【CEO观点】腾讯创始人马化腾：创造生物型组织的“灰度法则”

这一年里，我们大家一起向一个开放的、没有疆界的互联网新生态迈出了第一步。大量的创业伙伴在腾讯开放平台上涌现出来，其中不少团队还取得了初步成功。

看到这些新的现象，我既感到高兴，也体会到责任重大。如果说以前腾讯做得好不好只关系到自己员工和股东，现在则关系到大家，腾讯还必须要促进平台繁荣、与广大合作伙伴一起成功。

这个转变让我一再思考，除了流量、技术、服务等“硬件”的分享，腾讯还能带给大家什么?换句话说，怎么把腾讯累积的经验和能力开放出去，让整个互联网行业生态发展得更加健康繁荣?

一年来，通过对开放平台上合作伙伴的观察，我发现，做好一款产品对于很多人来说并不太难;但是，如何让它持续地运营下去，如何移植一款产品的成功经验从而创造一系列的成功产品，却是一个相当难的问题。

这里，我想跟大家分享一下我的思考。这些思考来自腾讯14年来的经验和教训，希望对大家能有所帮助。在腾讯内部的产品开发和运营过程中，有一个词一直被反复提及，那就是“灰度”。

我很尊敬的企业家前辈任正非也曾经从这个角度有深入思考，并且写过《管理的灰度》，他所提倡的灰度，主要是内部管理上的妥协和宽容。但是我想，在互联网时代，产品创新和企业管理的灰度更意味着时刻保持灵活性，时刻贴近千变万化的用户需求，并随趋势潮流而变。

那么，怎样找到最恰当的灰度，而不是在错误的道路上越跑越远?既能保持企业的正常有效运转，又让创新有一个灵活的环境;既让创新不被扼杀，又不会走进创新的死胡同。这就需要我们在快速变化中找到最合适的平衡点。互联网是一个开放交融、瞬息万变的大生态，企业作为互联网生态里面的物种，需要像自然界的生物一样，各个方面都具有与生态系统汇接、和谐、共生的特性。从生态的角度观察思考，我把14年来腾讯的内在转变和经验得失总结为创造生物型组织的“灰度法则”，这个法则具体包括7个维度：

分别是：需求度、速度、灵活度、冗余度、开放协作度、创新度、进化度。

这里简短与大家一一探讨：

一、需求度：用户需求是产品核心，产品对需求的体现程度，就是企业被生态所需要的程度

大家可能认为说用户有点老生常谈，但我之所以在不同场合都反复强调这一点，是因为最简单的东西恰恰是做起来最难的事情。

产品研发中最容易犯的一个错误是：研发者往往对自己挖空心思创造出来的产品像对孩子一样珍惜、呵护，认为这是他的心血结晶。好的产品是有灵魂的，优美的设计、技术、运营都能体现背后的理念。有时候开发者设计产品时总觉得越厉害越好，但好产品其实不需要所谓特别厉害的设计或者什么，因为觉得自己特别厉害的人就会故意搞一些体现自己厉害，但用户不需要的东西，那就是舍本逐末了。

腾讯也曾经在这上面走过弯路。现在很受好评的QQ邮箱，以前市场根本不认可，因为对用户来说非常笨重难用。后来，我们只好对它进行回炉再造，从用户的使用习惯、需求去研究，究竟什么样的功能是他们最需要的?在研究过程中，腾讯形成了一个“10/100/1000法则”：产品经理每个月必须做10个用户调查，关注100个用户博客，收集反馈1000个用户体验。这个方法看起来有些笨，但很管用。

我想强调的是，在研究用户需求上没有什么捷径可以走，不要以为自己可以想当然地猜测用户习惯。比如有些自认为定位于低端用户的产品，想都不想就滥用卡通头像和一些花哨的页面装饰，以为这样就是满足了用户需求;自认为定位于高端用户的产品，又喜欢自命清高。其实，这些都是不尊重用户、不以用户为核心的体现。我相信用户群有客观差异，但没有所谓高低端之分。不管什么年龄和背景，所有人都喜欢清晰、简单、自然、好用的设计和产品，这是人对美最自然的感受和追求。

