Originally, decimal was used because in early human history, it was convenient to count using their 10 fingers, which eventually formed the decimal system. When you use your thumb to count the joints of the other four fingers, you have exactly 12, hence the duodecimal system. Later, when the joints were not enough, they would bend down a finger on the left hand after counting a full round, resulting in the sexagesimal system.
There are many examples like this in the book, which is the clearest and most understandable business book I have ever read. The author simplifies complex business decisions into mathematical concepts, making it surprisingly fascinating to read. It's amazing to realize that it's actually like this, and learning to approach the business world from a mathematical perspective makes it not so difficult.
The overall success rate of entrepreneurship = 100% - (100% - basic success rate) ^ number of attempts.
This is the formula for entrepreneurial success given by the author. To understand it, you first need to know what the basic success rate is. The basic success rate is greater than 0 and less than 100%. It is a multi-factor variable influenced by the entrepreneur's personal abilities (such as previous entrepreneurial experience, team leadership experience, etc.), the characteristics of the industry, the level of competition, various policies, and unexpected situations.
Due to the many uncertainties, the basic success rate is generally not high. Only 2% of small and medium-sized enterprises in China can survive for 10 years. Assuming your basic success rate is 10 times the average level, it would be 20%.
20% is still not high, what should you do? This requires increasing the number of attempts.
If you randomly draw 1 card from 5 cards and the basic success rate of winning the first prize and getting an iPhone is 1/5, which is 20%.
If you didn't win on the first try, you can try again on the second try. What is the probability of winning on the second try? 36%.
Why is it 36%? Because the probability of not winning on the first try is 80%, and the probability of not winning on the second try is also 80%. The probability of not winning on both tries is 80% * 80% = 64%. So the probability of winning at least once is 1 - 64% = 36%. Although your basic success rate is still 20%, by increasing the number of attempts, your overall success rate becomes 36%.
What if you try 3 times? You will find that the overall success rate becomes 48.8%.
Entrepreneurship is the same. The more you persist and don't give up, the higher your overall success rate. And because the experience of entrepreneurial failure can be continuously accumulated, your basic success rate will continue to improve, which is why we often say "failure is the mother of success".
Okay, let's go back to the original formula, the overall success rate of entrepreneurship = 100% - (100% - basic success rate) ^ number of attempts. If you want to succeed in entrepreneurship, either increase the basic success rate or increase the number of attempts to maximize the overall success rate.
Increasing the basic success rate requires you to be eager for knowledge, constantly learning, improving personal abilities, understanding industry characteristics, and avoiding risks. Increasing the number of attempts requires you to persist and not give up. When your basic success rate remains at 20%, if you try 10 times, the overall success rate will reach 99.44%.
You have probably heard this question before: Should a company hire employees with good skills or good attitudes?
For a company, both skills and attitudes are important. Either skills or attitudes alone is a binary thinking. In fact, skills and attitudes are not on the same dimension, so they cannot be compared together. When faced with such a question, we can try to think in higher dimensions.
In one dimension, there is a straight line, with good skills on one end and good attitudes on the other end. We have to choose one or the other, either left or right, and we cannot have both.
But if we move to two dimensions, we can draw a coordinate system, with skills on the horizontal axis and attitudes on the vertical axis. We can divide employees into four quadrants:
Quadrant 1: Stars, with strong skills and good attitudes.
Quadrant 2: Novices, with weak skills but good attitudes.
Quadrant 3: Mediocre, with weak skills and poor attitudes.
Quadrant 4: Troublemakers, with strong skills but poor attitudes.
This is also how Alibaba classifies its employees, and different strategies for recruitment can be formulated for employees in different quadrants. "Those with both virtue and talent are promoted regardless of their qualifications; those with virtue but without talent are cultivated and utilized; those with talent but without virtue are restricted from being hired; those without both virtue and talent are absolutely not hired."
Why can we cultivate and utilize those with virtue but without talent, while restricting the hiring of those with talent but without virtue?
Here we need to move to another dimension, and introduce a third dimension on top of attitudes and skills: plasticity.
It is obvious that personal morality is related to one's experiences and worldview, and it is difficult to reshape. However, if the attitude is correct, work skills can be quickly developed.
Therefore, with the addition of plasticity, the two-dimensional coordinate system can be upgraded to a three-dimensional coordinate system. Novices have weak skills, good attitudes, and high plasticity. Troublemakers have strong skills, poor attitudes, and low plasticity. Therefore, novices are cultivated and utilized, while troublemakers are restricted from being hired.
So when we face complex problems, how do we execute in lower dimensions?
