3 points to understand why high-profile Chinese executives are leaving Microsoft.

On January 17th Baidu announced that Microsoft's former global executive vice president Lu Qi (more commonly known as Qi Lu in English), would serve as Baidu president and chief operating officer. Li Yanking ( known as Robin Li in English), Baidu's co-founder said at the press conference, "Lu Qi will be responsible for daily operation of Baidu. In the future, I will put more energy on the company's strategy, the shaping of corporate culture, as well as the training and attracting talent.”

Lu Qi, new Baidu COO . Photograph by David Paul Morris — Bloomberg via Getty Images

According to Li's internal mail, in the future, Baidu president Xiang Hailong, technical system and emerging business group president Zhang Yaqin, senior vice president Zhu Guangjiang financial business group, senior vice president Wang Jin and chief scientist Wu Enda Will report to Lu Qi.

From Baidu insiders’ view, Li Yanhong has always kept a strong control of the company and never completely let it go. Li Yanking added "My understanding of artificial intelligence is about one tenth of what Lu Qi knows." The Baidu founder usually wouldn’t give out such humble evaluation.

At the end of mobile O2O (Online-to-Offline) competition, people thought Baidu should start being like Google, a cool technology company. But Li Yanhong saw O2O as a core strategy and invested 20 billion RMB in it. This may be the last critical strategic mistake Baidu can afford. Baidu and Li Yanhong are forced to reflect on the management culture of Baidu and its strategic path.

That's where Lu Qi joined Baidu.

1 - Many people wonder, why did Lu Qi went to Baidu?

Imagine you and I are evaluating Lu Qi standing outside of Baidu, he might be the best choice. Lu Qi in talking about the reasons for choosing Baidu emphasized two points: 1) AI needs large-scale basic construction, 2) Baidu needs sufficient sensitivity to the data and attention, the research company should have engineering culture.

Some people speculated that after leaving Microsoft, Lu Qi would become Tencent’s co-president, responsible for artificial intelligence and maps and other new business.

Although Tencent's performance in recent years is far better than Baidu's, for Lu Qi, there is more to explore in the field of artificial intelligence at Baidu. Tencent can not give such position to Lu Qi. More importantly, Tencent tend to focus on their existing business, and they wouldn't have been able to give Lu Qi enough strategic resources on the investment of AI. Wu Jun from Silicon Valley (ex-Google) joined Tencent in 2015 but because Tencent did not give him enough search space, Wu left.

Lu Qi may encounter very important challenges for Baidu within its corporate culture.

Baidu executives level struggle has long been criticized. It is easy to think of Zhang Yaqin, who left Microsoft to join Baidu in 2014.

Also a talented scientist, Zhang Yaqin joined Baidu in the past three years; however, he did not get much attention. He is responsible for the emerging business group positioning in deep education, medical, financial, transportation, tourism and other new markets which are obviously not Baidu's core business. It’s even more difficult to understand that this computer scientist was once in charge with Baidu's public relations and government relations team.

2 - All the executives at Baidu are aware that Li is not easy to handle, but Lu Qi is not a typical professional manager.

In 2014, Lu Qi told in "Global Entrepreneur" interview "Life is not linear, do not think that a bus can take you from the current position to desired position."

Interviewer said: "Do not think Lu Qi is small, he treats people nicely and works hard, I can feel his strength through chatting with him.”

Zhang Yaqin is great for Baidu, but Lu Qi is different. Baidu Vice President Zeng Liang who served as vice president of Microsoft Greater China Area, once said, "Lu Qi is not only a AI scientist, he is also professional manager. Microsoft has very high internal evaluation of Lu Qi, he was even regarded as Microsoft's former CEO Steve Ballmer's successor."

Promotion at foreign companies is like climbing on stage, it very much depends on timing. Before leaving Microsoft, Zhang Yaqin spent eight years at the position of Asia-Pacific R & D Group, and this position is three levels down from Microsoft CEO. Before leaving Microsoft, Lu Qi was the global executive vice president, serving directly to the Microsoft CEO Nadela.

It is speculated that Lu Qi's departure is due to the acquisition of Slack and because of diverging ideas with Gates and Nadelal. But essentially, Lu Qi and Zhang Yaqin left Microsoft for the same reason: the glass ceiling is hard to break.

3 - An interesting question: why Microsoft?

Over the past ten years, Kai-fu Lee founded the Microsoft Asia Research Institute, which has been playing the role of Chinese science and technology academy. Crowned with this title, the institution has excellent training results, but it also shows that Microsoft Asia Research Institute has an outflow of top technical talents.

In the rise of domestic entrepreneurial upsurge, the attractiveness of foreign investors isn’t the same as a few years ago. Although Microsoft’s focus is in China, Microsoft Asia Research Institute has limited space to perform. It is said that Zhang Yaqin had limited projects at Microsoft. When he left Microsoft to join Baidu, he explained on media: "I want to have a very busy life."

Looking at the key projects at Microsoft Asia Research Institute, so far, online artificial intelligence assistant is the only project from Microsoft R & D team in China, starting from the bottom up to Microsoft's global project.

According to 36 Krypton, a few years ago Microsoft Group intended to promote the more practical Cortana, as R & D employees in China thought that the conversational and emotional experience should be smoother, so they began to develop Xiao Bing App. The development of Xiao Bing App has not been under much control of the headquarters, to some extent because the feedback cycle is too long and can’t keep up with the speed of product change.

Microsoft began artificial intelligence research and development 20 years ago. In the technical stand, China's domestic companies have not been of any interest for Microsoft. The problem is that Microsoft made enough money with Windows system and Office software; however, in the era of cutting edge technology and application, the US company's ambition and urgency is much less developed than the one of Chinese Internet companies.

Zhang Yaqin said in an interview, "we feel the excitement in the development of the Asian Institute, but we are also frustrated because many of the technology did not enter the market."

China's mobile Internet and artificial intelligence business boom has come, a group of technical high-level engineers are leaving Microsoft to join Chinese companies to gamble on a chance to make technology dream comes true. Many of them are either founders or senior executives of companies in China.

After leaving Microsoft, Wang Jian led the creation of China's largest cloud computing company Ali Yun. Following Kai-fu Lee, Lin Bin left Microsoft to join Google and became one of the seven founders of Xiao Mi, world's 4th largest smartphone maker. Director of the Asian Academy of Engineering, Asia Pacific R & D Group Chief Technology Officer, Zhang Hongjiang became CEO of Jinshan Software.

If we have to predict which country will make technology innovation come into reality the fastest, it has to be China. Perhaps Lu Qi's luck will be better than two years ago and perhaps we can see a new Baidu.

Original article here

#Microsoft #China #AI