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Specialization, as a development strategy for enterprises, is often viewed with great conviction. However, as the business environment changes, specialization clearly does not guarantee success just by focusing on one area; therefore, it is necessary to reevaluate specialization strategies and assign them new roles, new tactics, and new models in the new business environment. — 1 — Why pursue specialization? From a strategic perspective, specialization enables precise targeting by focusing efforts. Companies focus their efforts on certain segments of the industry, targeting those areas in order to develop those niche markets more thoroughly. At the same time, companies can focus their efforts on achieving major goals, avoiding the waste of strategic resources on non-strategic opportunities, and thus achieve results by concentrating their efforts in one direction. From a tactical perspective, specialization is aimed at achieving a comparative advantage, enabling lower cost competitiveness compared to other companies in the same industry. Establish a competitive position in the market by creating technical and price barriers through specialization. Emphasizing specialization does not mean denying diversity; the two are not in direct conflict. However, opportunism is the greatest challenge to specialization. Many companies have a clear specialized focus at the time of their establishment, but they tend to opt for speculation when faced with external market temptations. In fact, to enter other markets, it is still necessary to establish a comparative advantage; if strategic choices and restructurings can be made, that could indeed be a strategic option ； But more companies do it purely for profit, which turns \"speculation\" into a situation where they end up losing more than they gain. Looking at companies around the world, it is often the specialized firms that focus on their core business which survive for a long time. Founded in 578 AD, the Nippon Kongo Group is the oldest construction company in the world, with a history of over 1,400 years; it has been dedicated solely to building temples for a thousand years. To uncover the secrets to a company’s longevity, as Kōkō Masakazu, the 40th head of the Kōkō Group, puts it: “It is very important for a company to stick to its most fundamental business activities.” ”Kōsuke Kōgo believes that whether the economy is booming or in decline, focusing on one’s core business remains the key to survival. Following the mechanisms of a specialization strategy and corporate management practices, this \"simplifying complexity\" strategy of specialization addresses the uncertainties of the external environment through strategic focus, dedication, and professionalism, thereby ensuring the sustained success and longevity of the enterprise. The lesson of Carillion, the century-old British builder that abandoned its core business and pursued a blind transformation, is also worth careful consideration. — 2 — Strategic positioning for specialization: Determining how to achieve a specialized positioning is clearly a difficult decision. Construction companies seem to be present in every segment of the industry; every niche is a \"red ocean\". The “truth” of the construction market is that no market is saturated, and there is no “ceiling” in specialized sectors. It is not the market that holds back growth; it is we ourselves. We should not try to determine the scale of the industry; to a certain extent, the size of the industry has no direct relation to the construction companies themselves. An excellent construction company is one that doesn’t just thrive when the industry conditions are favorable, but is also able to cope effectively even in difficult circumstances. I believe the reason for the continuous growth of the construction industry is that human needs are constantly increasing, and meeting the needs of society and humanity is the primary driving force and fundamental characteristic behind the development of construction projects. The strategic positioning of a company’s specialization allows it to \"find differences within similarities,\" thereby establishing a competitive advantage in homogeneous markets ； Secondly, it is necessary to identify needs and explore segments within \"mature\" markets that possess growth potential, in order to find a path for the construction industry toward \"blue oceans\". For a company’s strategic focus on specialization, it is first necessary to understand the industry; the company should be able to grasp and outline the overall landscape of that industry. From a strategic perspective, businesses should not only compete for existing customers but also create and drive demand to initiate new growth. A company’s understanding of an industry cannot rely solely on data reports ； Because these data are often based on facts that have already occurred, rather than on needs. From a future perspective, we have reason to be optimistic about emerging fields such as urban renewal and rural infrastructure development. My understanding of \"new infrastructure\" is that it refers to new industries, business forms, and models in infrastructure construction that are oriented toward meeting the people’s growing needs for a better quality of life, rely on green, industrialized, and informational development approaches as their main strategies, are characterized by the transformation and upgrading of traditional infrastructure, and involve innovative applications that integrate the Internet, new energy sources, new materials, and new technologies. However, demand is not exactly the same as the market; it requires a business model to facilitate its transformation, and companies that strive