DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES IN INNOVATION: UNRAVELLING THEIR ROLE AND IMPACT

Appendix 6: Tencent's Interview Responses

Me Can you introduce yourself and outline your role at Tencent, highlighting your experience in digital technology and innovation.

Interviewee My role at Tencent was a manager of Tencent's AI product team. The experience in digital technology and innovation is divided into two parts, one is digital technology, and we manage the atomic capability of AI, through speech semantics or OCR, including AI platform products, and then including the current cutting-edge AI digital human generation, including the ability of large models. Second is innovation part, we apply some capabilities of the corresponding technology of AI to the corresponding education scenarios of the corresponding public welfare industry. It is oriented to the scientific research scene in the corresponding education, and then to the corresponding talent training scene, and there are some corresponding productization and innovation solutions.

Me I would like to ask you about Tencent's innovative ideas and leading projects. How Tencent has cultivated a culture of innovation in the digital field, and what strategies or practices are particularly effective in encouraging employees to think creatively.

Interviewee I think it may be two aspects, from Tencent's point of view, it is one is from the company's orientation. Emphasize the values to him, and then the second is to say from the specific implementation or landing, and then will match the corresponding resources and tools. Second aspects, Promote or encourage our own employees to do the corresponding technical dimension, or how to think creatively about some practice and landing.

Me So please share an example of a specific product or project where Tencent demonstrates how digital technology is driving innovation within the company.

Interviewee

I can give an example, in fact, what I am particularly impressed with should be Tencent's document, such as floods, and then earthquakes or some geological disasters, and then re-document it to be applied, or innovate into a document called life-saving documents. Then he can go to the place where there is a network and a mobile phone can actually help the trapped, and then inform him in time what kind of place he is in, and then what kind of environment he is currently around, but it is more convenient and efficient to guide the corresponding rescue team, and then timely put the materials or the corresponding one is the rescue force or resources more timely to do the corresponding tilt and guidance.

Me Can you talk about how Tencent is using data analytics and artificial intelligence to enhance user experience and create innovative solutions.

Interviewee If we look at the user experience in a narrow sense, we assume that it is a C-end user, I hope to give an example, we have an example on a digital person, what does he mean to a digital person? Will use a series of some generative or driven technology, and then to make the digital virtual person, and then more vivid and realistic to simulate such an interaction of people, mouth movements, and then demeanour. In fact, we also put a case in the digital virtual human part that I think is also very valuable, that is, when we were in the Winter Olympics, the domestic Beijing Winter Olympics in Beijing, and then went to use sign language resin people, and then to help our disabled people so that they can listen to the Winter Olympics. It is a case that combines AI technology, and then faces user experience enterprises, and has a certain public welfare nature. When we learned about the Winter Olympics, we could combine with the debriefing and then do the corresponding combination, in fact, we were discussing how to do the corresponding combination. It is also because of chance to understand that in fact, every year our domestic security is for people with specific tumors or special disabilities, in fact, the number is still relatively large, for them, how to better for a process of the event. Then some phased results of the event, and then there is a perception of you.

This may be from the leadership will also think that ok is a technical value realization, and we ourselves as an achievement, but also uphold a strategy or culture of the company to science and technology for good in a direction, so from the top down to drive, from the docking of technical needs, technology evaluation, including development and implementation, right, and then in the end, is actually to see some of our Winter Olympics TV or broadcast such a scene, We would think that at least in my market I would consider an example of such an impact that is of great value or great significance.

Me On the negative side, how can Tencent integrate innovative security measures into its products, especially in the face of ever-changing cybersecurity threats.

Interviewee Because this example is especially for practitioners with several characteristics, first, Tencent we have a very large number of C-end business, and then for the user, he has a lot of data on an interaction.

The second is that we've also been working on AI technology, Then the third one emphasizes safety. We can give a very practical such as intelligent question answering robots and APA and other systems to produce research and development will face a lot of problems. How to protect customers in the actual use of the situation, its problems include our machines or called technology some responses and answers.

