Yi Xiaogang, CEO of Sany Heavy Industry: Independent innovation cannot be imitated behind foreign companies

("China Youth Daily" August 10 reporter Cheng Gang)On July 29, a unique collection ceremony was held in Xining, Qinghai. One has been in service on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau for 11 yearsConcrete pump truck, wearing red and hanging colors, embarking on the road of "going home", will be collected into the Trinity Museum in Changsha. As the first self-developed 37-meter boom pump truck in China, its advent 11 years ago broke the monopoly of foreign technology on the Chinese market and changed the pattern of the world's concrete machinery market.
It is also in this short period of 11 years that Sany Heavy Industry has grown rapidly from a little-known private enterprise to a leader in China's construction machinery industry.
"There are many factors for the success of Sany, but the main one is definitely independent innovation." Yi Xiaogang, executive president of Sany Heavy Industry, said. In that year, as the general person in charge of the R&D project, he personally drove the first domestic 37-meter boom pump truck off the assembly line. However, Yi Xiaogang, who has led the research and development for many years, admitted that the difficulties of *5655 also come from the understanding and persistence of the concept of independent innovation.
During the R&D process, it is common to hear engineers say two sentences, one is "foreign countries have done this, and we should do this", and the other is "foreign countries have not done this, and we can't do this". "If I hear an R&D engineer say these two words, I will definitely criticize them unceremoniously. We must have a sense of independent innovation, and we cannot follow the imitation of foreign enterprises. ”
In his view, the innovation ability of Chinese enterprises is not inferior to outsiders, the key is the lack of self-confidence, and he always believes that multinational enterprises have accumulated over the past hundred years of development and have strong capital and technical strength, and cannot catch up and surpass.
Sany recruits thousands of new people every year, and the first task is to "brainwash" them to get rid of this lack of self-confidence.
Self-confidence stems from the recognition of one's comparative advantage. Yi Xiaogang calculated the accounts. In the construction machinery industry, multinational companies have a R&D team of more than 500 people, which is already a lot. Sany has 29,000 employees, but there are more than 3,000 R&D personnel, and one in less than 10 employees is engaged in R&D. Sany's R&D expenditure accounts for more than 5% of sales revenue.
"Our employees work six days a week, and they often work overtime, and they only work four or five hours a day abroad, and there are various holidays. Our R&D talents are several times that of theirs, and the working hours are several times that of theirs, so is it impossible to achieve transcendence? Yi Xiaogang said that in fact, because the technology of multinational companies has been relatively mature, the speed of technological progress is relatively slow.
He believes that this kind of self-confident and innovative ideas should be cultivated from an early age and throughout the education system.
In the early 90s of the last century, many industries, including construction machinery, were popular "market for technology", that is, to open the market and allow foreign capital to enter in exchange for the other party to provide technology, and then to achieve localization. However, the actual effect is that multinational companies occupy the Chinese market and gain a monopoly position in the market by relying on technology-advanced products, but do not hand over technology to Chinese enterprises. The technology has not been learned, but the market has been lost, and many Chinese companies have suffered from it.
China's construction machinery industry has had a suffocating "history of humiliation".
In the 90s of the last century, foreign brands invaded the Chinese market in a big way. Due to backward technology and the inadaptability of the traditional system to the market environment, the entire domestic industry once fell into the predicament of being passively beaten. What is sad is that many large state-owned enterprises that were once supported by the state's key investment, such as Anshan Yigong with a national bulldozer of 5656, Fushun Excavator Factory of the national excavator production base, Hefei Mining Machinery Factory, which won the national * brand award, and Beijing Forklift General Factory, which sold 5656 forklifts in the country that year, have been squeezed out of the market and disappeared.
Excavators are known as "the best of construction machinery", but foreign brands once occupied a relative monopoly position of more than 90% in the market. In 2005, foreign brands joined hands to "raise prices", and local companies that were mired in low profit margins at that time were unable to fight back.
In Yi Xiaogang's view, the so-called localization at that time was actually to take other people's prototypes, imitate and produce them after surveying and mapping. "This is contrary to the original intention of innovation, and it has taken a long detour." He said.
Recognizing the cruelty of market competition, Chinese enterprises, including Sany, Liugong and Zoomlion, gave it a go, but released great vitality. Breakthroughs in independent research and development have not only enhanced the competitiveness of Chinese enterprises, but also greatly benefited domestic consumer enterprises.
Before the first self-developed 37-meter boom pump truck in China went off the assembly line, foreign brands dominated the world, and the price of a piece of equipment was five or six million yuan. Nowadays, on domestic construction sites, almost all of the domestic brand construction machinery can be seen.
Although there is a gap between Chinese companies and foreign brands such as Caterpillar and Komatsu, Sany, XCMG and Liugong have entered the *5656 echelon and have the basis for competing with multinational companies on a global scale.
Looking back on the development based on independent innovation for more than 10 years, Yi Xiaogang believes that policy support and government support are important, but the key to Chinese enterprises to fight a bloody road lies in the determination of independent innovation, "Enterprises must take independent innovation as a development strategy." Once we position ourselves as an independent innovation enterprise, we must get rid of our dependence on imported technology, and we can't simply imitate it, let alone simply 'copy homework'! ”