Xiaoming Zhu

The O2O Model—From Online/Offline to the O2O Model

Why did Wanda Group, an offline real estate enterprise, announce its launch of an intensive e-Commerce campaign in July 2014?

Platforms—From the One-Sided Market to the One-Sided + Two-Sided Market

JD.com brought its B2C site (www.jdlaser.com) online on January 1, 2004, and in June 2007 renamed the company Jingdong Mall and adopted a new domain name, 360buy.com. In the second quarter of 2008, JD claimed its first place in China’s B2C market with 18 % market share. In December 2010, JD opened its online platform to brand owners, charging a commission according to the type of service.

Outsourcing and Crowdsourcing—From Building All-Round Capabilities to Outsourcing and Crowdsourcing

Wreckage searching can be crowdsourced? In March 2014, four days after Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 had gone missing, DigitalGlobe, an American satellite mapping company, set up Tomnod, a crowd-sourcing initiative, encouraging internet users to scan and tag images of more than 1200 mi2 of ocean to locate the missing plane. Each online volunteer was given some satellite images and directions to tag any suspicious hints, floating objects or airplane wreckage. An algorithm would tally all of the tags, note any areas of the ocean that consistently attracted attention and then pass over the findings to governments involved in the rescue efforts. Unexpectedly 25,000 users signed up within a single day, crashing the website.

Seizing Innovation Opportunities

With the ten mega business trends discussed in the previous chapters, this chapter aims to provide readers with two facts about these trends. First, business trends in different countries, regions and sectors may not necessarily resemble each other. Second, the ultimate goal of identifying the trends is to seize opportunities while avoiding uncertainty, which is, to go beyond gaining an understanding of these trends.

Mobile Internet—From PC-Based Internet to PC-Based Internet and Mobile Internet

When you get lost in an unfamiliar place, Baidu Map on your mobile phone will guide you to your destination with its voice assistant; When you are in a bus station, subway, coffee shop, or airport lounge, you can browse the news, read a novel, tweet, play games or watch movies on your mobile phone or tablet; When you need a taxi, you can use Didi Taxi on your mobile phone to find a taxi nearby, and then you can pay for the fare with WeChat Payment or the WeChat “Red Envelope” you just got; When you and your friends want to eat out, you can take out your mobile phone and log into Dianping.com, open “search in the city”, set a target area, price range, type of cuisine, etc., and within minutes you can find the best restaurant option; When you are on a business trip, you can read messages and photographs posted a moment ago by your friends, colleagues and family members through WeChat, and of course you also can post interesting things to share with them, or even chat directly by voice or video chat.

Big Data—From Raw Data to Big Data

On April 4, 2014, a domestic agency forecasted that Mount Tai would be the most crowded scenic destination in China in the upcoming weekend. The next day, Mount Tai indeed appeared at the top of the list of tourist destinations released by CCTV. Who was responsible for this incredibly accurate forecast, helping tourists escape the crowd? It was Baidu! Baidu built a tourist forecast model based on big data that predicts the number of visitors to main tourist attractions around the world. Research indicates Baidu’s forecasts are more than 90 % accurate compared with actual visitor numbers.

The Long Tail Market—From Economies of Scale to Economies of Scale and the Long Tail Market

Now let’s look back at the heated American presidential election in 2008. When the final results were in, the two key terms were “African American voters” and “the Internet”. These two terms are tied to one person: Barack Obama.

Software Defined Anything—From Software-Defined Hardware to Software Defined Anything

Marc Andreessen, a well-known engineer, investor and columnist based in Silicon Valley, is the inventor of the first graphical web browser, Mosaic, co-founder of Netscape and member of the board of directors at Facebook, eBay and Hewlett-Packard. In 2011, an article Andreessen authored for The Wall Street Journal, Why Software Is Eating the World, received considerable attention. In the article, Andreessen wrote about the growing impact of software: the key point of the article is that software is becoming even more pervasive; it is eating the world. He also made a list of the best-performing companies in many industries that we are familiar with, for instance:

Prosumer Economy—From Supply Chain to Prosumer Economy

In the initial stage of Netflix, its founder deeply believed that his website can provide a new way of renting movies, more convenient, less expensive and with fewer troubles. He also believed that his customers loved online services offered by Netflix, and a large number of potential customers heard of his company. However, the problem was that the subscription rates in other US cities were much lower than that in the San Francisco Bay area. What, then, was different about the Bay area? An intensive survey was launched to examine the attitudes of both Netflix customers and noncustomers in cities around the United States.

Cloud Computing—From Offline Computing to Cloud Computing

Do you remember the movie Charlie and The Chocolate Factory? In the movie, there was a flying machine that could move chocolate beans to each workshop to make chocolates; there were well-trained squirrels that could remove nutshells and throw bad nuts into the bin; there was also a delivery machine, which transferred chocolates directly to the TV screens of each household so that people could grab them by hand.