1) [Seeking Alpha] Stone Fox Capital: Alphabet: Hardly Matters
Source: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4230027-alphabet-hardly-matters
Why does Alphabet/Google quietly expand its hardware business?
[Excerpt] Mahaney sees the big growth drivers (for Google) in the hardware business coming from Pixel smartphones and Home smart speakers. Anybody just needs to look at the iPhone business from Apple (AAPL) to understand the opportunity in this category.
[i] The iPhone generated $166.7 billion in FY18 revenues ending in September. One naturally understands why Google would make an attempt to produce a competitive smartphone, but RBC only sees Pixel revenues reaching $6.9 billion by 2021.
[ii] The other reason is that Apple will collect up to $9 billion in fees for making Google the default search engine for iOS products. Google would prefer to reduce that payment going forward by having consumers bypass the iPhone for a Pixel (smartphone).
[iii] Alphabet competes against market leader Amazon (AMZN) in Smart Speaker category and notably the online retail giant isn't about maximizing profits. Remember that smart speakers are about capturing ad revenues from voice assistants. Both Amazon and Google wanted consumers to search for products via these voice-assisted services.
[iv] The hardware division is a necessary evil to ensure Alphabet is positioned to combat any market shift toward a solution that would reduce search revenues from Google. The division just isn't a profit generator for the tech giant no matter how much the company tries. [/Excerpt]
2) [ZDNet] Mary Jo Foley: What makes Microsoft tick?
Source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-makes-microsoft-tick/
[Excerpt] Chris Capossela, Microsoft's Chief Marketing Officer, recently explained the impact of turning Microsoft into a "mission-driven company" during an appearance at the UBS Global Technology Conference.
"One of the most fundamental things that I don't think people yet understand about Microsoft is we make that mission come true in the business model we've moved to, which is a consumption-based model," Capossela said.
When Microsoft axed a bunch of its sales people and reorg'd that team back in 2017, the company instituted a new sales compensation model based on use instead of units sold. Azure, Xbox and Office 365 customers are billed for what they use, which means if they aren't using something, Microsoft gets an immediate signal that a product or service is in need of a revamp.
"We feel more like a partner to our customers and less like a licensing machine," Capossela said of the change. (This is one of the big reasons why Microsoft increasingly pitches customer wins as "partnerships," instead of case studies.) [/Excerpt]
3) 橘色橙报: 【戴季全社長專訪簡立峰】AI 時代，台灣不可被取代的關鍵優勢是什麼？
出处：https://buzzorange.com/techorange/2018/12/25/google-taiwan-jian-2018-interview/
以下台湾科技产业转型的经验、契机与挑战，值得马来西亚政府和私人企业借鉴：
[引述] 《科技報橘》社長戴季全 (以下簡稱「戴」)：這跟「邊緣運算」趨勢也有關係，在 client 端運算決策，不是全部在 cloud 端。剛剛你講的手機個人化，是不是代表硬體還是有既定標準，但是在 AI 的部分要透過每一個用戶每日使用的智慧裝置去蒐集、累積 Data ，然後在邊緣端去訓練個人化 AI？
Google 台灣董事總經理簡立峰 (以下簡稱「簡」)： 對，你講這就是重點。為什麼終端需要運算？舉例，現在很常被應用的人臉識別，就是用戶打開手機，裝置端開始學習辨識。
為什麼這個是重點？因為終端的硬體標準現在還沒有成立，百家爭鳴。大家都在爭奪那個機會，就是 「AI 時代的晶片 」。譬如說你看 Google 在雲端技術有 TPU 晶片，在手機端、在 edge 端也會需要，因為終端裝置開始不斷做 machine learning，未來，用戶個人的行為都在手機端學習，所以手機端也要有一個學習的晶片。
邊緣趨勢另一個重點是，隱私權問題要怎麼克服？歐盟 GDPR 的隱私權規範後，資料都不能存在雲端，只能存在終端，而且使用者對這些資料有控制權，使用者若在終端刪除資料，雲端的資料同步也要刪除。所以，網路服務業者會越來越不想把資料放到雲端去，寧可在終端完成。
[...]