And then it's not going to be too big a mistake. For example, culture and a series of religions, which may be more sensitive to some words, so we will actually integrate, or to land a very many series of security measures, such as some technical and technical means to prevent attacks, and then at the same time add some key filters, and then combine with some toolboxes related to pornography, violence, and terrorism, so as to come and go through the perspective of technology, Then come and design one or several such funnels for your safety protection, so as to reduce the risk of production accidents in our own products for actual user use scenarios.

Me How does Tencent measure the impact of digital technology on innovation results, what indicators or other models?

Interviewee I can give you a specific example, when measuring the impact of digital technology on innovation outcomes. There are generally two types, one qualitative and one quantitative. From a qualitative point of view, it may be more about whether our technology has targeted the key needs of key users in a certain scenario. We think it is a judgment from my perception that it may be a more qualitative judgment.

The second is quantitative, it is more like the Tencent document I just said. Although we don't want his current use case to be called a life-saving document when disaster comes, we don't want it to be used by high frequency. When he uses it like last year, there was a big flood in Henan, and everyone access it to be used tens of millions of times in a few days or 1~2 weeks.

In this scenario, we will think this online document may bring a disaster rescue, and then or related to some personal or property safety losses. It can be due to a certain extent a reduction, the so-called DAU or MAU behind some indicators. I will think from the company level, they are still very much to do some of the corresponding admiration, or to do such an encouragement.

Me understands. So Tencent has a diverse product portfolio, from gaming to social media, how is the company facilitating cross-collaboration between these different divisions to stimulate its ability to innovate?

Interviewee I think there may be a status quo, which is that Tencent, as such a company in the world, has close to 100,000 employees, so it is actually very large. At this scale, cross-team communication and collaboration is more difficult, which may be a status quo or a challenge that I think.

In addition, how it is promoted there will be some corresponding means, for example, I cite two the first is oriented to technology, pure technology for him may have a lot of cross-team or cross-regional technical exchange salons, it may be corresponding to some events.

the second seminars, it will also involve the operational mechanism. The second is a design that I would still think is biased towards operation or innovation model, which can be in the form of activities. For example, I just said about public welfare projects. Tencent has been advocating internally, because some time ago last week, September 9th every year is Tencent's Charity Day, it will use this form of public welfare projects to let it bring together different teams within the company, and even employees in different countries, and use projects to drive some exchanges and cooperation corresponding to everyone, so as to stimulate an innovation, because of the technical products driven below, or some modes of operation.

Me Tencent has a history of strategic investments and partnerships, how these collaborations work, how they contribute to the company's innovation efforts, and can feel that other things are more grounded.

Interviewee I can enumerate that Tencent's investment from the perspective of investment attributes, one is pure financial investment, and the second is strategic investment. My side is mainly to share strategic investment, it is more business investment. For example, I just said Tencent, we may be more PAS-based on the technical composition and our product composition, which may not talk about our current situation. we hope to have better ecological partners and better user-oriented products, together to better meet the needs of our end users.

We're going to make some strategic investments, for example, IPA robots or intelligent Q&A customer service robots. For some scenarios, the industry track in its industry power consumption is very deep, such as like the legal industry. How can we help our lawyers, or legal learners, some legal law learners, to provide their own only assistants, we may be combined with the leading partners in the industry.

We provide the underlying technology and capabilities, and then Tencent's brand system and then at the partner level. They may provide their own industry-type products and solutions that are combined with the industry in the industry to precipitate and polish. Everyone does a combination together. To jointly provide our own technology, as well as services, and brand for the end customers in the industry.

Me As the digital industry continues to develop rapidly, how can Tencent meet the challenges of maintaining its leading position and cultivating a culture of continuous innovation.

Interviewee 15:08 This is called my encouragement or demand for the team, I do this effort from two perspectives, choose one externally, and the second is internal.

