A new round of technological and industrial change is in full swing, and digital technology is advancing fast. Developing the digital economy is a strategic choice for capturing this opportunity. Fusing digital technology with the real economy – and making the digital economy strong – requires the persistence of choosing one thing and dedicating a lifetime to it, the refinement of specialising in one trade, and the pursuit of excellence that shapes a tool through a thousand hammer blows.
Digital technology has an amplifying, stacking and multiplying effect on economic growth. Fusing it with the real economy can upgrade traditional industries and create new industries, business formats and models, injecting fresh momentum. But hard problems remain: how to bridge differences in digital adoption across industries, how to make industrial internet data sharing and pooling efficient, and how to keep data consistent across the full chain of production, manufacturing, R&D, distribution and consumption. Solving them takes technology companies willing to polish their craft on technical innovation over the long run.
Deep technology, not just scale
From a technology development perspective, integration innovation no longer stops at ‘efficiency through scale’; it pushes into deeper, breakthrough-level underlying technology, and extends from the consumer side to supply chains and production. That demands long-termism: meticulous cultivation and relentless refinement.
JD is a case in point: since pivoting to technology in early 2017 it has invested nearly RMB 75 billion in technology, producing warehouse robot scheduling algorithms, super-automated supply chains, smart city operating systems and other applied results that feed manufacturing, distribution and service industries. Many of these projects took years of continuous R&D and optimisation, with large numbers of engineers staying focused on their fields. Breakthroughs come from that endurance, determination and confidence in original innovation.
The industrial internet needs patient standards work
From an application perspective, extending the digital economy to the production side largely means building the industrial internet, which connects all industrial factors and the whole industrial chain with data and upgrades traditional industries end to end. In practice, industrial products come in huge varieties with complex parameters, and industrial data lacks standards. Building a unified digital product standard library is a key problem for the industrial internet – one that requires patiently solving technical difficulties in niche fields.
One technology company deep in this area launched the ‘Mercator’ standardised industrial product library, resolving inconsistent product information and incomplete industry attributes in existing systems, and laying a foundation for connectivity between upstream and downstream supply chain enterprises. Staying specialised, refined, detailed, practical and innovative is what drives technical and industrial breakthroughs.
The digital economy surge demands both urgency and patience: fast iteration and slow craftsmanship. Long-term value creation and transformative innovation are the way to master underlying core technology, keep supply chains autonomous, secure and efficient, and occupy the high ground of future development – with innovation as the compass, technology as the lifeblood and quality as the pursuit.
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