Google 台灣董事總經理簡立峰 (以下簡稱「簡」)：我可以再更近一步舉例。台灣工業電腦是世界第一，全世界的街頭監視器，很高比例是台灣製的。如果這些監視器如果可以自動辨識車禍、火災，那我們的工業電腦是不是就升級了？它是一個工業電腦的「服務」。現在大家在談智慧城市，當車禍發生時，智慧監視器可以先報案。現在生活中不是，現在是車禍發生後有人死了再去找監視器。
把原先完全不叫「服務」的「產品」稍微改一下，就變成服務了，那這就是一個機會。這個機會別人不容易做，為什麼，因為那個工業電腦、監視器，整套的維護管理，有很高的跨入門檻，首先它現在是 low margin（編按：低毛利），第二個是它 deployment（編按：佈建）成本非常非常高，另外你要做到風吹日曬雨淋都不會壞其實不容易。但這個苦工的基礎，台灣都已經有了，就是沒有把它加上 AI。
[...]
軟、硬體人才沒交集，代表過往 10 年台灣沒有思考世代整合問題
《科技報橘》社長戴季全 (以下簡稱「戴」)：現在台灣政府可以做到的程度，大概就是說「我這個試辦區域給你，你來申請」，可是看起還好像是政府要主導。
簡：這又一個大問題了。我自己非常、非常相信 AI 帶給台灣的機會，會跟其他國家很不一樣。PC 時代，辦公室軟體人才和電腦製造硬體人才，彼此中間有很大的鴻溝，到了網路時代，gap 更大，兩邊人完全沒有交集。
但是，只有在 AI 時代裡頭，做 AI 軟體人才跟作硬體的人才，交集點比較高 ；因為，AI 是在最先進的裝置（硬體）上運作。台灣應該把握它，但不是什麼都做，台灣沒有這個條件什麼都做。譬如說智慧汽車，我們到底該做哪個部分？我們要想清楚，不是全部，不可能。因為台灣人口就那麼少，策略思維是重要的。
好，回到實務面， 公部門必須引導這兩個產業有交集，但應該怎麼做？ 台灣 40 歲以下新創很少碰硬體的，他們的工作經驗沒有硬體。硬體企業老闆這幾年一直想要投資新創，但沒有案子可以投，就是因為這些新創的方向和硬體無關。
台灣的問題是一個很奇怪的 mis-match（編按：在這裡指的是產業的『不交集』），這個現象別的國家很少發生 。 大部分的國家產業，如果有一個新興產業，一定跟舊產業有連結；但台灣不是。
網路產業算是台灣新興產業，網路產業相對容易上手，但它離台灣的優勢越來越遠。這十幾年，台灣沒有什麼巨大成功的網路上市公司，因為網路業是非常適合大國崛起式的產業。那問題就來了。政府政策上，為什麼台灣發展網路產業，會誤用大國思考，而沒有辦法和硬體產業優勢結合？因為台灣軟體人才和硬體人才彼此之間沒有交集。
貓餵食器就是很典型的台灣個案。線上募資案非常成功，創業團隊一開始覺得自己有本事可以做，但最終他們沒有成功應用台灣的硬體產業優勢，因為初始量產規模太小，台灣硬體廠沒人想接。而這些純軟體出身的創業者，又很容易低估硬體製造的成本。
結果就是， 台灣做軟硬整合跟在矽谷做變得一樣難，完全沒有發揮台灣優勢 。 貓餵食器如果可以從鴻海抓幾個人，可能問題輕易就解決了，但這些事情沒有在台灣發生，而是在深圳發生了。我有兩個同事也出去創業做 Android notebook，所有團隊都台灣人，但他們位置選在深圳，創業一下就做起來了。
為什麼台灣硬體廠投資新創，過去幾年成功案例這麼少？
戴：所以現在全球的趨勢上，從純軟體面起家的團隊要去發展一些新的硬體，去深圳會是這些團隊的直覺選擇？
簡： 對，我這件事講了已經十年左右了，深圳崛起了，今天不管是哪個創業家，不管是在法國、美國、台灣、日本，如果你要做硬體、做軟硬整合，都深圳了。我們剛剛講的台灣優勢在過去十年其實一直在削弱。
[...]
