#14年打造台灣最年輕、最會賺的兆元企業,緯穎洪麗寗:「你只要說我願意!」
從零到兆元市值、兆元營收,要多久?
緯穎,只用了十四年,比鴻海、台積電、廣達、聯發科都快。
這一群平均三十二歲的員工,靠著為國際雲端大廠生產AI伺服器,一年獲利破六百億,平均每人年產值六千萬,ROE超過五十%,打敗台積電。
為什麼緯穎能跑得這麼快、獲利這麼高?這是我對緯穎董事長洪麗寗(Emily)的提問。
「你只要說,我願意!」她在這一集「#商周MEGA TALK」裡,給了我這個簡單又篤定的答案。
她說的,是十四年前離開緯創、成立緯穎,轉向雲端客戶的那個決定。
當時,她已是林憲銘之下的一層主管。要去緯穎,得先辭掉緯創的職位。她形容,那是一張「River of No Return」,沒有回頭路的單程車票。
她為什麼願意走?
洪麗寗記得,第一次走進雲端客戶的資料中心,眼前是一整排、上千台伺服器,紅燈、黃燈、綠燈不停閃。她緊張地拉著同事問:「怎麼了?為什麼那個閃紅燈那麼多?」
那一刻,她第一次直接看見自己做的伺服器如何運作。她說:「OEM會叫你做什麼;但是CSP是告訴你為何而戰。」
她想做的,不只是另一門生意,而是讓工程師更靠近產品的用途,也更明白自己為什麼而做。
只是,走向雲端客戶,舊生意不會自動讓路。
當時台灣伺服器廠商面臨大客戶的威脅,有人被警告,有人被抽單。公司裡也有不同聲音,有人主戰,有人求和。連董事長Simon(林憲銘)都勸她別衝動,因為筆電生意很大。一位品牌客戶甚至直接威脅:「你要做多少伺服器,才能換回這個筆電的收益?」
但她早就想做CSP,不想繼續做品牌伺服器OEM。最後,緯創與客戶達成協議,由緯穎承接CSP業務。轉去緯穎的人,全部辭掉原來的工作,不能參與緯創的決策,連辦公室都要刻意離的遠遠的。
這不是一句「我願意」就能保證成功。她早已看見自己要走的方向,也願意承擔選擇的代價。
這份「我願意」,後來又出現在一個看似更小的決定裡。
2016年,緯穎才成立四年。客戶要求建立服務平台,工程師問資料要放在哪裡,洪麗寗回答:「上雲。」
「然後緯創的IT人就shock!」她笑著說,因為當時大家根本沒上過雲,不知道怎麼做。更有趣的是,緯穎當時連自己的IT團隊都還沒有。
她說,既然自己做的就是雲端生意,當然要相信雲端。接著又笑說:「當時也是沒有人,沒有錢。」
她不是把「沒有人、沒有錢」說得浪漫,而是沒有把「我們還不會」當成拒絕的理由。先判斷方向值得走,再帶著團隊把能力補起來。
緯穎也沒有把早期的成功模式當成永久公式。創業時,公司把製造外包給緯創;長大後,卻開始投資自己的工廠,現在九成工廠是自己的。因為洪麗寗認為:「製造工藝其實是設計的延伸。」伺服器愈複雜,設計和製造就愈需要快速交換技術、彼此回饋。
Emily的「我願意」,也有摔跤的時候。
緯穎曾投入浸潤式冷卻技術,馬來西亞半座工廠都為合作案蓋起來,計畫最後卻喊停,設備全拆了。她帶獨立董事去看那些設備,稱它們是「屍體」,還感嘆:「這麼美好的技術,就這樣沒有了。」
但她沒有因此否定整條路。她說:「如果你每次都要對,你就不會做任何進步的事情。」緯穎至今仍相信這項技術,工程師也繼續研究。
聽她一路談下來,我覺得她的「我願意」不是逞勇,而是看見值得走的方向,就先踏出一步;發現原來的方法不夠,也願意修正。
這正是AI時代更需要的能力。技術變得快,昨天的答案可能很快就不適用。洪麗寗常提醒人資:「我要明天的人資,不要告訴我昨天的人資要做什麼。」她也問團隊:「如果今天是Day One,我們還會這樣想嗎?」
AI時代,企業的差距不只在於能不能選對答案,也在於發現題目變了,能不能及時換答案。
我喜歡洪麗寗談紅燈時的樣子:不懂就問,問得直接。她談失敗不包裝,只說「很阿雜」;談技術變化,也不假裝早就知道答案。她像孩子一樣,對世界還有好奇,也願意把自己的判斷、失敗和疑問攤開來分享。
時勢帶來機會,但選擇才把機會變成能力。
十四年來,緯穎一次次選擇說「我願意」,靠近客戶、先上雲、改變製造方式,也從失敗中繼續學。這不是牆上的口號,而是公司遇到未知時,反覆做出的選擇。
在AI時代,模型快速換代,如果等舊方法失效才開始學,往往只剩追趕。「我願意」,能讓組織與個人提早走進變化,在舊方法失效前,先長出下一種能力。謝謝Emily與緯穎為我們做了最好的示範。
完整對談影片,今晚8點在商周MEGA TALK上線,歡迎收看!