I will think that the words to the outside world are that we must continue or always pay attention to whether our market and the needs of our users will change, whether the competitive landscape in the market and the main players in the market will change, to maintain a perception of the position in the market. Then this is to understand the outside first, and the second is to internally, it is more encouraging and supporting our own students to boldly innovate, including product innovation, and then including model innovation, and operation or service innovation. From then there are some ideas for innovation, or quickly go to our own market and users to do parallel interaction, see if such an innovative direction can better meet their needs, and then promote our own technology and product iteration.

Me Tencent's digital products generally cater to a wide range of demographics, how does the company ensure that innovation is barrier-free and beneficial for users of different age factors and backgrounds?

Interviewee If you talk about products, I think it might be more practical. Although our own business system is more about 2B, then it may be according to my understanding, and then go and give a response. I think there are at least two angles to look at this problem.

The first angle is how do we target users with different age sets and backgrounds, and then plan our products. I think that's the first question. The second is how we plan our products to be accessible or beneficial to our users. I will talk about this question first. I think the first problem is more oriented to product planning. In essence, in the face of C-end products, everyone's product planning will be the first is to analyze the needs, may be more targeted at more dimensions, such as different age groups, and even for age groups, it can be more distinguishable to hire the department.

According to the age group can be checked in more detail, the second is the background, and then more dimensions to understand the changing trend of our users, his and their own needs, and the needs of the enterprise.

To add some test barrels, this is a very typical way of designing some products. Go design some test charts according to different age groups. Then come and go for a validation on our own product strategy iteration. To ensure which product iteration strategy is better able to serve users. The second is how to ensure accessibility and beneficial.

If you iterate any product strategy, the key needs of key users are better met, but there may be some obstacles to improving users, such as he may have the cost of use. A new product may let users be familiar with and use, but in the long run, it may have such an obstacle in the short term. In the long run, it may be an improvement for the user experience in a long-term or multi-scenario manner.

Me From your point of view, which emerging digital technologies do you think are called to play a central role in Suzhou, Tencent and the whole technology industry innovation.

Interviewee I think there are several actual technologies and what can be more able to improve it is to create it technology, to make your market value or economic value, and then AI may be a direction that is especially now dominated by large models.

I'm also interested in some techniques like digital voices. Because it will be better, this concept may be after the original or called the real Internet. I can also include some corresponding wearable devices, whether it is VR and then AR and XR devices, I will think it is also a very typical trend of this trend.

Technical direction point can at least shape the industry. For Tencent, we will have some different layouts for these tracks, respective choices in business and products have a focus.

Me What advice would you give to researchers exploring the role and impact of digital technology services in innovation?

Interviewee Two perspectives I will make suggestions, the first is to say the depth of basic research exploration and the second is to look at the breadth and engineering experience in the application of engineering, we think that digital technology is very core breakthrough direction. it is actually very likely to be a linear which will go from a stage of cutting-edge research basic research to applied research and then to engineering landing, and then slowly form some products of IT in the market.

It is actually a very important point in terms of some depth of cutting-edge research. I hope to get closer to some of the depth of our own basic research, such as even just doing mathematics, and applying mathematics or physics.

These aspects may have to do some more in-depth research, which is the first.

When the second technology goes to marketization or long-term landing, it will have a process from technical research to applied research, and then to technology engineering and technology productization. So I actually think that technology engineering is actually also a word for our researchers, he can focus on it, but he may not necessarily be for researchers, he may be for development or technical engineers.

Because this year is more assessment, like that is the engineering to say, many times is the product of research, or how to transform and land the results of scientific research, it emphasizes more on our own technical personnel or researchers engineering a thinking.

This may contain both the user perspective and the market perspective, and then come and go to carry out the design of the system, and include a practical engineering and productization of technology, I think this is equally important for our researchers, so the president one is the depth, the other is in the productization or technical engineering landing on a width.