戴：如果，台灣今天要比較積極的加速這個新興產業發展，有哪些事情要做，或哪些事情是不要做的？
簡：就是投資錢，而投資的概念，是要點火的意思。亞洲矽谷政策在邏輯上是對的，可是讓政府當那個投資的人，就會變得很艱難。政府有太多的社會責任，投資不准損失，一個不能損失的投資，就不叫 venture capital（風險創投）了。
台灣要有新興產業，最需要的是 Pre A 或是 A 輪的錢。才可以讓有膽子、有技術、有優勢策略的人，出來招兵買馬，找到更多綠林好漢，然後才有可能推動新興產業。
簡單說，台灣需要資本市場，但全球資本市場的短期狀況對台灣很不利。2008 年金融風暴，到今年剛好一個十年的循環，VC 的錢基本十年都要贖回，所以投資的公司如果沒有 IPO 就麻煩了，很快的，這些沒有 IPO 的投資人會斷頭慘賠，又碰上今年經濟不佳，明年其實是資本市場很壞的一年。
這個短期現象，對台灣新創會有傷害。這個時候，政府該做 bridge、扮演投資點火的角色。只是說這個點火的東西，要有點聰明的方法。政府的邏輯應該是我一塊，人家丟十塊。而不是人家丟一塊，我丟十塊。
戴：是我丟一塊人家丟十塊，還是我丟十塊人家丟一塊？
簡：邏輯上是應該兩個都有，看那件事情當時是怎樣。如果大家都不投資的時候，你(政府)要投，讓那個價值上升。另外一種別人都投的時候，其實政府是可以退，可是那一塊錢，在某種邏輯上也是算 support。原則上政府應該是雪中送炭，但是雪中送炭公務員壓力太大，因為你沒有打算把那些錢丟到水裡。
[/引述]
4) [Bloomberg] The World’s Leading Electric-Car Visionary Isn’t Elon Musk - Wan Gang pushed China to leapfrog the West in electric vehicles.
Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-09-26/world-s-electric-car-visionary-isn-t-musk-it-s-china-s-wan-gang
[Excerpt] Long before becoming the nation’s top futurist, Wan suffered through the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, China’s great leap backward for science and technology. Sent from Shanghai to a remote village near North Korea at age 16 to learn values from peasants, he spent his days repairing the town’s smoke-belching tractor and building its electricity grid from scratch, according to the state-run People’s Daily and author Lisa Margonelli, who interviewed Wan.
One of the lucky few of his generation to attend college, Wan was admitted to a Ph.D. program in mechanical engineering at Clausthal University of Technology in Germany. When he graduated in 1991, job offers came from all the big German carmakers, but he picked Audi because it was the smallest and provided the best chances for promotion.
As an executive in Audi’s planning department, Wan played the role of ambassador, showing its state-of-the-art factory in Ingolstadt to Chinese delegates trying to resurrect their decrepit auto industry. One guest was then-science minister Zhu Lilan, who took a liking to the engineer.
Months after their first meeting, in 2000, Wan was back home selling Zhu and the rest of the State Council on the idea of leapfrogging. China was choking in smog, and its automakers, Wan reasoned, could never hope to catch up with Japanese, American or German manufacturers when it came to traditional vehicles.
A bet on new technologies could put China on more-equal footing or even allow it to take the lead, he theorized. It also could help the country break its dependence on foreign oil.
