosystem."
This may be the core of Haier as a key research case in the White Paper on Internet of Things Ecological Brands. So why is Haier at the forefront of the times?
This stems from Zhang Ruimin's long-term thinking about maintaining the vitality of enterprises.
"All companies are doomed, and their lifespans are getting shorter and shorter. The same is true for the world's top 500 companies." Zhang Ruimin said at a forum earlier. Kevin Kelly, the former editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, shares a similar view with Zhang Ruimin: all companies are doomed, and all cities are nearly immortal. Some cities have stood for thousands of years without falling down, because cities are ecological and can continue to grow.
This is the original intention and key point of Haier's exploration of IoT ecological brand.
On May 10, 2018, Zhang Ruimin first proposed the concept of IoT ecological brand. In June 2019, the brand category of "Internet of Things Ecology" was established for the first time. Haier, as the first and only IoT ecological brand, entered the BrandZ Top 100 Global Brands list. In 2020, Haier was once again on the list as the only "Internet of Things Ecology" brand for two consecutive years, and its global ranking rose from 89 last year to 68, a jump of 21 places.
From Haier's inclusion in the "BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands" to the joint release of the White Paper on IoT Ecological Brands with Kantar and Saïd Business School of Oxford University, it fully demonstrates that Haier has taken the lead in the IoT era. In fact, Haier's exploration in the Internet of Things era can be condensed into two sentences: redefining users and redefining enterprises.
The essence of the Internet era is the traffic economy, and the Internet of Things era is accompanied by the application of big data between the individual needs of users and the interconnection of devices, and the era of experience economy, sharing economy and community economy is coming. The biggest feature at this time is that users become industry leading force of development. The ecological brand transformation explored by Haier is to redefine the interactive relationship between enterprises and users, that is, to allow users to participate in business activities, and to transform users from mere consumers into "prosumers".
However, this change is mainly due to the "Rendanheyi" model explored by Haier. In this model, employees are transformed into entrepreneurs, and the Haier platform builds an ecosystem around user needs for innovation, and realizes user value by creating personalized scene experiences for users, and realizes its own value in the process. In other words, the biggest change in Haier’s Rendanheyi model is the transformation of two types of people. Users are transformed into prosumers, and employees are transformed into entrepreneurs. This is the long-term force driving the development of the enterprise.
Traditional enterprises are walled organizations, while eco-brands are borderless ecology. This may be the best expression of Haier's redefinition of the concept of enterprises in the Internet of Things era. Haier's ongoing exploration is to break the boundaries of the enterprise and expand the enterprise into a complete ecological system, thereby attracting various ecological parties to enter and form a tropical rainforest.
This is the road of the times that Haier explores, and it is also the road of exploration for ecological brands in the era of the Internet of Things. Just as Wang Xing, CEO of Kantar Group China and Global President of BrandZ said, “Many companies, including Google and Huawei, are asking us: how to build an ecological brand and how to learn from it?” This was a common question of many well-known companies.
Products will be replaced by scenarios, and industries will be covered by ecology.
This is Haier's latest judgment on the Internet of Things era.
As Zhang Ruimin has said many times, there is no successful enterprise, only the enterprise of the times. He has an extremely clear understanding of Haier's development, which is to always follow the rhythm of the development of the times.
The release of the "White Paper on Internet of Things Ecological Brands" marks the formation of a brand building paradigm for the Internet of Things era. This is not only the world's first ecological brand standard, but also Haier's gift to the Internet of Things era. It will open the global Internet of Things era A new era of development.
In the traditional era, Haier's "smashing refrigerator" awakened the quality consciousness of the enterprise, and thus won the first quality gold medal in the history of Chinese refrigerators. This story has always been regarded as a classic by the Chinese business community, because for a long period of time since then, through its own efforts, Made in China has gradually shed the label of low price and low quality that has been criticized in the world, and this is exactly what Haier " Smashing the Refrigerator" contributed to that time.
In the era of the Internet of Things, Haier transforms into an ecological brand and transforms the enterprise into a borderless open innovation ecology. Taking the smart kitchen as an example, Haier no longer provides users with a single product solution, but integrates ecological resources to provide users with scene solutions. Create a smart kitchen scene for users to meet diverse scene needs such as purchasing, storage, cooking, cleaning, and safety.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg in Haier's ecological transformation. At present, Haier's ecological platform can not only see the unique Haier Internet of Clothing, jumping out of the single product end of the washing machine, but incorporating the entire industry resources such as clothing and washing into the ecology; you can also see the unique Gooday Logistics breaks the delivery boundaries of traditional logistics, thus creating a new model of scene logistics; there are also blood networks, vaccine networks, and biological sample networks...each of which is an ecology and a unique subversive innovation .
In this sense, the "White Paper on Internet of Things Ecological Brands" is obviously an outlier, because it publicizes the "Morse Code" of ecological brand building, and creates a completely open source brand building paradigm that global companies can learn from. It plays an important role in promoting the accelerated arrival of the entire Internet of Things era.
The "White Paper on Internet of Things Ecological Brand Standards" established the co-evolution model for Haier and its partners. Under this model, the iteration of user experience will continue forever, and the IoT ecological brand will also continue to grow.
Qin Guan 