现在的互联网产品已经不是早年的单机软件，更像一种服务，所以要求设计者和开发者有很强的用户感。一定要一边做自己产品的忠实用户，一边把自己的触角伸到其他用户当中，去感受他们真实的声音。只有这样才能脚踏实地，从不完美向完美一点点靠近。

二、速度：快速实现单点突破，角度、锐度尤其是速度，是产品在生态中存在发展的根本

我们经常会看到这样几种现象：

有些人一上来就把摊子铺得很大、恨不得面面俱到地布好局;

有些人习惯于追求完美，总要把产品反复打磨到自认为尽善尽美才推出来;

有些人心里很清楚创新的重要性，但又担心失败，或者造成资源的浪费。

这些做法在实践中经常没有太好的结果，因为市场从来不是一个耐心的等待者。在市场竞争中，一个好的产品往往是从不完美开始的。同时，千万不要以为，先进入市场就可以安枕无忧。我相信，在互联网时代，谁也不比谁傻5秒钟。你的对手会很快醒过来，很快赶上来。他们甚至会比你做得更好，你的安全边界随时有可能被他们突破。

我的建议就是“小步快跑，快速迭代”。也许每一次产品的更新都不是完美的，但是如果坚持每天发现、修正一两个小问题，不到一年基本就把作品打磨出来了，自己也就很有产品感觉了。

所以，这里讲创新的灰度，首先就是要为了实现单点突破允许不完美，但要快速向完美逼近。

三、灵活度：敏捷企业、快速迭代产品的关键是主动变化，主动变化比应变能力更重要

互联网生态的瞬息万变，通常情况下我们认为应变能力非常重要。但是实际上主动变化能力更重要。管理者、产品技术人员而不仅仅是市场人员，如果能够更早的预见问题、主动变化，就不会在市场中陷入被动。在维护根基、保持和增强核心竞争的同时，企业本身各个方面的灵活性非常关键，主动变化在一个生态型企业里面应该成为常态。这方面不仅仅是通常所讲的实时企业、2.0企业，社会化企业那么简单。互联网企业及其产品服务，如果不保持敏感的触角、灵活的身段，一样会得大企业病。腾讯在2011年之前，其实已经开始有这方面的问题。此前我们事业部BU制的做法，通过形成一个个业务纵队的做法使得不同的业务单元保持了自身一定程度的灵活性，但是现在看来还远远不够。

四、冗余度：容忍失败，允许适度浪费，鼓励内部竞争内部试错，不尝试失败就没有成功

仅仅做到这一点还不够。实际上，在产品研发过程中，我们还会有一个困惑：自己做的这个产品万一失败了怎么办?

我的经验是，在面对创新的问题上，要允许适度的浪费。怎么理解?就是在资源许可的前提下，即使有一两个团队同时研发一款产品也是可以接受的，只要你认为这个项目是你在战略上必须做的。去年以来，很多人都看到了微信的成功，但大家不知道，其实在腾讯内部，先后有几个团队都在同时研发基于手机的通讯软件，每个团队的设计理念和实现方式都不一样，最后微信受到了更多用户的青睐。你能说这是资源的浪费吗?我认为不是，没有竞争就意味着创新的死亡。即使最后有的团队在竞争中失败，但它依然是激发成功者灵感的源泉，可以把它理解为“内部试错”。并非所有的系统冗余都是浪费，不尝试失败就没有成功，不创造各种可能性就难以获得现实性。

五、开放协作度：最大程度地扩展协作，互联网很多恶性竞争都可以转向协作型创新

互联网的一个美妙之处就在于，把更多人更大范围地卷入协作。我们也可以感受到，越多人参与，网络的价值就越大，用户需求越能得到满足，每一个参与协作的组织从中获取的收益也越大。所以，适当的灰度还意味着，在聚焦于自己核心价值的同时，尽量深化和扩大社会化协作。