“Wan Gang was saying, ‘I want to create a system where we can be energy secure and there’s a more level playing field for our companies,”’ said Bill Russo, a former Chrysler executive who now heads auto consultant Gao Feng Advisory in Beijing. “He knew you couldn’t win playing the old game. [/Excerpt]
5) 【吐納商業評論】程天縱: 從NBA球員看「專業經理人」必須具備的條件與能力
出处：https://vocus.cc/tuna/5c23559efd89780001e3bee8
[引述] 1990到1991年，我在矽谷的Santa Clara大學念MBA課程。其中有一門叫做「組織行為學」的課，談到了企業中存在的一個現象，叫做「Organization Politics」，也就是「組織政治」。
望文生義，很顯然「組織政治」就是在組織裡面不可避免的，必須要隨波逐流、搞些政治手段。
由於我對政治一向沒有好感，尤其對於企業內部的政治鬥爭更加沒有興趣，所以在上這堂課之前，我一向抱著「獨善其身」的原則，做好自己部門的工作，盡量不和其他部門產生矛盾。
但是聽了這堂課之後，讓我對組織政治學徹底改觀，也讓我在專業經理人的學習路程上，躍進了一大步。
「權力缺口」
任何企業或組織的資源都是有限的。為了達到最高效能，企業經營者基於分工合作的原則，設計了企業的組織架構；而因為資源是有限的，所以基於資源共享的原則，又設計了中央與產品事業部的「矩陣式組織」架構。
因此，對於在大企業內的任何部門，光靠企業賦予的權力與資源，都不足以產生卓越的成果。
如果要達到卓越的績效，假設所需的資源以100來表示，企業能夠給予部門的資源可能只有60；那麼這中間的差距40，就叫做「Power Gap」（可暫譯為「權力缺口」）。
在企業內尋找資源來填補權力缺口的行動與過程，就叫做「組織政治」。
填補「權力缺口」
填補「權力缺口」的資源那裡來？當然是從企業內、其他部門去找；但別的部門為什麼要拿他們有限的資源來幫助你、成就你？
試想，別的部門也面臨同樣的問題，也需要資源去填補權力缺口。如果你能主動去幫助别人，每次就會收到一個「IOU」（I Owe You，「我欠你人情」的意思）。
當你累積了足夠的IOU，需要填補自己的權力缺口時，就不愁沒有足夠的資源了。
這就叫做「組織政治」! [/引述]
6) [Inc.com] Jessica Stillman: Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman: Never Trust Your Gut Unless You Can Say Yes to These 3 Questions
Source: https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/never-trust-your-gut-unless-you-can-say-yes-to-these-3-questions.html
[Excerpt] Are gut instincts the brilliant distillation of all our wisdom and experience, or just an expression of our brain's laziness and biases? Do they lead us to oversimplify and stereotype or help us avoid danger before we can even fully process the threat?
These questions are the stuff of heated academic debate. Malcolm Gladwell famously laid out the pro-intuition case in his bestseller Blink, while Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman summed up the position of intuition skeptics in Thinking, Fast and Slow.
But while the experts argue, the rest of us have to go on and make real world decisions. Should we all ignore our guts or go with our intuition? The answer, according to Kahneman depends on the context.
According to ThinkAdvisor, in a recent talk at the World Economic Forum, Kahneman offered a thankfully simple answer to this decidedly hard question. It took the form of three questions. If you can say yes to each, then go ahead and trust your gut. Otherwise, you'd better check your instinct against some actually data and hard reasoning:
i) Is there actually some regularity in this area you can pick up and learn?
ii) Have you had a lot of practice in this area?
iii) Do you receive immediate feedback in the area? [/Excerpt]
7) [Analyse Asia] Episode 278: State of China and SoftBank in 2018 with Shai Oster
Source: https://analyse.asia/2018/12/26/episode-278-state-of-china-and-softbank-in-2018-with-shai-oster/
Summary: The Podcast host Bernard Leong and the guest Shai Oster offered some great insights into ways China enterprises navigate the dynamic of steep domestic and global competition, and the breakaway from Chinese market also means the farewell to significant percentage of global market.
8) [Linkedin Learning] Fred Kofman on Managing Conflict
Source: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/fred-kofman-on-managing-conflict/negotiate-on-the-interests
[Transcript] Negotiate on the interests
- At one stage of the conversation, we've understood one another. We still disagree, but now we know why and what each one of us is thinking. So now we need to see can we take these two perspectives and integrate them? Can we create something new? Most people, if they are good-natured and try to find a solution, they will try to find a compromise, and they'll say, "Okay, let's split the difference." Like, "I'm offering you 100, "you're asking me 200. "Okay, let's settle for 150." That doesn't quite work.
That's not very creative, and I would suggest not to start there. We might end up there, but that's not the first place. There's a very powerful technique to negotiate, which involves understanding what's important to each person. And instead of negotiating on the positions, which is what people have stated, negotiating on the interests or the concerns, which is what people haven't necessarily said, but it's underlying the positions. What really matters to you? There's a famous book by Fisher and Ury called Getting to Yes.
