Wu Xiaoru, President Of Iflytek: Closed Loop And Open System Innovation

Editor's note

2021 is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China. It is the first year of the 14th five year plan. It is also a key year for the strategy of strengthening the country and independent innovation.

The world is changing so much that it is hard to prevent China from rejuvenating. In such a period of great historical changes and opportunities, the 21st century economic report exclusively planned and launched a series of reports entitled "the road to greatness: Top 100 innovation in big countries" throughout the year. Through screening and reporting the key enterprises and outstanding entrepreneurs in the national strategic industries, it has helped China's magnificent journey to climb new heights.

This issue is an exclusive interview with iFLYTEK and Midea. Please pay attention.

On June 9, HKUST celebrated its 22nd birthday.

In the past 22 years, iFLYTEK has grown from a once unknown college student start-up to a well-known leader in intelligent voice and artificial intelligence in China, from the vision of "making machines listen and speak, understand and think, and change the world with artificial intelligence" at the early stage of entrepreneurship, and now it has further extended its mission to "building a better world with artificial intelligence", Witnessing the breaking, transformation and take-off of intelligent voice and artificial intelligence industry in China.

Today, it is the centenary anniversary of the founding of the CPC and the opening year of the 14th five year plan. Scientific and technological innovation has been raised to an unprecedented height. As a representative enterprise of innovative technology, iFLYTEK also has more in-depth thinking on intelligent voice, technological innovation and its own business development.

"In the fourteenth five year plan, the outline of long-term goals for 2035, and the recent academician conference, scientific and technological innovation has been put to an unprecedented height." In an exclusive interview with the 21st century economic report, Wu Xiaoru, President of iFLYTEK, said, "in the planning outline, scientific and technological innovation is the core of the whole national development strategy, and in particular, it is proposed that self-reliance of science and technology is the strategic support for future national development. General Secretary Xi stressed at the academicians' meeting that we should constantly march into the breadth and depth of science and technology in the face of the world's scientific and technological frontier, the main economic battlefield, the major needs of the country, and the people's life and health, which also points out the main direction for our scientific and technological innovation. "

Under the atmosphere of innovation, iFLYTEK has more confidence in the future. In February this year, Liu Qingfeng, chairman of iFLYTEK, clearly put forward the "14th five year plan" goal of "one billion users, 100 billion revenue and one trillion ecology". Liu Qingfeng stressed that systematic innovation and strategic base areas are the most important growth paths and the two core engines supporting the rapid growth of iFLYTEK's performance.

Investment in technological innovation is undoubtedly the foundation of the foundation“ In major economic and livelihood activities, especially in the field of technological innovation at the national strategic level, iFLYTEK's technological innovation will enter the deep-water area in the future. " Wu Xiaoru pointed out, "we should vigorously increase research and development in this area, and strive for continuous breakthroughs on the basis of technological innovation at the source of artificial intelligence."

Two wheel drive of source innovation and application innovation

In June 1999, in a rented cottage in Hefei, Anhui Province, Liu Qingfeng and his classmates set up Anhui Silicon Valley Tianyin Technology Information Co., Ltd., now known as iFLYTEK, with a capital of 3 million yuan.

At that time, China's intelligent voice industry was still hard to speak of, and iFLYTEK was just a start-up enterprise. However, although it was still unknown, iFLYTEK at that time intended to create core values with high added value that could represent the country's future participation in global competition.

IFLYTEK, which is a "fast runner", sees the future direction. The clock points to the new century, especially in the second decade. With the rapid development of China's mobile Internet and the continuous penetration of China's intelligent voice assistant applications, the scale of China's intelligent voice market begins to rise rapidly. According to CCID Consulting data, the scale of China's smart voice market will reach 14.44 billion yuan in 2019, with a year-on-year increase of 54.1%.

IFLYTEK, with its global leading independent core technology, has become the current leader in the field of intelligent voice. It not only occupies 70% of the market share in China's voice technology market, but also ranks fifth in the global smart voice market after nuance, Google, apple and Microsoft. From 2018 to 2020, iFLYTEK won nearly 10 International Ai Championships in the field of intelligent voice.

At the same time, iFLYTEK's technological innovation is not a castle in the air. At present, iFLYTEK has achieved positive interaction between source innovation and industrial application in education, medical treatment, intelligent office, smart city and other application scenarios, forming a continuous closed-loop iteration of "algorithm data" in the expanding application scale.

"Looking back over the past 20 years, we have always stressed that" we should stand up to the sky and stand on the ground "for technology and application "IFLYTEK has always emphasized the two wheel drive of source innovation and application innovation," said Wu Xiaoru

In terms of application landing, iFLYTEK is mainly realized through the core R & D platform, business incubation in the exploratory direction and the entrepreneurial team on the open platform.

In 2010, iFLYTEK released iFLYTEK open platform for artificial intelligence with intelligent voice and human-computer interaction as the core, providing one-stop AI solutions for developers. As of May 31, 2021, iFLYTEK open platform has opened 415 platform capabilities, gathered more than 2.1 million developer teams, the total number of applications exceeded 1.12 million, the cumulative number of terminal devices covered was 3.2 billion +, the total number of AI university students reached 516000, and the artificial intelligence industry ecology with iFLYTEK as the center continued to build.