对创业者来说，如何利用好平台开展协作，是一个值得深思的问题。以前做互联网产品，用户要一个一个地累积，程序、数据库、设计等经验技巧都要从头摸索。但平台创业的趋势出现之后，大平台承担起基础设施建设的责任，创业的成本和负担随之大幅降低，大家可以把更多精力集中到最核心的创新上来。

对我个人来说，2010、2011、2012年以来，越来越意识到，腾讯成为互联网的连接者也就是帮助大家连接到用户以及连接彼此方面的责任、意义和价值更大。在这个过程中，我们要实现的转变就是，以前做好自己，为自己做，现在和以后是做好平台，为大家而作。互联网的本质是连接、开放、协作、分享，首先因为对他人有益，所以才对自己有益。

对腾讯来说，我对内对外都反复强调我们作为平台级企业一定是有所为有所不为。现在肯定还有许多不尽人意的地方，我们也希望通过各种渠道，听听大家对如何经营好开放平台的意见和建议。这绝不是一个姿态，而是踏踏实实的行动力。一个好的生态系统必然是不同物种有不同分工，最后形成配合，而不是所有物种都朝一个方向进化。

在这种新的思路下，互联网的很多恶性竞争都可以转向协作型创新。利用平台已有的优势，广泛进行合作伙伴间横向或者纵向的合作，将是灰度创新中一个重要的方向。

六、进化度：构建生物型组织，让企业组织本身在无控过程中拥有自进化、自组织能力

这一年来，我也在越来越多地思考一个问题：一个企业该以什么样的型态去构建它的组织?什么样的组织，决定了它能容忍什么样的创新灰度。

进化度，实质就是一个企业的文化、DNA、组织方式是否具有自主进化、自主生长、自我修复、自我净化的能力。我想举一个柯达的例子。很多人都知道柯达是胶片影像业的巨头，但鲜为人知的是，它也是数码相机的发明者。然而，这个掘了胶片影像业坟墓、让众多企业迅速发展壮大的发明，在柯达却被束之高阁了。

为什么?我认为是组织的僵化。在传统机械型组织里，一个“异端”的创新，很难获得足够的资源和支持，甚至会因为与组织过去的战略、优势相冲突而被排斥，因为企业追求精准、控制和可预期，很多创新难以找到生存空间。这种状况，很像生物学所讲的“绿色沙漠”——在同一时期大面积种植同一种树木，这片树林十分密集而且高矮一致，结果遮挡住所有阳光，不仅使其他下层植被无法生长，本身对灾害的抵抗力也很差。

要想改变它，唯有构建一个新的组织型态，所以我倾向于生物型组织。那些真正有活力的生态系统，外界看起来似乎是混乱和失控，其实是组织在自然生长进化，在寻找创新。那些所谓的失败和浪费，也是复杂系统进化过程中必须的生物多样性。

七、创新度：创新并非刻意为之，而是充满可能性、多样性的生物型组织的必然产物。

创意、研发其实不是创新的源头。如果一个企业已经成为生态型企业，开放协作度、进化度、冗余度、速度、需求度都比较高，创新就会从灰度空间源源不断涌出。从这个意义上讲，创新不是原因，而是结果;创新不是源头，而是产物。企业要做的，是创造生物型组织，拓展自己的灰度空间，让现实和未来的土壤、生态充满可能性、多样性。这就是灰度的生存空间。

互联网越来越像大自然，追求的不是简单的增长，而是跃迁和进化。腾讯最近的组织架构调整，就是为了保持创新的活力和灵动性，而进行的由“大”变“小”，把自己变成整个互联网大生态圈中的一个具有多样性的生物群落。

我相信每一个创业者都怀有一个成功的梦想，我与大家分享的是腾讯14年互联网实践的一点体会。它肯定是不完整的，但它同样也遵循“小步快跑”的灰度法则，需要一步一步去完善，大家可以继续发挥和探索。我希望的是，腾讯不仅是能让大家赚到钱的平台，更能成为业界一起探索未来、分享思考的平台。以后每年，但凡在创新方面能有所心得，我都会跟大家一起分享。

翻译：

This year, we all took the first steps toward an open, borderless Internet. A large number of entrepreneurial partners have sprung up on Tencent’s open platform. And many of these teams have had initial success.

