Why is this happening? Of course, there are many external factors, such as a good ecological environment for innovation has not yet formed, the innovation motivation and incentives are insufficient, the investment and risk of innovation are too high, and good returns can be obtained without innovation. However, under the same conditions and background, why can some enterprises stand out and become innovation models, while others are mediocre? In the final analysis, enterprises still have to look for problems and deficiencies from themselves.
At present, China's economic development has entered a new normal, and the international market has become increasingly complex, steep and unpredictable. In the past, many hotbeds on which small and medium-sized enterprises depended for survival, such as demographic dividend, reform and opening-up dividend, resource and environment dividend, and the resulting low-cost comparative advantages of production factors such as labor force, no longer exist. "Innovation or death" is increasingly becoming an iron law. Whether it is for the sustained and steady growth of the national economy, optimizing the industrial structure, or for enterprises to adapt to the new normal, lead the new normal, and accelerate the implementation of the innovation-driven development strategy, it is more urgent and more difficult to avoid. To this end, small and medium-sized enterprises must have the courage to try in innovation, have a sense of responsibility, and have the wisdom to plan strategies.
First of all, we should fully understand the necessity and significance of innovation-driven development of small and medium-sized enterprises at this stage. Since the reform and opening up, China has taken a factor-driven and investment-driven development path intentionally or unintentionally according to its own resource endowment and comparative advantages, and achieved staged success. In the 1990s, the government and enterprises continued to invest heavily, gradually improved various infrastructures, introduced advanced technology and equipment from the global market, and established modern, efficient and mass-produced factories. It has formed strong competitiveness in capital-intensive and labor-intensive industries such as basic raw materials, standardized products and parts, and the economies of scale are particularly obvious, making China the most important manufacturing base in the world.
However, this development model continues to this day, and we not only feel the great pressure brought by the shortage of resources and environmental pollution, but also after the international financial crisis, western countries led by the United States began to adjust their industrial structure and consumption patterns and implement re-industrialization, which made our traditional development model face unprecedented challenges. If the development mode is not changed decisively in time, the sustained and stable economic development will be difficult to sustain.
High savings rate and high investment rate can achieve rapid economic growth, but if we can't transform to innovation-driven growth mode in time, economic efficiency will not come up because of insufficient technological progress, thus making investment efficiency show a decreasing trend. Not only can residents not share more fruits of economic growth, but capital accumulation may also lead to "negative wealth", which will eventually lead to the end of economic growth and fall into the so-called "middle income trap". In this context, SMEs are duty-bound to drive transformation and upgrading with innovation.
Secondly, the operators of small and medium-sized enterprises should have the confidence to win in innovation and the determination to be proactive. Akio Morita, the founder of Sony, once said, "Anyone can innovate, as long as his life depends on innovation." There is also a Latin proverb to the effect that "necessity is the mother of invention." History has fully proved that any enterprise or individual can produce amazing creativity and innovative spirit. As long as it is absolutely necessary, there is no retreat.
For example, the famous innovative enterprise, American 3M Company, embarked on the road of innovation in this way. 1906, six miners in Minnesota, USA, put all their personal savings into a "worthless" gravel pit and faced bankruptcy. They had hoped to mine valuable minerals, but they only found sand. In desperation, they invented sandpaper (the first product of 3M), and then it was a glorious history. There is no end to invention and innovation, and there are always opportunities, but they belong to brave and hard-working people.
To this end, managers and employees of small and medium-sized enterprises should regard innovation as a necessary condition for the survival of the company, have a sense of urgency and crisis in taking innovative actions and implementing creativity, and believe that there is always a reward for paying, and no pains, no gains. Enterprises are striving for more quantity, better quality, faster speed, lower cost and higher customer satisfaction every day from top to bottom, which will naturally lead to innovation; On the other hand, enterprises will make persistent efforts and keep innovating, which will naturally achieve the above achievements and achievements.
Thirdly, SME operators should have a sense of innovative mission and entrepreneurial spirit, and create a cultural atmosphere suitable for innovation. Innovation is the function of entrepreneurs, and invention and creation are the embodiment of entrepreneurial spirit. Without entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship, small and medium-sized enterprises will not have successful innovation. Practice has proved that small and medium-sized enterprises with excellent entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial spirit have strong innovation ability, and vice versa.
