Congratulations!!!!

You have completed Level 2, which was a lot of big ideas. That was definitely a jump forward in terms of your thinking. Congratulations. I hope you feel good about that.

For Level 3, there are 5 learning goals.

We are going into other industries in this level. So shifting out of the ecommerce discussions of Level 2.

All concepts are in the Content Library, where you can see my overall digital strategy framework. There is also a Company Library, where you can search by company for articles and podcasts.

Learning Goal 6: The basics of Huawei and Economies of Scale

• Huawei is a complicated company sitting at the intersection of manufactured equipment and digital / software. And now politics as well. Things have been changing quickly in its consumer business (i.e., smartphones) as well as in telecommunications equipment due to political actions. But the biggest impact is the growing pervasiveness and intelligence of networks in business and society.
• The key learning goals are:
  • Huawei
  • Competitive Advantage: Economies of Scale
  • Competitive Advantage: Learning Advantage
• Listen and read:
  1. Huawei Is Going to Beat Trump with Human Resources, Not Technology
     1. Write 3 paragraphs in your journal about the top 2-3 factors that have enabled Huawei to build so a driven, innovative culture at scale.
  2. 3 Lessons from Hotpot with Huawei Chairman Guo Ping (Jeff’s Asia Tech Class – Podcast 9)
     1. Write 3 paragraphs in your journal about whether Huawei’s superior scale really gives them an advantage over Ericsson and Nokia in telecommunications. How? Is it all about R&D spend and manufacturing costs? What about the consumer products (i.e., smartphones) business?
  3. Huawei Going “Battle Mode” Is Bad News For Ericsson. Take-Aways from My Visit to Huawei HQ (pt 1 of 4)
     1. Write an answer to: What is Huawei’s goal? To get rich? To increase share price? To give shareholders returns? To survive? To put a dent in the universe? How is that different than the goals of Ericsson and Nokia in telecommunications equipment?
  4. 6 Predictions for Huawei After the TSMC Ban (Jeff’s Asia Tech Class – Daily Lesson / Update)
     1. Write an answer to: What is Huawei’s critical strategic requirement after the TSMC ban? What should be their #1 priority?
  5. Alibaba and the Power of Externalizing Capabilities (Daily Update – Jeff’s Asia Tech Class)
     1. Huawei has used its R&D scale to grow from telco to smart consumer devices. Is there anyway to externalize this and sell it to the market?

Learning Goal 7: The basics of Mobike / Ofo – and digital disruption in access vs. ownership businesses

• The bike sharing companies Ofo and Mobike are good examples of fairly simple businesses that used digital tools in innovative ways. They aren’t platforms or dominant business models. And they don’t have massive advantages. But they were digitally innovative and were aggressive early movers with lots of capital.
• The key learning goals are:
  • Mobike and Ofo
  • Access vs. ownership businesses
  • Demand purification
  • Money wars vs. hyperscaling vs. blitzscaling
• Listen and read:
  1. What Should Giant Bicycles Have Done About Mobike, Ofo and China Bike-Sharing? (Jeff’s Asia Tech Class – Podcast 2). Note this was an early podcast and the audio quality is not awesome. Sorry.
     1. Write an answer to: What should Giant have done about Mobike?
  2. Why Did Ofo Fail? What Should They Have Done? (Jeff’s Asia Tech Class – Podcast 8)
     1. Write an answer to: What should Ofo have done?
  3. There is No China Sharing Economy (1 of 2)
     1. Write an answer to: How are Airbnb, Didi and bike-sharing similar and different in terms of “sharing”?
  4. Five Questions for Understanding Didi, Mobike and China’s Micro-Rentals (2 of 2)
     1. Answer the five questions for Airbnb vs. Mobike

Learning Goal 8: The basics of Luckin Coffee vs. Starbucks. And digital superpower #1: Dramatically improving the user experience.