Seeing these new phenomena, I feel both joy and responsibility. If what Tencent does well used to be about its own employees and shareholders, now it’s about everyone. Tencent must also thrive on its platforms and succeed with its partners.

Tencent can also bring you what?

This change made me think again and again, in addition to traffic, technology, services and other “hardware” sharing. Tencent can also bring you what? In other words, how to open up Tencent’s accumulated experience and ability. So that the entire Internet industry ecological development more healthy and prosperous?

Over the past year, through observing partners on open platforms. I have found that making a good product is not too difficult for many people. However, how to make it sustainable, how to transplant the successful experience of one product to create a series of successful products, is a rather difficult problem.

Here, I’d like to share my thoughts with you.

These thoughts come from Tencent’s 14 years of experience and lessons, and I hope they will be helpful to you. In Tencent’s internal product development and operation process. There is a word that has been repeatedly mentioned, that is “gray scale”. Ren Zhengfei, a veteran entrepreneur whom I respect very much, once thought deeply from this perspective and wrote the Gray Level of Management.

The gray level he advocated was mainly compromise and tolerance in internal management.

The gray level he advocated was mainly compromise and tolerance in internal management. But in my opinion, in the Internet era, the grayscale of product innovation and enterprise management means to keep flexible all the time, keep close to the ever-changing user needs, and change with the trend. So how do you find the right shade of gray, instead of going further and further down the wrong path?

It can not only maintain the normal and effective operation of enterprises, but also provide a flexible environment for innovation. So that innovation is not stifled, but not into the dead end of innovation. This requires us to find the right balance among rapid changes. The Internet is an open, integrated and rapidly changing ecology.

As a species in the Internet ecology, enterprises need to be like creatures in nature, with the characteristics of confluence, harmony and symbiosis with the ecosystem in all aspects. From the perspective of ecology, I summarize Tencent’s internal transformation and experience gains and losses in the past 14 years as the “gray law” for creating biological organizations. Which specifically includes seven dimensions:

They are: demand, speed, flexibility, redundancy, openness and collaboration, innovation and evolution.

Here is a brief discussion with you:

Demand degree: User demand is the core of the product, and the degree to which the product reflects the demand is the degree to which the enterprise is needed by the ecology

You might think it’s a cliche to talk about users. But the reason I say it over and over again is because the simplest things are the hardest things to do.

Product research and development of the most easy to make a mistake is: developers often to their own mind to create the product like a child to cherish, care, think that this is his crystallization of hard work. Good products have soul, beautiful design, technology, operation can reflect the idea behind. Sometimes when developers design products, they think the better the better. But a good product doesn’t need the so-called great design or anything, because people who think they are great will deliberately make something that shows they are great, but users don’t need, that is to miss the point.

Tencent has also made detours in this area.

Tencent has also made detours in this area. Now very well received QQ mailbox, the market did not recognize before, because of the user is very cumbersome and difficult to use. Later, we had to recycle it, from the user’s use habits, needs to study, what kind of function is they most need? During the research, Tencent developed a “10/100/1000 rule” : Product managers must conduct 10 user surveys, follow 100 user blogs, and collect feedback on 1,000 user experiences every month. It may seem silly, but it works.

I want to emphasize that there is no easy way to study user needs, and don’t assume that you can just guess user habits. For example, some products think they are positioned at the low end of the user, do not want to abuse cartoon avatar and some fancy page decoration, think that this is to meet the needs of users; They think they are positioned for high-end users, and they like to be pretentious. In fact, these are not respecting the user, not to the user as the core of the embodiment. I believe there are objective differences in the user base, but there is no such thing as high or low. No matter what age and background, all people like clear, simple, natural, user-friendly design and products, which is the most natural feeling and pursuit of beauty.

