With the arrival of a large number of new technologies, how can we become the "king" of emerging industries?

Several IT industry leaders have quoted this sentence: "Technology is always overestimated in the short term, but always underestimated in the long term." This means that people's understanding of new technologies is misplaced, and these misalignments may lead us to "either get up too early and overexert ourselves to seize new technology opportunities, and become the early bird that dies, or get up too late and miss the golden period of layout and become the bird that lags behind."

Regarding the development process of new technologies from germination to maturity, consulting firm Gartner has an emerging technology maturity curve, which describes the evolution of technology from the trigger stage, expectation inflation stage, illusion trough stage, enlightenment climbing stage to production maturity stage. Recently, Gartner released the 2019 Emerging Technology Maturity Curve Report, which shows that technologies in five dimensions, including perception and mobility, human enhancement, post-classical computing and communications, digital ecosystems, and advanced AI and analytics, will have a significant impact on business, society and people's livelihood in the next 5 to 10 years.

Among them, in the dimension of "perception and mobility", it is recommended to pay attention to 3D sensing cameras, AR cloud, light cargo drones, autonomous aircraft and autonomous driving level 5, level 4, etc. In the dimension of "human enhancement", it is recommended to pay attention to biochips, anthropomorphism, enhanced intelligence, emotional artificial intelligence, immersive workspaces, biotechnology cultivation or artificial organizations, etc. In the dimension of "post-classical computing and communications", it is recommended to pay attention to 5G, next-generation memory, low-Earth orbit satellite systems and nano 3D printing, etc. In the dimension of "digital ecosystem", it is recommended to pay attention to digital computing, knowledge graphs, data synthesis, decentralized autonomous organizations, etc. In the dimension of advanced AI and analysis, it is recommended to pay attention to adaptive machine learning, edge artificial intelligence, edge analysis, explainable AI, partial distribution of artificial intelligence, transfer learning, generative adversarial networks and graph analysis, etc.

Will biochips, emotional artificial intelligence, autonomous flying vehicles, truly unmanned autonomous driving, low-Earth orbit satellite systems, etc. really arrive in five or ten years? If so, how should we embrace these technologies that are just beginning to emerge? How can we "strike a balance between ideals and reality"? How can we smoothly move from the "trough of disillusionment" to "steadily climbing" to maturity and become the "king" of the emerging technology industry?

"Choosing the right time" to build a moat during the critical window period
"Investment trends are more important than investment companies." Masayoshi Son, chairman and president of SoftBank Group, once said. Recently, Son mentioned the trend of the next 30 years in a summit forum speech. He said: "30 years later, there will be a large number of AI companies among the top ten companies in the world by market value." For the next 30 years, now is a critical time for layout, so SoftBank is investing in these fields. For this reason, he showed several photos and pictures in his speech. This group of photos means that "autonomous driving will become inevitable in 15 years."

We are in the best era for entrepreneurship, with a large influx of capital, talent, and resources. Regarding new technology entrepreneurship, an industry insider once told a reporter from China Electronics News: "In fact, there may only be a half-year window between startups and large companies, because large companies have talent, technology reserves, and funds. As long as they set their sights on a field, they can rush in quickly and may soon surpass startups. So what entrepreneurs can do is to act early, the earlier the better, while large companies have not yet woken up and noticed, quickly establish their own advantages, grow quickly, and even if they are acquired, they can sell at a good price."

Today, a large number of new technology entrepreneurs are "garage-starting" in new fields such as biochips, edge artificial intelligence, knowledge graphs, and autonomous aircraft. What may greet them is the hustle and bustle of the technology trigger period and the expectation expansion period, with a large amount of capital chasing investment and a large number of entrepreneurs rushing in, or they may have passed the expansion period and entered the capital winter and the bottom of the illusion. As Yu Kai, the founder of Horizon Robotics, revealed at the beginning of this year: "I have received a lot of resumes recently, most of which are from bankrupt startups." This may be the inevitable process of the development of new technologies, all of which are twists and turns. But only by persistence can you truly achieve your own opportunities, get through the climbing period, and pick the peaches of mature industries. Therefore, Yu Lali, the author of "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind", said that in the era of artificial intelligence, people must stick to emotional intelligence and resilience to win the war with machines.