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不知道牟中原老師讀過Hassabis團隊的傳記 Infinite Machine 之後是否改變想法? 我自己也相信AGI是"泡沫",然而這科學創新故事/史詩,值得討論-觀察........牟中原:為什麼相信AGI 是個大泡泡。
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牟中原。
為什麼相信AGI 是個大泡泡
通用人工智慧(AGI)很像一種陰謀論,而且可能是我們這個時代影響最大的陰謀論。
我們在近十年親眼目睹了AGI的概念從默默無聞的小眾領域逐漸崛起,成為主導整個產業的敘事。曾經遙不可及的夢想如今支撐著一些全球市值最高公司的利潤,可以說也支撐著美國股市。它為新建電廠和數據中心支付令人眼花繚亂的首付款提供了正當理由,而這些電廠和數據中心據說是實現這一夢想所必需的。人工智慧公司對這項假想的技術趨之若鶓,正不遺餘力地向我們推銷。
不妨聽聽這些公司的負責人是怎麼說的。 AGI將擁有“一個天才國家”的智慧(Anthropic公司首席執行官Amodei);它將開啟“人類最大程度繁榮的時代,我們將遨遊星際,殖民銀河系”(谷歌DeepMind首席執行官Hassabis);它將“大幅提升財富和繁榮”,甚至鼓勵人們更享受生活,生育更多。這聽起來像是個了不起的產品。
當然,別忘了它的另一面。當這些人不鼓吹烏托邦時,他們其實是在拯救我們於水火之中。 2023 年,Amodei、Hassabis 和 Altman 聯名簽署了一份 22 個字的聲明,內容是:「降低人工智慧帶來的滅絕風險應該與應對其他社會層面的風險(例如流行病和核戰爭)一樣,成為全球優先事項。」 埃隆馬斯克表示,人工智慧有 20% 的機率會毀滅人類人工智慧。
不同理念支持者之間的激烈交鋒其實有一個共同點,就是都要我們更大量的投資到AI.
我最近注意到,超級智慧——本來如果你想在公眾面前獲得尊重,就絕對不應該提及這個概念——現在卻被一些科技公司的CEO們掛在嘴邊,他們顯然還計劃著要開發它,」AI Impacts的首席研究員Katja Grace說道。 AI Impacts是一個專門調查人工智慧研究人員的機構。 “我覺得人們很容易覺得這沒什麼大不了的。他們也說超級智能會毀滅我們,但他們說這話的時候卻帶著微笑。
你不得不承認,這一切聽起來有點像是陰謀論。如果你要建構一個陰䜓論,就是創世紀和世界毀滅要一起講。
今天美國深陷其中,如果你把美國在人工智慧的投資扣除,她的GDP 成長是接近零。所以你還非吞下這個大泡泡不可。
我朋友中,厲害的經濟學家,AI 專家,很多。寫這個贴文真是心驚膽顫,準備被海扁一頓。
我在1985-95 之間才讀了許多皮亞杰Jean Piaget的著作
《皮亞杰對話錄》 (劉玉燕譯)的台灣版本的一小段是我大力促成的
......研究以印度的孩童為對象,比較了「在學校中學習」、以及「在市場工作」的孩童數學能力,發現兩者的數學能力有巨大的差異,而且他們的數學技能幾乎無法互相轉移。
動態消息貼文
* 書緣:川瀨先生講談會、皮亞傑發生認識論精華譯叢;total book ...
劉玉燕根據日本和英文翻譯『皮亞傑對話錄』(Bringuier, J-C. (1980). Conversations with Jean Piaget. Chicago: University of Chicago Press),我幫點小忙。
JP的主要著作大陸已翻譯十幾本。沒想到大陸教育界發揚光大,繼續弄「
皮亞傑發生認識論精華譯叢」,今天買到:
※走向一種意義的邏輯
※關於矛盾的研究
※可能性與必然性
※心理發生和科學史
(我會讀它們嗎?)