Today’s Internet products are no longer stand-alone software, but more like a service, so designers and developers are required to have a strong sense of users. Be sure to be a loyal user of your own product, while extending your reach to other users, to feel their real voice. Only in this way can we keep our feet on the ground and move from imperfect to perfect.

Speed: Rapid realization of single point breakthrough, Angle, sharpness, especially speed, is the fundamental existence and development of products in the ecology

We often see such phenomena:

Some people set up a big stall at the very beginning, eager to cover everything;

Some people are used to the pursuit of perfection, always want to polish the product repeatedly until they think it is perfect to launch;

Some people know the importance of innovation, but they worry about failure or waste of resources.

These practices often do not work out well in practice, because the market is never a patient wait-taker. In market competition, a good product is often not perfect to begin with. At the same time, don’t think that entering the market first will make you rest easy. I believe that in the Internet age, no one is more than five seconds stupid. Your opponent will wake up quickly and catch up quickly. They will do even better than you, and your security boundary can be breached at any time.

My advice is “take small steps, iterate quickly.” Maybe every product update is not perfect, but if you insist on finding and correcting one or two small problems every day, you will basically polish the work out in less than a year, and you will have a product feeling.

So, the gray scale of innovation here, first of all, in order to achieve a single point of breakthrough to allow for imperfection, but to quickly approach perfection.

Flexibility: The key to agile enterprises and rapidly iterating products is active change, which is more important than the ability to change

The Internet ecosystem changes so quickly that we normally think of resilience as very important. But the capacity for active change is actually more important. Managers and product technicians, not just marketers, would not be trapped in the market if they could anticipate problems and proactively change. While maintaining the foundation, maintaining and enhancing the core competition, the flexibility in all aspects of the enterprise itself is very critical, and active change should become the norm in an ecological enterprise.

This aspect is not only the common said real-time enterprise, 2.0 enterprise, social enterprise so simple. Internet companies and their products and services, if they do not maintain sensitive antennae, flexible body, will also suffer from big enterprise disease. Tencent in 2011, in fact, has started to have this problem. Previously, the BU system of our business division enabled different business units to maintain a certain degree of flexibility through the formation of a business column, but now it seems far from enough.

Redundancy: Tolerates failure, allows moderate waste, encourages internal competition and internal trial and error, and does not try to fail, there is no success

That alone is not enough. In fact, in the process of product development, we still have a puzzle: what if the product we made fails?

My rule of thumb is to allow a modest amount of waste in the face of innovation. How do you understand that? Even having one or two teams working on a product at the same time is acceptable, resources permitting. As long as you feel the project is a strategic imperative for you.

Since last year, many people have seen the success of wechat, but we do not know, in fact, in Tencent internal, has several teams are at the same time research and development of communication software based on mobile phones, each team’s design concept and implementation are not the same, finally wechat by more users of favor. Can you say it’s a waste of resources? I don’t think so. No competition means the death of innovation. Even if some teams end up losing the competition, it is still a source of inspiration for the winners. Think of it as “internal trial and error.” Not all system redundancy is waste, there is no success without trying to fail, and reality is hard to achieve without creating possibilities.

Open collaboration degree: To the maximum extent of collaboration, many vicious competition on the Internet can turn to collaborative innovation

One of the beauties of the Internet is that it allows more people to collaborate on a larger scale. We can also feel that the more people participate in the network, the greater the value of the network, the more users’ needs can be met, and the greater the benefits of each organization participating in the collaboration. So, appropriate grayscale also means deepening and expanding social collaboration as much as possible while focusing on your core values.

For entrepreneurs, how to make good use of the platform to carry out collaboration is a question worth pondering. In the past, Internet products, users to accumulate one by one, procedures, databases, design and other experience and skills to explore from scratch.