• The competition between digital attacker Luckin Coffee and traditional retailer Starbucks has lots of good lessons in the power and limitations of digital tools (and capital).
• The key learning goals are:
  • Luckin Coffee and Starbucks
  • Demand purification
  • Digital Superpower 1: Dramatically Improving the user experience
  • Money wars vs. hyperscaling vs. blitzscaling
• Listen and read:
  1. What Should Starbucks China Have Done About Luckin Coffee? (Jeff’s Asia Tech Class – Podcast 3). Note this was an early podcast and the audio quality is not awesome. Sorry.
     1. Write an answer to: What should Starbucks have done about Luckin in the first year?
  2. Forget Luckin. Starbucks’ Most Interesting China Competitor is HeyTea (pt 1 of 2)
     1. Write an answer to: Why is HeyTea succeeding while Luckin failed? Does either company have Digital Superpower #1?
  3. 7 Things Everyone Is Getting Wrong About the Luckin IPO (Pt 1 of 2)
     1. Write an answer to: What is the biggest strength and weakness of Luckin Coffee’s new retail business model for coffee?
  4. Luckin Coffee Is a Fraud? Why Nobody Is Surprised. (Daily Update – Jeff’s Asia Tech Class)
     1. Write three paragraphs about the difference between hiding faked sales in products vs. services vs. digital goods (e.g., watching videos)
  5. Starbucks Big Success in China Has Been Surprisingly Painless (2017)

Learning Goal 9: The basics of smartphones, ecosystems and endless bundling.

• Smartphones are about digitizing and connecting consumers. And as consumers function more and more like a connected network, it is also moving business and society towards networks and ecosystems. This Learning Goal is about how digitization is leading to increasingly complicated ecosystems. And how bundling of digital goods and services is an increasingly effective strategy.
• The key learning goals are:
  • Ecosystems and super-apps
  • Digital economics: Bundling
  • Money wars vs. hyperscaling vs. blitzscaling
• Listen and read:
  1. How Huawei Is Turning Smart Cities Into Operating Systems (1 of 2)
     1. Write 2-3 paragraphs about where a digitized connected city could change behavior. If you were writing an app to run on such a platform, where would you focus? Transportation? Culture? Security? Community?
  2. How Should Huawei’s Smartphone Business Respond to the US Tech Ban? Part 2 (Podcast 17)
     1. Write 3 paragraphs about why Huawei went from telecommunications (doing the connecting) to smartphones and other smart devices? Why are they trying to offer an end-to-end solution that is smart devices in people’s hands plus connectivity (5G) plus cloud?
  3. Alibaba, Complementary Platforms and Why Dinosaur Packs Are Scary (Daily Update – Jeff’s Asia Tech Class)
     1. Write 3 paragraphs about how a marketplace, audience builder and payment platform could strengthen each other when linked? Resources like technology and capital? Customer acquisition? Data? Marketing spend?
  4. Can Xiaomi’s Operational Excellence Compensate for Its Weak Business Model? (Asia Tech Strategy – Daily Update)
  5. Tencent Will Crush ByteDance’s Online Gaming Ambitions (Jeff’s Asia Tech Class – Daily Update)
     1. Just some fun stuff on Tencent vs. Bytedance

Learning Goal 10: More Huawei

• More on Huawei. And their response to the US tech bans, arguably biggest political events in digital China in like 20 years.
• The key learning goals are:
  • Huawei
  • Competitive advantage: Switching costs
  • Competitive advantage: Economies of scale
  • Operational marathons
• Listen and read:
  1. How Should Huawei Have Responded to the 2019 US Tech Ban? Part 1 (Jeff’s Asia Tech Class – Podcast 14)
     1. Imagine you were an executive at Huawei when this happened. Answer the question in the podcast. What would you have done?
  2. Huawei’s Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) is “Meritocracy Plus Partnership” at Scale in China Tech. (Pt 2 of 3)
     1. Huawei’s greatest strength is its +194,000 employees, most of whom are engineers and in R&D. How does meritocracy plus ownership different in a tech company versus a beer company?
  3. My Interview With Huawei About Their 2019 Financials. Plus Fraud at Luckin Coffee (Jeff’s Asia Tech Class – Podcast 24)
     1. Huawei survived the entity list ban of 2019 and posted reasonable numbers. Mostly by ramping up sales in China. But economies of scale in telecommunications are global. Write 3 paragraphs on whether how their consumer and telecommunications businesses would compete as mostly a regional company.
  4. Hotpot and Hiking with Huawei Chairman Guo Ping (pt 1 of 2) 
     1. If Huawei is switching from playing to win to playing to not lose (i.e., to survive), what would that entail? Saving money? Stopping new R&D? Abandoning projects? Going to low growth but predictable businesses?

You should try to complete these in about 2-3 months. And you probably want to do some of the Learning Goals twice. Speed is not important here. What is important is to build up your understanding. So repetition can be really helpful.

When you are ready, go on to level 4.

• Learning Goals: Level 4