Appendix 7: Alibaba's Interview Responses

阿里巴巴

Me  Hi, host. Thank you for joining us. Today. If you are okay, should we get starting? I will introduce my why we're doing this interview and the whole confidential thing. That's all right. Yeah, sure, go ahead. I’m a university student currently at queens college, London and the purpose of this interview will be data collection for my graduate dissertation on the topic of digital technology and innovation unravelling their roles and impact. The data for the interview will be summarized into key points which helps to support and broaden my viewpoint, stated within the dissertation. This interview will be completely anonymous and no personal data or information which might cause suspicion of identity will be published or mentioned the nor in my paper. Thanks. So, shall we start? Go ahead, okay. Firstly, let's start with a brief introduction. Could you please introduce yourself and provide an overview of your role at Alibaba emphasizing your experience with digital technologies and innovation? Sure.

Interviewee I am part of the Alibaba cloud a business, so Alibaba had different groups. I'm part of Alibaba and my job is the solution architect.

Me Thank you for explaining let's go on to our main subjects, the innovation philosophy at Alibaba and leading projects, how does Alibaba foster a culture of innovation within its digital sector? And what strategies and practices has been particularly effective in encouraging police to think creatively?

Interviewee This is my own opinion. I think Alibaba did you have to do the innovation because when we established Alibaba group is totally e commerce one at that time is not innovative business because before that people are all going to get used to the traditional people to the store, go to shop to buy the product.

But Alibaba, the e commerce purely online which means customer can purchase their product online and that the product can be shipped to their home. So it is during the business innovation then go back to Alibaba cloud. So, we launched our club business around 14 years ago. It's around 1990 o2009. So that time is also an innovation for our own business. At that time, there's more and more people use the online website to purchase the product, right? Yes. They need more and more workload to support website. But the traditional the distributed system is no longer enough before they all like use oracle cluster to set up in a very huge database cluster. But it's still not enough to support the large volume. So, we decided to us need to do something brand new to support such business narrows. Then that's how Alibaba start their club business. So, club can offer purely elastic services, which means no matter how volume workload you need. They can quickly provision the environment as more than thousand or even 10,000 servers to support business.

Start from that we polish the cloud technology for our own Alibaba group business and later we turn them to be in a commercial one. Let me start to support some internet companies later. Now Alibaba cloud is a number one market share in China and number one market share in Asia pacific and never third in global. So, our own journey is still based on the I think innovation is to start two parts. One is we call business innovation. We have launched lots of new business-like e commerce like the double eleven in shopping they and like the cloud. That's all I think to examples, right? To support encourage innovation cross in the cross company.

Me05:27 Thank you so much for your insightful explanation. We also know that data is a crucial asset in the digital age, and we are curious how does Alibaba leverage data analyst takes and artificial intelligence to identify new opportunities and enhance existing products?

Interviewee 05:51 That's true. Data is crude on crucial asset. If you ever read some article from jack ma, some it of his opinion is not before is an era of information technology it but in future is dt tech data technology, which means data is core of the business.

When you run business, your customer is online, your supply chain is online, and your provider is online as well. Everything is data. So, the more you master data, the more business opportunities you can identify. So, the faster you can run your business compared with your competitors. Data really the central technologies. Alibaba we build something like they can meet with the office or business in middle office, which means for all the Alibaba group business, we have lots of business, we have e commerce, we have logistic, we have an edge, we have cloud, lots of businesses. All the data can be shared and can be managed in the consistent way.

So we can know that Taobao or team or customer who purchased it product, right? We can get inside to know how we can better support them in the largest area or in the financial area. In that way, the data is not in a silo within the different applications. It is more like the data warehouse which can be used by many as possible the scenarios. This is the first thing.

The second thing I think are today the generator ai is really a game changer so Alibaba we also announced our own territory ai model the tong Yi know the Tong Yi. Tony chairman so if you should ask me and mandarin but tony and then it can generate different content like your graph or content test. Last thing can be generated by a large language model. Best I think is another key technology to change the future.

Me Right? It should it is the current trend now I believe. Yeah, let's move on to our next question. Thank you for your answers. China's digital market is distinct in many ways. How does Alibaba tailor its approach to digital innovation to cater to the unique needs and preferences of Chinese consumers?

