The collision between the prophet and the pioneer: Kevin Kelly's trend interpretation coincides with Suning's transformation practice

Who says the future is unpredictable? As early as 20 years ago, someone proposed the concepts of the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and the sharing economy. Today, with the vigorous development of science and technology, the original "prophecies" are becoming reality one by one. This person is Kevin Kelly, who is known as the "Silicon Valley God" and "Technology Prophet".

On April 6, Kevin Kelly, the founding editor of Wired magazine, attended the 2016 KK Zhongshan Entrepreneurship Prophecy Listening Session held by Suning with the theme of "Meetings will inevitably lead to encounters with the future". In KK's latest interpretation of future technological development trends, we can clearly see a lot of Suning's shadow, and these predictions also coincide with some of the views of Zhang Jindong, chairman of Suning Holdings Group.

About Entrepreneurship: It’s Never Too Late

In his speech, Kevin Kelly reiterated that "the greatest products of the future have not yet been invented", and encouraged entrepreneurs to start now. In the practice of entrepreneurship and innovation, Suning has adopted a very similar attitude.

Based on his own entrepreneurial experience, Zhang Jindong proposed that "the market has never lacked opportunities or trends, and now should be the best time to start a business." At the 2016 National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, Zhang Jindong, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, suggested in his proposals related to entrepreneurship and innovation that the investment directions of different investment entities should be further clarified, and enterprises should be encouraged to serve as investment entities for mass innovation and entrepreneurship, especially leading backbone enterprises in the industry, and they should make full use of corporate resources to support entrepreneurship and innovation and improve investment efficiency.

In fact, this is what Suning is doing. On December 26, 2015, at the Suning 25th Anniversary Youth Declaration Strategy Conference, Zhang Jindong officially announced that Suning would enter the field of entrepreneurship and investment, and would invest 300 million yuan in start-up funds to support young people's entrepreneurship in terms of funds, venues, technology, etc. Suning is trying to establish a global entrepreneurial ecosystem by opening up corporate resources to share with the whole society.

KK believes that disruptive innovation starts from small businesses, which is one of the starting points for Suning to support small and medium-sized startups. Zhang Jindong made it clear that no matter how the capital environment changes, Suning will be a strong backing for entrepreneurs, providing a package of all-round services and truly providing entrepreneurs with a spring-like entrepreneurial environment.

About trends: Technological progress and consumption upgrades are eternal themes

Regarding the long-term development trends in the field of science and technology, KK made several predictions at the meeting: artificial intelligence will become the foundation for the development of the industry; artificial intelligence has entered the "deep learning" stage; AI will become a commodity like traffic, and everyone can buy it; AI has not replaced human jobs, and more types of jobs will appear in the future; VR will soon become popular all over the world; "tracking" will become a trend, and everything that can be tracked will be tracked; online stores in the future will break the boundaries with physical stores; the advertising industry will undergo earth-shaking changes.

These trends can be simply summarized as: technological progress and the resulting changes in business models, which are very close to the two areas of technological progress and consumption upgrade that Suning Investment Group focuses on.

According to Yang Yang, vice president of Suning Investment Group, Suning's strategy of seizing the wave of the Internet and mobile Internet has been very effective. At present, Suning's online revenue has achieved a year-on-year growth of 95%, and the proportion of mobile orders has exceeded 60%. On the one hand, PPTV invested by Suning has seized the opportunity of user demand transforming from material products to spiritual content products, and on the other hand, Nubia has seized the opportunity of the rapid development of smartphones.

In the future, Suning will continue to focus on advanced manufacturing and smart devices, and how to provide consumers with new scenarios and better experiences.

About O2O: Online and offline integration and the introduction of VR technology are the future direction

Kevin Kelly found that there is a clear boundary between physical retail stores and e-commerce. There is a lot of tension between physical stores and online stores, but the barriers between the two will soon be broken. In the next 10-20 years, the largest e-commerce company will become the owner of the largest physical store, and the owner of the largest physical store will become the owner of the largest e-commerce platform, and the two will merge with each other.

As early as 2009, Suning realized this trend and began to transform to the Internet. In the past six years, Suning has explored the O2O model of "one body, two wings, three clouds and four terminals", and has taken the lead in realizing the integration of online and offline in the industry. Zhang Jindong believes that the core capabilities of Internet retail are the ability to create professional management capabilities for commodity supply chains, wide coverage, fast and convenient logistics capabilities, and the ultimate service capabilities to meet user needs. Next, Suning will rely on the core competitiveness of supply chain, logistics, and services, and fully open to suppliers, platform merchants, platform partners, and small and medium-sized enterprises at the end of the retail, to build a Suning Internet retail ecosystem.

In addition, KK also believes that by using VR technology to digitize products, the user experience of online shopping will be greatly improved. Suning also pays close attention to cutting-edge technology fields such as smart hardware, VR, and AI. It has opened a special VR experience area in the Suning Cloud Store in Nanjing Xinjiekou, actively promoting the popularization of VR technology.

There is an old Chinese saying that "great minds think alike." In the process of human innovation, we need not only prophets like Kevin Kelly, but also practitioners like Suning. The former ignites our vision for the future, while the latter tells us with practical actions that the future is happening.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.