On August 14, the "Top 100 Chinese Internet Companies" list was announced, and Alibaba ranked first this year. When Xing Yue, vice president of Alibaba Group, gave a keynote speech, he put a special photo in his PPT. It was a photo of Jack Ma climbing the Great Wall when he led 18 Arhats to return to Hangzhou after their failed business venture in Beijing. The caption next to it was "Because we believe, we see", a sentence Jack Ma often mentioned. Xing Yue said: "Although the business venture in Beijing failed, Mr. Ma and these people still had smiles on their faces." It was because of belief that Jack Ma led these people to persevere and created Alipay, Taobao, Alibaba Cloud, Ant Financial, etc. in 20 years. Alibaba's goal in 2036 is to help 10 million small and medium-sized enterprises make profits, serve 2 billion consumers worldwide, and create 100 million jobs.

A few days ago, Baifendian celebrated its 10th birthday. Baifendian is a data intelligence company that currently has more than 10,000 customers. Su Meng, founder and CEO of Baifendian, said in an interview with China Electronics News: "Everyone sees that we display mature and successful products. In fact, behind every product we release, there are a large number of failed and unsuccessful products. In fact, failure and trial and error are valuable because you know which dimensions are wrong."

Some people may think that since the development of new technologies must go through the process of expectations inflating, disillusionment and the bottom before climbing back up to maturity, why not wait until the expectations are disillusioned before entering? In fact, opportunities lie in the process of trial and error, and there is not much time and opportunity for trial and error. Once others have established a technical and market moat in the process of trial and error, it is not easy for others to come in. Wang Jian, founder of Alibaba Cloud and chairman of Alibaba's Technology Committee, once told a reporter from China Electronics News about the creation of Alibaba Cloud that year, "Product development is always the result of interaction with users. Competitiveness is never learned from books. It must be formed under the impetus of user needs. Only by solving problems by following problems can competitiveness be formed. In the process of making Fei Tian, ​​Alibaba encountered many problems and received a lot of criticism. It was only by constantly working hard to solve problems that it grew up."

Moreover, technological development is showing a superposition and diffusion effect. In the past, technologies that may have gone through more and longer trough periods may have accelerated their development today due to the superposition and diffusion effects of technology. Liu Hong, technical general manager of Greater China at the Global Mobile Communications Technology Association (GSMA), said in an interview with a reporter from China Electronics News that although Gartner puts 5G at the peak of the expectation inflation period, since 5G is an iterative evolution based on 2G/3G/4G, its curve shape is different from those of non-iterative technologies. Specifically, expectations will not be so inflated, the disillusionment period will be shorter, and the gap between peaks and troughs will be smaller.

"At present, the industry's view on 5G is generally pragmatic, and there is a consensus on the phased development of 5G and its long-term coexistence with 4G. In the short term, 5G will drive the development of bandwidth-sensitive high-definition video and AR/VR-related businesses. In the long term, 5G will empower various industries including education, tourism, transportation, medical care, and industrial manufacturing, and promote their digital transformation. The combination of 5G and artificial intelligence technology will enable operators to truly build an intelligent autonomous network to help change our future," said Liu Hong.

"Choosing a path" means taking into account the reality and reaching the ideal shore
. For new technology entrepreneurs, the future may be bright, but they must learn to survive in the present, so that they can reach "the day when the ideal comes true."

In fact, you need enough adaptability on the road.

Wu Gansha is the founder and CEO of UISEE Technology. Before he started his own business, he was the director of Intel China Research Institute. In an interview with a reporter from China Electronics News, he said that starting a business in the field of autonomous driving is difficult, and of course it takes time for the technical algorithms to evolve and mature, but what is more difficult is the commercial implementation and finding a business model suitable for the development of the enterprise. "Fully autonomous driving L5 is an ideal kingdom, but in fact, a company's development cannot be "sharpening only one sword" in ten years. It must learn to "make its own bread" on the road." So after he entered the field of autonomous driving to start a business, on the one hand, he moved towards the L4L5 direction of high-speed autonomous driving on open roads. On the other hand, he also promoted the implementation of conditional intelligent driving in various commercial scenarios such as parks, factories, and shopping malls. At present, UISEE Technology has achieved commercial breakthroughs in four directions: "L3 OEM mass production", "unmanned minibus operation", "open road national road testing", and "cloud brain and international car factory cooperation".