to enter the \"blue ocean\" deserve attention. Secondly, it is necessary to keep an eye on competitors. Understanding the opponent is not about “taking others’ paths so that they have no way out”” ； The most important thing is to stand out, and this differentiation is not aimed at competitors; it’s not done merely for the sake of differentiation, but to offer customers unique value. The “5+2” construction system adopted by Vanke is, in essence, aimed at improving the living comfort of users. Therefore, a company’s specialization strategy should focus on those key elements that can bring value to customers, while eliminating and reducing other elements. In this way, the company’s strategy can deliver higher value while reducing costs. Once again, it’s about taking control of oneself. Enterprises often choose their areas of specialization based on their own strengths. If that’s the only consideration, they will only reap short-term benefits while losing their long-term competitive edge. In a company’s specialization strategy, the most important thing is not to ask “What can I do?” but rather “What do customers need?” The key to understanding one’s core strengths lies in not limiting oneself with the company’s existing resources and capabilities; instead, it is about focusing on the opportunities in the external market and the needs of customers, and using these as a basis to assess the company from an external perspective, thereby identifying its infinite strategic potential and growth opportunities. Every industry is a growing one, and a company’s strategic approach to specialization \"should be forward-looking, involving a deep understanding of the industry, trends, and economic environment; it is a process of proactive adjustment rather than a passive response based on what can be observed ； Strategic thinking should be a process that starts with customer needs, aiming to meet those needs and create new ones; the market and performance are the ultimate determinants, rather than just a supply-side mindset focused on what one wants to do. ”(Sinochem Group’s Gao Ning, “The Foundation of Strategy Is Mindset”) — 3 — The key path to achieving specialization ▌1. Focus on products: No matter where we go, we can instantly recognize Vanke’s buildings. In fact, products can speak for themselves, conveying the values of a company. Just as Vanke’s products reflect concepts of quality and sustainability, these are important emotional attributes that lie behind the functional features of the products. Products are the lifeblood of a company; it is the company that gives products their vitality, integrating the company’s value proposition with its commitment to serving customers through those products. When a company’s products fail to reflect its philosophy, they cannot truly touch the hearts of customers. Specialized enterprises need to be able to provide specialized products. Specialized products are not merely about striving for excellence within a company; rather, they go beyond the realm of construction to offer, from a product perspective, the ability to create value for customers. From this perspective, engineering companies need to possess the capability for design or EPC, while construction is a process of \"redesign\" and \"recreation\", thereby realizing a customer-centric value proposition during the building process. Therefore, all efforts in the development of building products are not merely aimed at meeting technical or quality standards, but rather at providing users with a better living experience. A product is the most direct manifestation of a company’s ability to concentrate, focus, and dedicate itself to creating value for customers. As seen with the widespread adoption of prefabricated buildings in recent years, there has been a lot of encouragement and incentives on the government’s side, but little feedback from the market and customers. The sustainability and effectiveness of this approach are issues that prefabricated building companies should consider. No matter how many advantages prefabricated buildings have, they ultimately need to translate into value for users, and only products that can demonstrate professional value can be considered professional products. ▌2. Master core technologies: A company’s profitability and sustainable growth depend on its ability to develop core competitive advantages at lower costs and faster speeds than its competitors. The uniqueness of such core competitive advantages lies in the fact that the resources/abilities in question cannot be stolen, bought, replicated, or taken away. ”Among them, core technologies are an extremely important part of a company’s core competitiveness; under certain circumstances, they can even play a decisive role. Chinese construction companies have undertaken research on high-rise building technologies such as \"Research on Construction Techniques for Kilometer-high Skyscrapers in China,\" and have developed a number of key technical equipment for the construction of such buildings, thereby establishing their core competitiveness in this field. Leveraging core technologies for super-tall buildings, it has constructed half of the world’s super-tall structures ； By continuously strengthening the \"protective barriers,\" a relatively monopolistic market structure was created, allowing them to maintain a strategic advantage of \"attacking first after achieving victory\" in competition. It is also thanks to its core technologies that China State Construction has managed to stay away from the fierce competition in the mid-to-low-end construction market, thus maintaining a clear first-mover advantage and a leading market position. In developing core technologies, companies need to learn to answer the four strategic