Tracing back to Bloomberg's growing experience is like a standard sample of the American dream. The hero was born in a civilian family in Massachusetts, USA. As early as a teenager, he had a strong interest in information and technology. During his college years, he obtained a bachelor's degree in engineering from Johns Hopkins University. Then he got an MBA certificate from Harvard Business School. With two diplomas, Bloomberg entered salomon brother, a first-class investment company on Wall Street. This young man in his early twenties started from the most basic manual accounting, working 6 days a week, 12 hours a day. In the sixth year, he became a partner of salomon brother Company with diligent and persistent working attitude and keen and far-sighted business mind. Such achievements are enough proud capital for any young person. However, Bloomberg didn't seem to be satisfied at all, and he continued to work hard for the next nine years. Until 198 1, there was a dispute within salomon brother, and Bloomberg was thrown out of the house. His dream of operating 15 was shattered by the sudden impact. The morning after leaving the company, when Bloomberg pulled open the closet and put on a suit to go to work, he suddenly realized that he had been abandoned by the company. He squatted on the ground in despair, feeling desperate. In others' eyes, a 40-year-old winner was pushed down from a height when his life was about to reach its peak. This kind of pain, if not personally experienced, is unimaginable to others.
However, excellent leaders have such a character that they show extraordinary courage and commitment to team confidence in their actions. Bloomberg started his second venture with the company's compensation of 654.38 million+million. He analyzed his advantages very calmly. He believes that the global economy, including the American economy, is in a critical transition period, people's demand for timeliness and accuracy of information is growing, and the proportion of service industry is growing. The use of computers will transmit all information to users electronically through the network in the simplest way, which will be a major change and development trend of human economic life. Bloomberg believes that in such a transitional period, it is precisely the need for talents who know both securities investment and computer applications. So he positioned his new company as a company providing information services for financial institutions with new technologies, and named it: Innovative Market Systems Company. This company is the predecessor of the later Bloomberg Group. Bloomberg, who is used to doing big business, now finds it difficult to do small business. In order to survive, he and the founder of the company worked in front of the computer for a long time every day, and their eyes were extremely tired, so everyone came up with a time-saving and economical way to put a fish tank on each employee's desk. Once your eyes are tired, you will watch the goldfish swimming in the water for a while to relieve your fatigue as soon as possible. In such a tense day, Bloomberg often feels that dreams are so attractive and so far away.
A famous French writer once said: All efforts will not fail. During the period of 1982, due to the success of selling data terminals, Bloomberg was favored by a big company like Merrill Lynch, and they were very optimistic about the market value and team value of this small company. Merrill Lynch bought a 30% stake in Bloomberg for $30 million. At this time, Bloomberg breathed a sigh of relief and finally took the first step to realize his dream with the help of the resources of big companies. Pragmatic companies will grow at an amazing annual growth rate of 40% in the next 10 years.
Bloomberg headquarters
We were taken into the front office of the company. Although its front hall is not as spacious as Puhua Company, it is nearly 8 meters high, all of which are light brown marble walls and floors. Bypassing the front desk, it is a corridor of nearly 100 meters, also covered with light brown marble walls and floors, but there is a long set of modern installation art works on the right hand side of the wide corridor, which is made of dozens of wood materials resembling China root carving, one person high and one and a half meters wide. However, when you approach the work, you will find that it is completely different from the root carving, and each of its works is made of hundreds of rough wooden strips. Against the backdrop of nearly 100 meters of stone walls without any decoration, the power of the most primitive dreams that are condensed together impacts everyone who walks in front of the works.
By elevator, we were taken to the training building of Bloomberg Company. When we walked along the corridor, we were curious to find that the side of each classroom facing the corridor was all transparent glass. In this way, all people passing through the corridor can directly see the training content and the learning status of the trainers in the classroom as long as you glance at the classroom at will. Our guide, a clever American youth in Ming and Qing Dynasties, explained to us that transparency is an important part of company culture. When Mr. Bloomberg invited the designer of the world's tallest building, the Kuala Lumpur Twin Towers, to design the Bloomberg Tower, he demanded that the concept of transparency must be reflected in the design. So you can feel the transparency of the company not only on this floor, but also in all rooms and jobs on other floors.
It is an incredible myth that any enterprise can grow without setbacks. The development of Bloomberg is by no means smooth sailing. 1994, in that seemingly normal hot summer, the company's top management had a presentiment that a storm was coming. Due to the Fed's interest rate hike policy, the Wall Street stock market fell sharply. Many companies have laid off employees, and the financial business on Wall Street has dropped sharply. All this directly affected Bloomberg, whose main business is financial information services, and their rapid progress in 13 years was stopped. The sales of data terminals that support the company's cash flow are declining every month, and there is a question of how long the red flag can last inside and outside the company. Some people think that this financial information service provider has passed the peak of their development and can only face the monthly decline, with no hope of further growth.
In the rescue of the stranded company ship, Bloomberg once again showed his qualities as a leader. He firmly believes that his dream is the right direction. He decided decisively that the whole company must stick to its core business, that is, increase the sales of data terminals as much as possible. Only in this way can the company increase its cash flow in the fastest time. This seemingly simple decision was extremely difficult at that time. Because the company was not a single business direction at that time, Bloomberg had developed many other information services, such as magazines and media. However, Bloomberg himself believes that it is a waste of time to be distracted to take care of others at such a critical moment. His persistence influenced all his followers. Under the guidance of Bloomberg Luo Ji, the company finally sold an amazing number of data terminals. A steady stream of cash flow is like refueling, and the stranded ship has returned to its original route.
In a training classroom, a woman in charge of reception temporarily introduced us to the business philosophy, development process and main business of Bloomberg. As soon as the introduction was over, the lady apologized and said that she would go back to work at once. Because everyone's projects are very tight, we don't have department heads, only temporary project heads. Once the project is implemented, you have to work overtime. If the project is completed, the project leader will cancel it automatically. This can not only improve everyone's work efficiency, arouse everyone's enthusiasm, but also reduce the communication cost between departments.
Out of the training classroom, American youth began to show us around the main functional areas of Bloomberg Tower. In the company lounge, we saw a huge electronic screen surrounded by three sides on the empty wall overhead. One screen displays information such as time and weather, and the other two screens display information such as news and finance. The image background of each screen is dynamic, giving people an immersive feeling. On one side of the hall is a sumptuous buffet, fruits and various drinks. The guide said that because the company provides services to its partners 24 hours a day, our staff will also work in shifts 24 hours a day. In order to save more rest or work time, the company provides all employees with these buffets, fruits and drinks free of charge.
Today, Bloomberg has developed into a global multimedia group company integrating news, data and data analysis. Its interactive financial information network provides services to more than 260,000 professionals in 65,438+026 countries 24 hours a day. The business philosophy put forward by the company is that we must provide services for our partners 15 minutes ahead of any competitor. For this idea, the company has 1600 journalists all over the world, who devote themselves to their work every day. Bloomberg provides more than 4,000 news reports to 350 newspapers every day. At present, the company's TV business broadcasts financial and market information to 200 million viewers in seven languages through the 10 TV network. On April 26th, 2004, many media around the world announced that Bloomberg's financial data market revenue had surpassed the number one Reuters Group. On this day, maybe Bloomberg will tell himself in his heart: this is my dream of rebuilding more than 20 years ago.