Traveling through the sword to engage in military industry.

Xue Xiaofeng walked into the conference room at the Liming Research Institute headquarters with some trepidation.

Although no one told him why in advance, Xue Xiaofeng knew very well that this was a great thing.

He even secretly hoped to run into the famous Dean Ren Zhongren here. Thinking of the possibility of meeting Dean Ren, Xue Xiaofeng couldn't help but feel a little nervous. He didn't even know how to greet him in person.

After all, although Ren Zhong has never been promoted in almost all official media, anyone who has a little knowledge of science and technology at the University of Tokyo probably knows that the most powerful research institute at the University of Tokyo is the Liming Research Institute.

Ren Zhong is the dean of the Liming Research Institute and a true pillar of Southeast University's scientific community.

As a product manager of Northern Computer, Xue Xiaofeng has only worked in computer product design for three years, but he has grown from an initial assistant to the most capable product manager of Northern Computer. He has presided over the design of three best-selling computers. The prototypes of these three computers were not assigned from above, but were made by him himself based on the original needs obtained from market research.

When personal computers first came out, Xue Xiaofeng, who was studying electronic technology, became crazy about this thing. He quickly collected all the computer-related information he could find on the market and studied it.

I also found a way to enter the Computer Technology Research Center with the help of the company and studied for three months, fully mastering the standard computer motherboard design circuit diagram.

For an engineer who only has basic knowledge of electronics and not much basic knowledge of computers, Xue Xiaofeng is one of the top ten best among the 100 people.

Xue Xiaofeng's first product was a business computer developed for financial staff. When domestic computer designers were still figuring out how to use computers and for whom they would be used, Xue Xiaofeng sensitively discovered the company's problems in financial processing through market demand research.

Therefore, after conducting extensive research with the company's financial personnel and figuring out the logical relationship between financial accounting, accounting tables and the company's material purchase, sales and inventory, it took a year to work with software engineers to customize a special finance computer. After it came out, it immediately became a best-selling business computer in the country, leading Northern Computer to become the first computer company to achieve sales of more than 100,000 units within two years.

Next, Xue Xiaofeng continued his efforts and developed an educational computer through research on the education industry. At the lowest possible cost, he created an economical computer similar to the APPLE II, which was equipped with a basic programming typing training program and an elementary school math problem training program, as well as several simple basic mini-game programming learning codes. Xue Xiaofeng's educational computer was designated as a designated computer for purchase by all the elementary schools in Dongda University.

It soon became Northern Computer's second best-selling product, a new hit with annual sales exceeding 100,000 units.

Compared with his competitors, Xue Xiaofeng did not simply reproduce the public version of the personal computer and did not do too much work on the appearance of the chassis or the display.

Instead, it is based on the practicality of computers, and designs a product that can accomplish specific functions as soon as it leaves the factory by integrating computer hardware and software to achieve specific functions.

Moreover, the computer's hardware configuration is closely integrated with these applications to ensure that the price is controllable. As a special-purpose computer, it directly takes the cost-effectiveness to the extreme. When other companies were still mindlessly making standard computers priced at 1999 yuan with a TV as a display, Xue Xiaofeng had already streamlined the configuration and developed a 1499 yuan educational computer for schools and wealthy families.

His idea of ​​making personal computers even surprised Ren Zhong.

Because these ultimate products are actually not common in the main world.

In the early days of personal computers, which had limited functions and performance, many people didn’t know what they could do with a computer without industry applications.

Coupled with the proliferation of large quantities of standard computers brought about by the development of standards, few of the first batch of domestic personal computer manufacturers thought of customizing computers for professional applications to open up specific markets.

After all, these people have not been exposed to much information in this era, so it is normal that they lack imagination about the usage scenarios of computers.

Xue Xiaofeng's way of thinking is not to see the computer as a universal platform, but as a carrier of professional applications.

That’s why we stand out among our competitors.

It even gave rise to software copyright regulations in advance for the development of Todai computer software.

After the Financial Professional Computer was launched and sold well across the country, many competitors began to imitate Northern Computer's Financial Professional Computer. Some small companies even copied the software from Northern Computer and put it directly into their own computers for sale, creating the first generation of "pirated" products. After Ren Zhong discovered the problem, he urgently took out the Temporary Management Regulations for Software Copyright to regulate it.

This has curbed the trend of speculation in the market. Computer host vendors do not have the ability to develop software and hardware like Northern Computer does, so they commission some software development companies to imitate and develop the functions of Northern Computer's financial software.

Ren Zhong has no good way to limit this kind of trend-following.

If the imitation of functions is also prohibited, then this industry will easily form an invisible monopoly in the subdivided industry.

After all, most of the functions in industry applications are similar.

What disappointed Xue Xiaofeng was that he did not see Dean Ren, whom he had admired for a long time. Sitting behind the desk were five judges who were middle-aged or above. They understood and verified every aspect of Xue Xiaofeng's product research and development, including the inspiration for a product and other details.

After the whole group talked for more than two hours, the meeting was adjourned and they asked Xue Xiaofeng to leave the meeting room and wait in the waiting room outside.

After Xue Xiaofeng left, Ren Zhong walked into the meeting room.

"Everyone, what do you think of this candidate?" Ren Zhong asked directly after sitting at the head of the conference room.