Interviewee There's lots of different unique things in China, I think firstly is very, very high volume. This because very big population and all the majority population they use internet they already get used to purchase things online.

Firstly, if that Alibaba around 10 years ago we launched double eleven every year the refresh record that in 1 day 24 hours they can join in the huge number of transactions online.

Yeah, so that's something unique in China. Because in western we have black Friday we have。But there's not so big shopping day in one day that has so much volume transactions. And, so much logistic happened in one day. So that's thus we do a lot of adjustment, no matter from the business also from technology to fulfil the need of Chinese consumers. Secondly, I think the China consumer they are still very cost sensitive means the audience for the more cost-effective solution. Again, we keep polishing our technology to reduce the cost and to offer the cost competitive of solution, for example our cloud technology. So, we use our cloud tenor by our own business, and we keep pushing to technology itself to make the infrastructure cost cheaper and cheaper.

Then we can make the service cheaper or cost effective. If you know that, I think last year we ever announced in China, we had a big announcement to reduce our computing service even wrong half 50% off in the huge reduction. Yeah, but we can still make money. That's because we will keep reducing the cost. Then we can still offer the competitive service. So that's the two unique things in China I a large volume and also the word. There were cost sensitive buyer.

Me Yeah, it is very impressive how Alibaba keeps up with such large demands and decrease the cost in the make more.

Let's move on to our next topic at hand or which is the impact of digital technology. I believe there are both positive and negative. In fact, while the technology has been developed. So from positive, could you share examples of how Alibaba technical department has led or contributed to digital transformation initiatives that have significantly impacted the company's innovation landscape.

Interviewee I've given a sample, I think a few years ago we ever launched a series or because my city, okay, we use big data, we use real time computing technologies and to help to improve the whole the overall efficiency of the city of opera city.

For example, based on we use camera, and we use camera to catch real traffic situations, we use a big data to make more focused. So where would be the traffic jam or what was the trend of the traffic? Then they can adjust the time of the traffic light. For example, they can keep longer green light in shorter red light or the opposite way to make the traffic more efficient. So, by that way, they can in average they can in some of the city like Hangzhou, they can improve the traffic efficiency very significantly. So, another scenario is there some emergency activity? For example, you need to send the patient to the hospital by the ambulance, then they can control the traffic light to ensure the very straightforward delivery without any traffic jam. Are still all those things being not mentally. They are all operate by using the technology itself.

So, I think that's the real sample that how we used the technology together because as a back and it is lots of technology, not only is our team on the big data, a loss of technology and into you together to solve the real problem. I think one of the keys of Alibaba is we always start from how to solve the problem is not the research lab by the they need to focus on how to solve actual problem that we faced in our daily life.

So, in that way, we can keep innovate new things and address the new issues.

Me Thank you for your answer. That is an impressive way. I believe you have collected so much data which are all being computed into algorithm, I assume. But regarding to those data, as we all know, security and trust are paramount, especially in conference and digital appointments. Could you also know how Alibaba enemies in terms of cyber security and custom data production to ensure user confidence?

Interviewee I think we can explain two ways.

Firstly, we do lots of our own work to improve the security. I security is never enough because it's more like the red and red and blue team competition. Yes. When you improve your security, your enemy, they are still also improving there they approach attack you. So, it's more like a game never ending. So, give me I give you an idea that again, we can use double eleven as an example that day invested on 24 hours, there will be more than billions of attacks happened. That day you need to protect every transaction that they write. We do lots of things, a lot of effort to protect the transaction in that day, because there's so many transatlantic happen, it also means a lot of opportunities for them to do some bad things.

We keep pushing our technology to our business. Second thing is we are quite open to collaborate the ecosystem because we are not a security company, running commerce operation. We run financially, but we're not secure the company. So, we will work very closely with the security service providers like 40 net panel auto f five, all those they have a good product truly focus on security. So, we work with closely with them, to build into a solution together with them, to protect the data and applications together with the ecosystem.