Entrepreneurs and their spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship are the key to the success of enterprise innovation. But this does not mean that employees are not important to SME innovation. On the contrary, an enterprise with entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial spirit must have a corporate culture atmosphere that encourages all employees to innovate, so that everyone can be proud of and enjoy innovation. Because ordinary employees are most familiar with the problems existing in enterprise products and services, have the closest contact with customers, can find the shortcomings of products and services in the first time, and have the best advantage to innovate and improve.
For small and medium-sized enterprises with insufficient funds and talents, ordinary employees are the most valuable innovation resources, which is just ignored by many enterprises. If they can't make heroic achievements and stay out of trouble, busy managers can easily ignore ordinary workers and their ideas. Small and medium-sized enterprise operators who struggle for the survival of their enterprises must never suppress the richest source of new ideas. They should give employees full space to play freely, create a cultural atmosphere that encourages innovation and entrepreneurship and tolerates failure, and give innovators reasonable returns and effective incentives.
Thirdly, SMEs should attach importance to non-technological innovation. Innovation is divided into technical innovation and non-technical innovation. The latter includes system innovation, management innovation and business model innovation. Technological innovation with independent intellectual property rights is very important for the development of small and medium-sized enterprises, especially industrial manufacturing enterprises, but non-technological innovation can not be ignored or even more important. Because successful enterprises are not necessarily technologically advanced enterprises, but they must be enterprises with leading systems, management or business models.
For example, the employee stock ownership system contributed to Huawei's rapid becoming a world leader in the communications equipment industry. Today, 60% of the innovations of American enterprises are business model innovations and 40% are technological innovations. The importance of business model to independent innovation can be seen. The core of business model innovation is value innovation. Both Apple in the United States and Haier Group in China are recognized as technical leaders, but Apple can become the world's largest company with market value from a niche supplier of "cool" products, and Haier can rise against the market in the case of a general decline in the profitability of the global home appliance industry, relying not on "excellent technology" but on business models. The former is "the integration of hardware, software and services", and the latter is "the integration of people and orders needed in zero inventory".
The rapid development of the new economy in the United States, represented by the emerging industries of the Internet, is closely related to the patents granted for business model (business method) innovation from 65438 to 0998. Many enterprises in China have put knowledge creation, technological innovation and product innovation to a strategic height, but they have not paid enough attention to business model innovation. So that although some enterprises have advanced technology, their products are neglected in the market. The important reason is that they didn't innovate in value from the perspective of "maximizing customer value", and didn't innovate in business model from the aspects of constituent elements, the relationship between elements or dynamic mechanism, so as to develop the potential needs of users and attract customers' interest. With system innovation, business model innovation and management innovation, technological innovation often comes naturally.
Finally, small and medium-sized enterprises should be good at using intellectual property strategy. The report of the 17th and 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China put forward the strategy of implementing intellectual property rights, emphasizing the protection of intellectual property rights, which has important guiding significance for small and medium-sized enterprises. The ability of small and medium-sized enterprises to create, use, protect and manage intellectual property rights determines their core competitiveness.
Intellectual property is the most important factor of production and wealth resource in knowledge economy. Intellectual property is a powerful tool for international competition in the era of knowledge economy. In the international competition arena, intellectual property is the core weapon. There are three hegemonies in the United States, namely, financial hegemony, military hegemony and intellectual hegemony, among which intellectual hegemony is reflected in the three firsts of intellectual property-related industries: the number of PPT international patent applications is the highest in the world, the number of well-known trademarks is the highest in the world, and the income of copyright-related industries is the highest in the world.
For a long time, the level of creation, protection and application of intellectual property rights has restricted the healthy development of enterprises and economy in China. Because our local enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, lack the consciousness of independent innovation and are diligent in imitation and introduction, they are often at a disadvantage in the fierce market competition with multinational companies. Even if a certain market is obtained by relying on the advantages of low cost and low price, it will inevitably be suppressed by intellectual property infringement lawsuits. In recent years, multinational companies are used to using intellectual property sticks to prevent China enterprises from entering the international market.
Therefore, China's small and medium-sized enterprises must strengthen independent innovation, consciously raise awareness of intellectual property protection, and attach importance to the implementation of intellectual property strategy. For small and medium-sized enterprises, especially high-tech enterprises, innovation without patent protection is equivalent to building tall buildings on the beach. Therefore, enterprises should establish organizations and various rules and regulations to protect trade secrets and intellectual property rights.