However, after the emergence of the trend of platform entrepreneurship, large platforms have assumed the responsibility of infrastructure construction. The cost and burden of entrepreneurship have been greatly reduced, and people can focus more on the core innovation.

I’ve realized more and more that Tencent has a greater responsibility.

For me personally, since 2010, 2011, 2012, I’ve realized more and more that Tencent has a greater responsibility, meaning and value in being the connector of the Internet, in helping people connect to users and to each other. In this process, we want to realize the change is, before to do well for themselves, now and in the future is to do a good platform, for everyone. The essence of the Internet is connectivity, openness, collaboration, and sharing. First of all, it is beneficial to oneself because it is beneficial to others.

For Tencent, I have repeatedly stressed both internally and externally that as a platform-level enterprise, we must do something and not do something. There is certainly still much to be desired. And we hope to hear your opinions and suggestions on how to run the open platform well through various channels. This is not a gesture, but a solid action. A good ecosystem is one in which different species have different divisions of labor and eventually cooperate, rather than all species evolving in the same direction.

In this new way of thinking, much of the Internet’s vicious competition can be turned to collaborative innovation. It will be an important direction of gray innovation to make use of the existing advantages of the platform to extensively carry out horizontal or vertical cooperation between partners.

Evolution degree: Build biological organization, so that the enterprise organization itself has the ability of self-evolution and self-organization in the uncontrolled process

Over the past year, I have been thinking more and more about a question: What kind of shape should an enterprise structure its organization? What kind of organization, determines what kind of innovation gray level it can tolerate.

The degree of evolution, in essence, is whether an enterprise’s culture, DNA, organizational mode has the ability of independent evolution, independent growth, self-repair, self-purification. I want to give an example of Kodak. Many people know Kodak as a giant in the film industry. But less well known is that it was also the inventor of the digital camera. At Kodak, however, the invention that dug the grave of the film industry and allowed many companies to grow rapidly was shelved.

Why? I think it’s the rigidity of the organization. In traditional mechanical organizations, it is difficult for a “heretical” innovation to obtain sufficient resources and support, or even be rejected because of the conflict with the organization’s past strategies and advantages. Because enterprises pursue precision, control and predictability, many innovations find it difficult to survive. This condition, much like what is known in biology as a “green desert” — a dense forest of the same kind of trees planted over a large area at the same time, blocks out all sunlight, prevents the growth of other understory and is itself less resistant to disasters.

The only way to change it is to build a new tissue type, so I prefer biological tissue. The truly dynamic ecosystems that seem chaotic and out of control from the outside are actually organizations that naturally grow and evolve in search of innovation. These so-called failures and wastes are also necessary for biodiversity to evolve in complex systems.

Degree of innovation: Innovation is not intentional, but the inevitable outcome of the possibility, diversity of biological organization.

Creativity, research and development is not the source of innovation. If an enterprise has become an ecological enterprise, open cooperation degree, evolution degree, redundancy degree, speed, demand degree are relatively high, innovation will flow from the gray space. In this sense, innovation is not a cause, but an effect; Innovation is not the source, but the product. What enterprises need to do is to create biological organizations, expand their gray space. So that the reality and future soil, ecology full of possibilities, diversity. This is the grayscale living space.

The Internet is more and more like nature, pursuing not simple growth but leap and evolution. The recent restructuring of Tencent’s organizational structure is to maintain the vitality and agility of innovation. And to change from “big” to “small”, turning itself into a diverse community of organisms in the whole Internet ecosystem.

I believe that every entrepreneur has a dream of success. What I share with you is a little experience from Tencent’s 14 years of Internet practice. It is definitely not complete, but it also follows the gray law of “small run”, need to be perfected step by step, you can continue to play and explore. What I hope is that Tencent will not only be a platform for us to make money, but also a platform for the industry to explore the future and share ideas. Every year, I will share with you what I can learn about innovation.

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