他的作品約2/3有英譯本 中國有翻譯
September 17, 1980
OBITUARYJean Piaget Dies in Geneva at 84
By ALDEN WHITMAN
Jean Piaget, the Swiss psychologist whose study of child development has often been compared to Freud's work in its vast influence on the science of human intelligence, died in Geneva today. He was 84 years old.Dr. Piaget was hospitalized 10 days ago at Geneva Cantonal Hospital. He is survived by three children. The cause of death was not disclosed.
The question to which Jean Piaget addressed himself was deceptively obvious and simple: How does a child learn? His answer, often phrased in obtuse language, was in brief that a child learns by discrete stages related to age and that he is a significant agent in the process.
His stress on the interaction of biological functions and the structure of the environment, elaborated in more than 60 years of research, was, in the opinion of many psychologists and education specialists, as liberating and as revolutionary as Sigmund Freud's earlier insights into the stage development of human emotional life. Many hailed him as one of the century's most creative scientific thinkers.
And indeed Dr. Piaget's theories exercised a profound effect on thinking about children in Europe and America. They have basically altered man's perceptions of the mechanism and functioning of his intelligence. Educators seized upon his work.
In contrast to the traditional views of how we acquire knowledge--that heredity plays a dominant role or that environmental factors are controlling--Dr. Piaget proposed that each child, starting from birth, constructs and reconstructs his very own model of reality, of the world about him, in a regular sequence. He does this through a multitude of direct experiences with persons and objects, in the course of which cognitive growth takes place not merely by amassing new facts. The child's transformation of these experiences into conceptions is constantly revised through his own self- discoveries, which tend to eliminate errors in previous conceptions.
A simple example of this phenomenon was cited recently by Dr. David Elkind of Tufts University, a Piaget specialist. He wrote:
"The child of 3 or 4 already has an elementary concept of quantity: confronted with two identical glasses of orangeade filled to the same level, he would say that both had the 'same to drink.' But if the orangeade from one glass were poured into a tall, narrow beaker while he looked on, the child would say, Piaget found, that the tall glass had 'more to drink' than the shorter one.
"Not until about 6 or 7 do most children understand that changing the shape of a quantity does not change the amount. The young child has a concept of quantity, but it is clearly a different concept from the one held by older children and adults: he thinks the amount of liquid can be gauged by its level without taking its width into account. Older children and adults, however, assess liquid quantities by taking both height and width into consideration.
Mental Growth by Integration
"This is mental growth by integration, wherein a new, higher-level idea (amount is determined by height and width) is formed by the integration of two lower-level ideas (amount is determined by height or width). It suggests that mental growth is an expanding upward spiral in which the same problems are attacked at successive levels but are resolved more completely and more successfully at each higher level."
In addition, Dr. Piaget explained that mental growth takes place by integration of diverse concepts and replacement or primitive notions of nature by more mature ideas with age. Thus, very young children tend to believe that the sun and the moon follow them around, a notion that is replaced in later years.
Four Stages of Growth
Four major stages of mental growth were delineated by Dr. Piaget, based on the cognitive tasks accomplished in each.
In the sensory-motor period--the initial two years of life--the child is chiefly concerned with the mastery of objects, blocks, large toys, rocks, household objects and the like. From 2 to 6, his main concern is with symbols such as those in language, fantasy, dreams and play. For about the next five or six years, or until age 12, the child learns to master numbers, relations and classes and how to reason about them. Finally, in the three years to age 15, he is occupied with the mastering of purely logical thought, and he can think about his own thinking and that of others. The continuum, in Dr. Piaget's presentation, is quite complex, yet each stage has its telltale characteristics.
A number of hardy theories were challenged by Dr. Piaget's work: that a child is a little adult; that ideas are inborn; that learning takes place by environmental conditioning or reinforcement; that the young child is capable of absorbing facts as they are understood by adults; and that he copies the world about him. In place of these notions, Dr. Piaget sought to substitute what he called genetic epistemology.
In this concept, the timetable that appears to underlie the development of intellectual skills indicates that the capacity for logical thought is coded, along with sex, eye color and the shape of the nose, in the genes. Rational tendencies, however, do not mature simply because they are innate; rather, they grow with use.
The application of this theory in education stresses the importance of what is called the "discovery method" of teaching, in which a child gets an opportunity to apply his developing abilities and test their limitations. The teacher is a guide, not a force-feeder of ready-made truths.
"The goal of education is not to increase the amount of knowledge but to create the possibilities for a child to invent and discover, to create men who are capable of doing new things," Dr. Piaget explained.