Let's look at this example: How to solve the problem of global warming, how to solve the problem of carbon emissions? This problem seems very complex, but Bill Gates gave a "decomposition formula" for solving the problem of carbon emissions in a TED talk: CO2 = P * S * E * C;
P is Population, the population;
S is Service Per Person, which is how many services each person needs, such as driving, cooking, etc.;
E is Energy Per Service, which is how much energy each service uses;
C is CO2 Per Unit Energy, which is how much carbon dioxide is emitted per unit of energy.
With this formula, to solve the problem of carbon emissions, you just need to solve the population problem (P), the problem of environmentally friendly lifestyles (S), the problem of energy efficiency (E), and the problem of carbon emissions from energy production (C). A grand problem can be broken down into four separate problems to be solved, which is dimensional reduction execution.
Let's start with a question:
Yesterday, I started climbing the mountain at 8 am and reached the summit at 8 pm. After a night's sleep, today I started descending from the summit at 8 am and reached the foot of the mountain at 8 pm. Is there a moment when yesterday's me and today's me are standing in the same position?
How would you think about this question?
Let's first think about your answer.
Actually, this question is very simple, you just need to change your thinking. You can transform this question into: You and another person, one going down from the summit and the other going up from the foot of the mountain, are walking the same path, will you definitely meet?
So the point where you meet is the point where yesterday's me and today's me meet.
This question is a Microsoft interview question that has stumped many people. But actually, you just need to change your thinking to solve it. Changing your thinking is very important and can help you simplify complex problems in our daily lives. For example, when eating at a restaurant and spending 200 yuan, and the restaurant says that if you top up 1000 yuan, the meal will be free, it means you are buying something worth 1200 yuan for 1000 yuan, which is a discount of 8.3%.
By changing the way of thinking, you will find that behind some fancy actions, there are very simple data, and we can directly address the essence of the problem.
A person's logic determines their thinking, behavior, and ultimately determines the upper limit of their life. So, improve yourself.
Web 1.0: The internet model before 2003, the static HTML era of the web, although dynamic HTML also appeared, mainly for human-computer dialogue, such as email, BBS, QQ, chat rooms, etc.
Web 2.0: The term for a new type of internet application since 2003, which has evolved from passive "reading" to "writing" and "collaborative creation"; from passive acceptance of information to active creation of internet information...
Its biggest feature: A large number of micro-content emerges. "People" are involved, forming social networks, especially the presence of "friends", allowing information to flow between individuals...
From the basic functions of social software, the motivations of users using the software, and the nature of the operating website, it can be divided into six categories (Huang Jianjun's classification):
- Creation and publication type, such as blogs, Sina blogs, Tianya forums. These media provide users with a platform for creation and publication.
- Resource sharing type, such as YouTube, Flickr, Tudou. On these websites, users share resources by uploading self-made content and organize and navigate information through tags.
- Hotspot aggregation type, such as Digg and Buzz. These websites rely on user-submitted content and use user evaluations to rank the content. This ranking result often triggers the "Matthew effect" and accelerates the spread of a specific topic.
- Collaborative editing type, such as Wikipedia. From the perspective of online publishing, Wikipedia has used the collective wisdom of netizens to complete the writing and online publishing of encyclopedias, and it has become the most influential online knowledge base.
- Social service type, such as Facebook, MySpace, school intranet. These websites mainly rely on personal social networks to produce and disseminate information.
- Online game type, such as Second Life and various online games.
Web 3.0: A brand new era of human-computer dialogue, where micro-information can interact with each other, integrate information in a more diverse and humanized way, provide automated optimal resource combinations, and intelligent search will become the main direction of people's future lives (people don't need all the information on the internet, just the information they need).
Impact and role on the internet:
Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and Web 3.0 have transformed marketing strategies, creating greater value for customers through more effective market segmentation, target positioning, differentiation, and channel strategies. They have transformed the concepts of internet marketing, distribution strategies, promotion strategies, product prices, services, and creativity, and created transactions that meet the needs of individual and organizational customers.
In summary, in the Web 1.0 era, website editors used scissors and glue to organize various information together based on their experience, often referring to traditional media.
In the Web 2.0 era, it is the era of "my internet", with the main feature being personal media. Blogs and forums are composed of articles and comments from individuals. However, blogs highlight the individuality of the theme publisher, while forums reflect more collective behavior. RSS reflects the personal media feature of the internet surrounding each subscriber. Due to the participation of a large number of users, the content on the internet grows rapidly.
Web 3.0 aims to connect the web pages produced in the Web 2.0 era, connect them through collaborative relationships, and achieve automatic adjustment and optimization of collaborative interests.