questions posed by Fuji’s CEO, Furusawa: how to use existing technologies to strengthen current markets, how to develop new technologies for application in existing markets, how to apply existing technologies to new markets, and how to explore new technologies to open up new markets. The 2017 China Patent Survey Report indicates that the number of invention patent applications in the construction industry was 49,000, accounting for only 28.7% of the total number of patent applications accepted ； The number of authorized invention patents was 19,000, accounting for only 19.4% of the total number of patents granted ； There are only 324 core patents in the construction industry, accounting for just 6.2% of the country’s total core patents. Data shows that the construction industry has a low level of core technological content in patents, with few invention patents that provide a competitive advantage on the international stage. Patents are not only a means of protecting one’s own technological achievements; their fundamental purpose is to create technical barriers. Clearly, China’s construction enterprises are not yet fully prepared for this. China’s vast market opportunities have enabled many construction companies to thrive. Despite their large scale, these companies still lack sufficient core competitiveness. We need to focus on doing the right things, tackling difficult tasks, and engaging in activities that require time to yield results. ▌3. Maintain scale: Companies need to maintain an appropriate scale in order to achieve growth. Enterprises must maintain strategic focus on specialization; however, their understanding of specialization should not be overly narrow. The key purpose of specialization is to gain market share, rather than engaging in “self-indulgent” specialization for its own sake. Companies that adhere to a path of specialized development tend to maintain a high level of focus and stability in specific niche markets and areas of expertise, thereby capturing the largest share in those markets. Focusing on its core business of waterproofing, Oriental Yuhong has developed a comprehensive product and service system for building energy efficiency centered around waterproofing. Its business scope encompasses numerous fields, including building construction, highways, urban roads and bridges, subways and urban rail systems, high-speed railways, airports, and water conservancy facilities. As a result, it has become Asia’s largest provider of waterproofing system services. In 2019, its revenue reached 18.1 billion yuan. It holds a significant lead in terms of scale and has become the undisputed leader in China’s waterproofing industry. Therefore, specialization does not hinder scale; on the contrary, it maintains healthy growth in scale. Specialization acts like a “powerful tool”; through the penetration and diffusion of core products, core technologies, and core businesses, it extends into various industries or along the upstream and downstream value chains. Specialization can be a point, or it can be a line or a circle; however, all such expansions do not deviate from the core business or divert the company’s resources. Focus remains the key to professionalism. ▌4. Project succession strategy: Construction companies exist based on projects; without such projects, the companies would have to close down. An important way to implement corporate strategy is through engineering projects, which serve as a vital means for achieving that strategy. On the one hand, projects should be selected from a strategic perspective, so that they can support the strategy ； On the other hand, a company’s strategic initiatives need to be implemented through projects. Project governance within an enterprise involves making appropriate interventions in projects to ensure their success and the realization of project benefits ； At the same time, continuous monitoring of the consistency of corporate strategy is carried out, with a focus on achieving the goals of that strategy. In many construction companies, project governance is lacking, which leads to a disconnect between the company’s strategy and its engineering projects. Since these projects fail to be linked to the strategy, it is very likely that the strategy will not be achieved. Companies that adhere to professional development need to establish a management relationship between strategic goals and project objectives. Whether it is developing core products, core technologies, or core business operations, these all need to be accomplished throughout the project implementation process, thereby creating a positive feedback loop in which they support one another. If strategy is the \"knowledge,\" then projects represent the \"action.\" It is only through the integration of knowledge and action in strategy and projects that a company can achieve sustained success. Execution is strategy, and strategy is execution – this is the state that a company should strive for. Compared to the past, businesses are facing increasing uncertainty and volatility in the business environment, and strategy is a method for finding a degree of certainty in such an uncertain setting. We need to redefine specialization and broaden our perspectives from a \"blue ocean\" viewpoint, thereby guiding businesses down a more correct and broader path. In fact, specialization is not merely a specialized skill; it is also a form of practical wisdom and a way of thinking. It should not be viewed as a single strategy, but rather as a combination of strategies, or even an evolving strategic ecosystem. In any case, specialization is an effective strategy; coupled with the support of organizational and business models, it can lead a company from achieving success to sustaining that success.