It's a 1970s book, and I think it's 1973, and it really started this trend about interest-based negotiation. So not to argue about what I want and what you want, but let's just go one level down. What's important to you? What's important to me? And then can we create something together, what's important to both of us? Let me tell you a true story. I was arguing with my wife many years ago where to go for a holiday, and I just happened to be an avid skier, and she's not opposed to skiing, but she doesn't want to go skiing all the time.
I wanted to go skiing all the time. So she said, "I'd like to go to the beach." And it's not that I want to go skiing all the time, but I really hate the beach. I just go crazy on the beach. I don't like being in the sand and not doing anything, and having to read a book or a magazine, it's just not my thing. So I said, "No, I don't want to go to the beach." "Well, I don't want to go skiing." "Well, I want to go skiing." "Well, I want to go to the beach." So you see, this was (laughs) not the kind of conversation I like to use to illustrate this class, but I have to confess, that's the conversation we were having.
And then I had this flash of insight, I had read the book by Fisher and Ury, so I asked her, "So tell me, what's really important to you "about the beach? "Why do you want to go to the beach? "What do you like?" And she says, "I like to be warm, "and I like the water. "I love to be in the water." I'm like, "Oh, okay. "Well let me tell you what's really important for me "about skiing, it's I like to be outdoors, "I like to be active, and I like the thrill of adventure. "I feel the speed, and it's thrilling." And then we said, "Okay, let's write these things down.
"What's adventurous, outdoors, sportsy "but warm and in the water?" And we started brainstorming. Like, all sorts of things came up like whitewater rafting, windsurfing, many things which we tried, but we didn't like anything as much as scuba-diving. And we went scuba-diving, and I'm still an avid scuba-diver 20 years later, and we are still sharing that passion for scuba-diving. We both love it.
Now, we love scuba-diving, but we would have never thought of scuba, we didn't know scuba, we learned scuba-diving because we couldn't agree on whether to go to the beach or go to skiing, but nobody said, "Okay, let's one year go to the beach, "the other year go skiing." We could have done that, and we had been doing that, but we actually took a step back and said, "What's really important?" And when we discovered what's really important, we said, "Can we put the ingredients together "and cook them differently?" It's like you have eggs and flour, and you can say, "Well, we're going to make a cake, "or we're going to make fried eggs and bread." And it's the same ingredients, but you cook them differently.
And what we found is that if we took our interests, and we cooked them in a different way, we could create something, actually today, I prefer to go scuba-diving than skiing. It's more fun for me. Even without her. It's just what I would prefer, but I would have never discovered that preference without this attempt to get a win-win solution. And many people speak about win-win, but there's a technique to win-win, and it's you stop trying to argue on your positions, you go one level down and say, "What's really important to you? "Why do you care about this? "What do you expect to get out of your position?" And then what great negotiators do is to find ways to give people what they want, really, without giving them what they ask, because people don't ask for what they want, people ask for what they think is going to give them what they want.
So in a good negotiation, we're both saying, "Okay, here's what we really want "beyond what we're asking. "Is there a way we can create that for both of us, "at least in part so there's mutual gain, "and we're both happy with what we do?" When you do that, it's magic, because you find new and creative alternatives. [/Transcript]
9) MIT AI: Google (Eric Schmidt)
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIC9FQpxVwQ
[Transcript]
Eric Schmidt on the importance of building a generalized platform
Eric Schmidt: I was the beneficiary of the great work of many many people who saw it clearer than I did. With Lex (a software program to generate lexical analysers for the UNIX computer operating system), I worked with a fella named Michael Lesk who was my supervisor and he essentially helped me architect and deliver a system that's still in use today.
After that, I worked at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center where the Alto was invented and the Alto is the predecessor of the modern personal computer or Macintosh and so forth.
And the Altos were very rare and I had to drive an hour from Berkeley to go use them. But I made a point of skipping classes and doing whatever it took to have access to this extraordinary achievement.
I knew that they were consequential. what I did not understand was scaling. I did not understand what would happen when you had a hundred million (users) as opposed to a hundred (users) and so.
Since then and I have learned the benefit of scale. I always look for things which are going to scale to platforms, right... So, mobile phones, Android, all those things...