"IFLYTEK has always attached great importance to technological innovation, which has not only obtained absolute advantages in various technical competitions, but also provided a good prerequisite environment for the promotion and application of products in the market." Wu Xiaoru said.

Practice "721 R & D investment mode"

IFLYTEK has spared no effort in innovation investment for a long time.

According to the statistics of 21st century economic report, the R & D expenditure of iFLYTEK has increased from 709 million yuan in 2016 to 2.416 billion yuan in 2020, with an annual compound growth rate of 35.87%, and the proportion of R & D expenditure in revenue has remained at about 20% for a long time.

However, innovation is not a simple investment, how to build an effective innovation system is the proper meaning.

Wu Xiaoru introduced that iFLYTEK's innovation system is divided into three major links. The first link is for product research and development in the next one to three years, which is in the charge of each business line and product department“ IFLYTEK has its own R & D teams in various business divisions. The R & D team is to face the problems we need to solve. We talk about products that return to the industry value. In this respect, it is more of an application-oriented technology research. "

The second link focuses on Application Research and development in the next three to five years, which is in the charge of iFLYTEK Research Institute“ Based on these supports, we have broken through a series of technological innovations in artificial intelligence, such as cognitive intelligence, speech and image recognition, in the whole core technology research. Through continuous technological innovation, our technical level can stand at the forefront of the world. " Wu Xiaoru said.

In addition, the third level of iFLYTEK's innovation is to adhere to the innovation path of taking enterprises as the main body and industry university research cooperation as the main body, and face forward-looking exploration in the future five to ten years or even further“ The industry university research cooperation has been contained in the gene since the birth of iFLYTEK. " Wu Xiaoru pointed out, "in 1999, when iFLYTEK stepped out of the laboratories of the University of science and technology of China, it established a joint laboratory with USTC to develop intelligent voice technology."

On the way to market-oriented technology research and development, iFLYTEK has also established joint laboratories with Tsinghua University, Institute of language, Institute of acoustics, Harbin Institute of technology and other research institutes and universities to carry out industry university research cooperation. With the mechanism of production, teaching and research and high investment, iFLYTEK has made continuous progress in the "no man's land" at the forefront of artificial intelligence technology, and has mastered the initiative and kept advanced in the source core technology.

At the same time, Wu Xiaoru introduced that iFLYTEK allocates "ammunition" based on market orientation and follows the "721 R & D investment model" in terms of resource investment“ After going public, we put more than 20% of our revenue into R & D every year, of which 70% of our resources are invested in current leading products, 20% in strategic new products, and 10% in exploratory ones, which do not necessarily pursue the direction of return. It can freely explore the future. "

As a result, iFLYTEK has formed a three in one closed-loop innovation system, from basic research to core technology research, and then to forward-looking technology research and development, so as to promote the "wheel" of innovation technology of HKUST.

Systematic innovation needs three supports

Innovation is undoubtedly the key variable for China to face the future.

The annual average growth rate of R & D investment of the whole society is more than 7%, the proportion of basic research investment in R & D investment has increased to more than 8%, and the added value of strategic emerging industries accounts for more than 17% of GDP. Behind a series of specific figures in the outline of the "14th five year plan", the determination to "fight the battle of key core technologies" is highlighted.

What is the key core technology? The plan outlines the direction: to aim at the frontier fields such as artificial intelligence, quantum information, integrated circuit, life and health, brain science and so on, and implement a number of forward-looking and strategic national major science and technology projects.

Wu Xiaoru believes that these cutting-edge technologies have important strategic significance for the national economic and social development, especially the core technologies at the bottom“ The core of high-quality development is to master the discourse power of the industry, and the forward-looking and strategic national major science and technology projects can be said to earn time and space for the industrial discourse power. "

In the process of tackling key technologies, Wu Xiaoru proposed the need to build systematic innovation“ In the past, AI enterprises have been making continuous innovation breakthroughs in key technology points, and solving local application scenario requirements based on single point technology innovation. However, to solve the major issues in social development, we must build a systematic stage. This is not only a technical problem, but also a "game of chess" involving key scenarios, needs, resources, teaching and research, and management mode. "

Wu Xiaoru said that the construction of systematic innovation needs the support of three major elements, including the ability of single point core technology to cross the gap, the ability of deep integration of key technologies in the innovation chain, and the insight and analysis ability of major systematic propositions“ The breakthrough of several key single point technologies from 0 to 1 and the integration of underlying cognitive intelligence can realize systematic innovation. From the field of artificial intelligence, it is necessary to combine the significant traction of typical large-scale applications to realize systematic innovation. "

At present, iFLYTEK has begun to practice systematic innovation. It is reported that iFLYTEK has led the establishment of the Yangtze River Delta artificial intelligence industry chain alliance to promote the integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta artificial intelligence industry. The alliance members have been expanded to 60 units, including artificial intelligence backbone enterprises, universities, scientific research platforms, industry associations, social institutions, think tanks and other relevant units, covering all aspects of the industrial chain.

"Only by improving the ability of systematic innovation, can we form the core competitiveness of the industry, and ultimately make the scientific and technological innovation achievements widely used in the industrial front line, and let artificial intelligence bring more convenience to people's lives." Wu Xiaoru stressed.

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