"Comrade Xue Xiaofeng has a very clear idea of ​​product development, which is a typical demand-oriented one," said one of the middle-aged men, who obviously knew Ren Zhong's habits very well and got straight to the point. "He is good at communicating with product users and understanding their real needs. The financial professional computer he developed was the result of him visiting more than a dozen companies with his people, and after learning about the specific financial operations in detail, he had a full understanding of the actual financial work. He then summarized and standardized the processing procedures of these companies, which were originally not very different, and then made a requirement specification. He used an intuitive graphical method to bring out his own financial process and key factors such as input screens to discuss again with the financial personnel of these companies. After confirming that his financial processing procedures did not deviate from actual needs and were accepted by the actual front-line financial personnel, he would communicate with the software. Software development engineers were asked to realize these requirements." "In terms of the hardware design of the financial software, Comrade Xue Xiaofeng used computers with different configurations to test the software in advance. After finding the most suitable hardware configuration for the software, he customized the computer. We can see that this is a computer with strict cost control, but the application runs smoothly. He even configured a printer driver for the computer so that financial statements can be printed out. Of course, for today's enterprises, it is still economically stressful to configure a complete printer. Generally, they prefer to copy the data directly from the computer report and fill it into the traditional report by hand after the computer completes a large amount of financial calculations and outputs the financial report. After all, the current software report cannot fully realize our traditional manual report."

"But even so, Northern Computer's professional financial computers have reduced the workload of manual reconciliation by at least 80%, allowing a large amount of calculation work to be automatically calculated by computers. This has not only greatly improved the efficiency of financial work, but also improved the accuracy of financial calculations!"

"Yes, you have a very thorough understanding. So, what are your opinions on Comrade Xue Xiaofeng?" Ren Zhong nodded after listening to the brief introduction of this working committee member.

As a promoter of the new system, Ren Zhong is not making decisions or screening now, but observing how his ideas are implemented from the perspective of an observer.

Just like now, he does not make decisions for the working committee, but asks for their decision.

After a brief exchange of views among the working committee members, the middle-aged man who had just made the introduction came out to answer.

"President Ren, our working committee believes that Xue Xiaofeng is qualified to be a candidate for the switch product manager of ET Group. Although computers and switches are two types of products with quite different types, they have a lot in common in terms of product design concepts. For a product manager, what is important is not how to implement the product, but what the product looks like and what specifications can better meet customer needs, especially in terms of functions and cost price control. Switches are more cost-effective than computers."

"Understanding the operational requirements of different operators for switches has always been a weakness of ours. We believe that Comrade Xue Xiaofeng can take on the task of developing switch products for a specific market and further examine his potential through the development of this new product."

"Of course, before that, we need to fully solicit the opinions of Comrade Xue Xiaofeng to see if he is willing to switch from the computer field to the relatively unfamiliar switch field to accept the challenge."

Seeing that the working committee was basically following the planned steps, Ren nodded and said nothing more.

There will be no need for him to intervene further in the subsequent work.

As a corporate employee under the Liming Research Institute, the authority to transfer can now be directly decided by the working committee. These are merely internal job changes. After the working committee confirms it, it will send a letter to the human resources department of the specific company.

After waiting in the reception room for a short time, Xue Xiaofeng was called back to the conference room.

"Comrade Xue Xiaofeng, after the investigation by the Institute's Talent Work Committee, we believe that you have the ability to rotate to ET Group. We are initially considering appointing you as the product manager of 5,000-line program-controlled switches in medium-sized cities in third world countries. I wonder if Comrade Xue Xiaofeng is willing to accept this challenging job?"

The middle-aged man in the working committee said to Xue Xiaofeng with a smile.

Xue Xiaofeng was not mentally prepared for such a thing. Although they were both product managers, ET Group and Northern Computer were two companies of different levels. Northern Computer sold more than 2 computers a year, which was already a leader among domestic computer companies, but in terms of sales revenue, it was only a company with sales of less than million, while ET Group had already exceeded billion in sales.

For Xue Xiaofeng, this is certainly a promotion.

But to be honest, this is a very big step from computer product development to switch product development.

At this time, Ren Zhong was only piloting his idea, so this policy of cultivating top talents was not publicized to the outside world. Even the Liming personnel system had only received instructions at the top level, and the specific staff were still unclear, let alone Xue Xiaofeng.

However, Xue Xiaofeng also knew that as a company under the Liming Group, although transfers were not very frequent, they were not isolated cases.

However, since this matter fell on his head, Xue Xiaofeng couldn't figure out whether it was a good thing or a bad thing for him.

Promotion is a good thing, but if you mess up the switch product by not adapting to the local environment, it will not be a good thing.

This means that you now have to change your career and engage in a new field, and even the clients are specifically overseas customers.

Xue Xiaofeng did not answer immediately, but his brain was working rapidly. He remembered when he first entered the computer industry, and suddenly an idea came to him.

"Dear leaders, I am willing to accept this challenge." Xue Xiaofeng raised his head and looked at the middle-aged man and the judges with a firm gaze.

It is true that he does not know anything about switches now, but Xue Xiaofeng knows very well, and the organization must be aware of what he does. Since such a transfer has been made, there must be a certain training period for him to adapt to the work in the new field.

Thinking that I am still so young and am studying electronic technology, from the core bottom level, switches and computers are essentially the same, both are computer chips + software control, switches are nothing more than a lot more interfaces. If I start learning now, I believe it won't take long to get started.

What's more, the position given to him by the organization is product manager, which means that his job is more about functional design and planning for the product, not the specific implementation.

So Xue Xiaofeng quickly grasped the key point. This was an important opportunity in his life. Even if he failed, it would not be a big deal if he went back to working on computers.

Thinking of this, Xue Xiaofeng did not hesitate any longer.

Just accept this difficult task.

(End of this chapter)