There are many many people in the world. People really have needs. They really will use these platforms and you can build big businesses on top of them.
so it's interesting so when you see a piece of technology now. You think what will this technology look like when it's in the hands of a billion people, that's right.
So an example would be that the market is so competitive now that if you can't figure out a way for something to have a million users or a billion users, it probably is not going to be successful.
Because something else will become the general platform and your idea will become a lost idea or a specialized service with relatively few users.
So it's a path to generality, it's a path to general platform use, it's a path to broad applicability.
Now, there are plenty of good businesses that are tiny, so luxury goods for example, but if you want to have an impact at scale, you have to look for things which are of common value, common pricing, common distribution, and solve common problems - the problems that everyone has.
And by the way, people have lots of problems - information, medicine, health, education, so forth. Work on those problems.
[...]
Eric Schmidt on Alphabet as a conglomerate of making bets
Eric Schmidt: In Google's case, (we) were big enough and well enough managed and so forth that we have a pretty good sense of what our revenue will be for the next year or two, at least for a while. And so we have enough cash generation that we can make bets.
And indeed Google has become Alphabet - so the corporation is organized around these bets. And these bets are in the areas of fundamental importance to to the world - whether it's artificial intelligence, medical technology, self-driving cars, connectivity through balloons, the on and on and on... And there's more coming and more coming.
So one way you could rest (assured) is that the current business is successful enough that we have the luxury of making bets. And another one that you could say is that we have the wisdom of being able to see that a corporate structure needs to be created to enhance the likelihood of the success of those bets.
So we essentially turned ourselves into a conglomerate of bets and then this underlying corporation - Google which is itself innovative.
So in order to pull this off you have to have a bunch of belief systems and one of them is that you have to have bottoms up and tops down.
The bottoms up we call 20% time. And the idea is that people can spend 20% of the time on whatever they want. And the top down is that our founders in particular have a keen eye on technology and they're reviewing things constantly.
So an example would be they'll hear about an idea or I'll hear about something and it sounds interesting - let's go visit them and then let's begin to assemble the pieces to see if that's possible.
And if you do this long enough you get pretty good at predicting what's likely to work.
Interviewer (Lex Fridman): So that's a beautiful balance that struck is this something that applies at all scale?
Eric Schmidt: Seems to be that... Sergey (Google Founder) 15 years ago, he came up with a concept called ten percent of the budget should be on things that are unrelated. It was called seventy-twenty-ten. Seventy percent of our time on core business, twenty percent on adjacent business and ten percent on other.
And he proved this mathematically that you needed that ten percent to make the sum of the growth work and it turns out he was right.
[/Transcript]
10) Other reading/learning during week 52:
https://www.techradar.com/sg/news/what-is-5g-everything-you-need-to-know
https://www.geekwire.com/2018/engineers-astronauts-made-apollo-8s-earthrise-possible-50-years-ago/
https://medium.com/swlh/lets-talk-about-self-driving-cars-387cd5adb834
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/can-agile-work-large-organizations-dipaka-patra-sdc-smc-ssgb
https://hbrascend.org/topics/overcome-resistance-change-two-conversations/
https://www.linkedin.com/learning/leadership-stories-weekly/introduction
https://www.linkedin.com/learning/ram-charan-on-coaching-high-potentials/
https://www.linkedin.com/learning/coaching-skills-for-leaders-and-managers/
https://www.linkedin.com/learning/transitioning-from-manager-to-leader/
https://www.linkedin.com/learning/jeff-weiner-on-managing-compassionately/
https://www.inc.com/ilan-mochari/clayton-christensen-disruptive-innovation-cheatsheet.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/glennllopis/2010/12/27/executive-presence-in-the-new-normal-workplace/#3971365016df
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/questions-change-your-life-dr-travis-bradberry
https://www.businessinsider.my/how-to-be-happier-routine-2017-11/
https://www.cw.com.tw/article/article.action?id=5036679&eturec=1&ercamp=article_interested_14
https://www.cw.com.tw/article/article.action?id=5092304&ercamp=article_interested_14
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-12-15/president-xi-jinping-s-next-moves-dictate-china-s-economic-future
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