W04 - New Understandings of Resilience

I recently finished reading He Fan’s "Variables 3." When he discussed "Transformer"-style innovation, it gave me a new perspective on the word "resilience." That term usually evokes the endurance to face difficulties, but its deeper driving force should be the capacity to adapt to change.

The book’s example of BYD manufacturing masks struck me deeply. We all know that early in the pandemic the market sensed strong risks, triggering an overreactive response and disorder in mask production.

What no one expected was that China’s mask production would soon find a stabilizing anchor that not only secured domestic supply but also continuously exported masks abroad. That anchor was BYD, which had never made a mask before and went from zero to the world’s top producer in a matter of months. They used the company’s tens of thousands of CNC machines to quickly fabricate mask machines themselves. Any idea that was proposed could be turned into components within two to three hours and put straight onto machines for testing.

The book’s account is powerful; you can feel BYD’s greatest strength in converting one production capability into another, transforming one organizational system into a different one, and transplanting existing management experience into a new field.