Jack Ma said: The future belongs to five new things!

Thread Content

Jack Ma believes that there are five new trends in the future that will have a profound impact on China, on the world, and on everyone in the future. I think the first of these new trends is what we call new retail. In modern cities, many traditional retail industries have been greatly impacted by e-commerce or the Internet. In my view, this is because they fail to grasp the technologies of the future; they don’t look ahead but only focus on the past. They need to figure out how to adapt to these new technologies, how to cooperate with Internet companies, how to work together with modern logistics systems, and how to make good use of big data. It is necessary to develop new retail; the retail industry that relies primarily on the real estate model will surely be impacted. If it isn’t impacted today, that company won’t be able to survive for long. The emergence of new retail will also have an impact on businesses that operate solely offline. The second aspect of new manufacturing: over the past two to three decades, manufacturing has focused on scale and standardization; in the next three decades, it will emphasize intelligence, personalization, and customization. If companies do not start focusing on personalization and customization, any manufacturing industry will surely be destroyed. So the second major technological revolution that began after the rise of retail is the IoT revolution – that is, the era of artificial intelligence and smart machines. Machines in the future will not be powered by electricity; instead, they will use data. Therefore, it is important that everyone pay close attention to this. In all manufacturing industries, as a result of changes in the retail sector, the traditional B2C manufacturing model will be completely transformed into a C2B model, that is, customization based on demand. What we are talking about today in terms of supply-side reforms is the need to transform oneself in order to adapt to the market and to meet the needs of consumers. Therefore, I hope everyone will pay close attention to the transformations brought about by IoT, as well as the emergence of new manufacturing methods in the future. The impact these changes will have on various industries in the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta regions, which rely on large-scale and standardized production, will far exceed what people can imagine. Furthermore, we propose a third transformation, known as the transformation of finance; the emergence of new finance will also accelerate transformation across society as a whole. In the past, finance has supported the development of the industrial economy over the course of two hundred years. During those two centuries, the 80/20 rule applied: by supporting just 20% of the large enterprises, it was possible to drive 80% of global development. However, future finance must support the 80/20 theory – it needs to help those 80% of small and medium-sized enterprises, personalized businesses, young people, and consumers. Traditional finance aimed to assist those 80% of small and medium-sized enterprises, innovation entrepreneurs, and consumers, but its IT infrastructure and original design concepts were not sufficient to achieve this. With the emergence of Internet finance, its goal is to create a system that is more fair and transparent, and one that provides support to those 80% of people who were not supported yesterday. Therefore, the advent of this new form of finance will inevitably have an impact on the financial institutions of yesterday; yet this opportunity is available to everyone. I hope to see the emergence of true Internet finance, and the creation of a genuine credit system. It is only a credit system based on data that can enable truly inclusive finance worldwide, ensuring that everyone who needs money or desires it can obtain it – enough money, not too much, and not something that can never be obtained. Therefore, the emergence of new finance will bring tremendous benefits to all entrepreneurs, young people, and small businesses. I believe that significant progress will be seen in the next decade, and this is also the responsibility that Ant Financial takes on. We aim to turn credit into wealth, and we want everyone to have access to financial support, thereby creating a fair, transparent, and open financial system that benefits all. There is also something called the emergence of new technologies: with the advent of the mobile Internet, chips that were previously based on PCs may become mobile chips, and operating systems will be mobile ones. Machine manufacturing as it existed before will give way to artificial intelligence, and while machines currently rely on electricity, in the future they will rely on data. In the future, an endless stream of innovations based on the Internet and big data technology will emerge, creating countless possibilities and avenues for human imagination. There are also new resources; past development has been based on oil and coal, while future technological progress will be based on new energy sources, namely data. According to Dr. Wang Jian, data represents the first time in human history that we have created our own energy and resources. Clothes lose their value once someone else has worn them; data, on the other hand, becomes more valuable the more people use it. The more it is used, the more valuable it becomes – it is something whose value increases with use. Jack Ma emphasized that everyone should remember these five new trends that will impact many industries. “We’re talking about them today, so that in 20 years people won’t say that you’ve ruined everything again. New retail, new manufacturing, new finance, new technology, and new energy – these five areas will have a profound impact on all sectors. Those who seize these opportunities will succeed. I don’t want this to be seen as an alarmist warning; rather, it should be viewed as an opportunity to make changes, starting right now.” ”