Dr. Piaget's early discoveries with children gained him worldwide acclaim in the 20 and 30's, but after that his works were considered too remote from the dominant trends in American behavioral science. Then in the late 50's and early 60's he was rediscovered. In the last few years most of his basic works have been translated and several explications for the general reader have been published. The most accessible of Dr. Piaget's own works are "Six Psychological Studies" and "The Psychology of the Child;" books about him include "Understanding Piaget," "The Essential Piaget" and "An Outline of Piaget's Developmental Psychology for Students and Teachers."
Along with an enthusiasm for Dr. Piaget in some American academic and educational circles there has been criticism. Traditionalists objected to the radical way he conceived of the child's task of acquiring knowledge. And many sympathetic with Dr. Piaget's overall interpretation feel alternative interpretations can be put forth for many of the phenomena he uncovered. Other critics also argued that his theory offered little help in clarifying the motivations and accomplishments of individual children. Many critics, however, agreed with Robert Coles of Harvard that Dr. Piaget had focused psychologists' attention on "man the developing thinker rather than on man the universal neurotic."
Tall, portly and rumpled-looking in his bulky suits, Dr. Piaget resembled a magnified Einstein, an impression that was accented by his bushy white hair. Out of doors he covered part of this unruly mane with a navy blue beret. To many who met him, according to Professor Elkind, Dr. Piaget gave off "an aura of intellectual presence not unlike the aura of a dramatic presence emanated by a great actor." Smoking a meerschaum and chatting with friends--and especially with children--he seemed benign and gracious, but members of his staff in Geneva knew that he could also be aloof and remote.
Followed a Strict Schedule
For years he followed a strict schedule. Up at 4 A.M., he wrote at least four publishable pages in a small, even hand. Later, he taught classes or attended meetings. After lunch he walked and pondered whatever problem faced him. "I always like to think on a problem before reading about it," he said. And in the evening he read.
In the summer he departed to an Alpine retreat to talk, meditate and write. Apart from articles and lectures, his output totaled more than 50 books and monographs. Several of them, including "The Child's Conception of Space" and "The Growth of Logical Thinking From Childhood to Adolescence," were written with Barbel Inhelder, his longtime associate at the Institute of Educational Science in Geneva.
Dr. Piaget's road to child psychology started with a youthful interest in zoology. The son of specialist on the Middle Ages, he was born Aug. 9, 1896, in Neuchatel, Switzerland. Something of a prodigy, he published articles on mollusks in scientific journals by the age of 15. At 22 he was granted a doctoral degree with a thesis on mollusk distribution in the Valais Alps. He became interested also in psychology, attending lectures by Carl Jung. From these and his own speculations, he recalled, he became "haunted by the idea of discovering a sort of embryology of intelligence." This was the basis for his later idea that life could be understood best in terms of "structures of the whole."
In 1920 he went to Paris to work with Theodore Simon, a co-developer with Alfred Binet of an intelligence test for children. Scrutinizing responses to the test questions, Dr. Piaget believed he saw a pattern in the wrong answers, a pattern that related to a child's age group. This finding led him to investigate the children's world, including the crib activities of his own three youngsters.
Inside the Child's Mind
Possessed of a remarkable empathy with children, he spent long hours on his hands and knees shooting marbles with them, exploring their notions of space, ethics, numbers and the like. From these observations came his first book, "The Language and Thought of The Child," which traced the development of child's speech from egocentric to socialized forms.
His researches in psychology spanning over a half-century built up an impressive body of insights. His basic approach was to get inside of the child's mind and see the world through its eyes. "I engage my subjects in conversation," Dr. Piaget recounted, "patterned after psychiatric questioning, with the aim of discovering something about the reasoning underlying their right but especially their wrong answers."
Among other things, he found that "children not only reasoned differently from adults, but also that they had quite different world views, literally different philosophies." For example, he noted that in a child's view "objects like stones and clouds are imbued with motives, intentions and feelings." The mind is thus not a passive mirror but an active artist as it develops increasingly sophisticated versions of reality.
The unfolding of Dr. Piaget's explanations occurred over a lifetime, so there were refinements as new evidence was sifted; but these did not alter his basic theories.
The elaboration of these was institutionalized in the International Center for Genetic Epistemology that he established in Geneva in 1955 with funds from the Rockefeller Foundation.
In his mature years Dr. Piaget was widely acclaimed. There were honorary degrees from dozens of universities, including Oxford and Harvard, and impressive guest appearances at scholarly meetings. He remained, however, a remote public figure--more the distant philosopher than the polemicist.