So that's a typically two approaches. We how we ensure the security and the trust.

Me I see because the customers trust is very crucial for e commerce mainly if you lose it, very unlikely to regain. I thank you for your answer. Let's move on to our next subject ahead which is measuring how does Alibaba measure the impact of digital technologies on innovation outcomes? Is there a matrix or an indicator being used to measure something?

Interviewee I would say is very simple. You need to improve the success. You need to make sure is the successful business. Again, we don't run pure technology.

When you had a good idea and data technology, innovation, you need to turn to the business. When I see the business, it can you can have your own customer, your user, your ecosystem, and you can run the business and generate value. For example, we launched lots of new things like ecommerce, like Taobao, like China, logistic, like he ma, like Alibaba cloud or they are new technologies, innovation, but you cannot only stop as a new idea or new sample, a new sandbox. You need to run this business and make it successful late.

Lastly, now we run our own CPU chips and CPU we do our own CPU again, is still on the business. You need to ensure those CPU can be used commercially and solve the real problem. The only matrix is the kid is run the business to prove is successful.

Me You're suggesting it will all be based on the revenue base or any other that shows actual impact.

Any technologies being used.

Interviewee I mean to improve prove the success you must turn them to the real business.

Me Thank you for your answer. I think we could go on to our topic next topic at hand, which is the limitation and challenges you face into competitive tech industry. Speed is often a crucial factor in innovation. How does Alibaba manage to rapidly develop and launch new digital products while maintaining quality and user satisfaction?

Interviewee Our experience is you need to have a very fast iteration when we deliver new feature. So how to ensure that is you need to hear the voice of the real customer. For example, when we work engage with the customer, we usually shape new features for them very quickly. For example, we ever engage in a customer in 3 months, we deliver more than ten features only in the one product.

This is fast to iteration interactive, develop new features week by week, day by day to address new requirement at the same time we have unit test or automated unit test to ensure the quality to ensure any new feature will not bring new regression for the existing customers.

For that part, you cannot be done by the human you need to have a very automated way to build in a regression test, then to ensure any new checking will not break the previous features. So then we can as quick as possibly renew new things and saw the real problem day by day.

Me Okay. Thank you for your answer. And I believe I have a question more related to our next topic ahead, which is the future tech trends. As you have mentioned, I do believe it takes a lot of manpower to do all the computing and recognize all the transaction details. Do you think from your point of view which emerging digital technology do you? We will play a central role in shaping the future of innovation at Alibaba and across the tech industry.

Like for example, I know we have mentioned the AI before were there any other technology be considered。

Interviewee That but I hope I think generator AI, or we call large language model, it really is a game changer. I do believe that because it's already improved the efficiency in many aspects.

For example, for me, I before if I need to write and write the summarize for the customer reference, I need to do on by ourselves, but now in just 2 minutes, it just has some key points. You can generate very good story for you for translation right before. It's very, very hard. But now just into check tvt they'll give you the result in second. So, I think the if you can train the model, it will be more efficient in the specific industry, no matter in chemical, in manufacturing, in finance, in insurance, there's so many areas they can play the key role. So sooner or later, there will be lots of new companies are the created. They will focus on a specific area and bring the innovation in these traditional industries.

Just for example, before if you want to purchase the new insurance product, you need to go to the consultant to ask their advice. No, the generator can do a much better job so they can even automatically sign which part you purchase and amend money for you. I would say generator is definitely the game changer. If there must be the second one, maybe if we have three is something also the game changer because it can run a business in a decentralized way.

Before if we make the transaction, if I make it in, a secure transaction must have the third party like the big bank to ensure the transaction is valid. But now it is all decentralized because everything can be kept record on the block chain. So you can so it also fundamentally change the business itself. I think there's two technologies, general AI and web three or block chain is the real game changes in the future of 5 or 10 years.

Me Thank you for your answer. If we have written already on news there like AI doctors and or air lawyers and trials. I believe we have asked most of our things. Let's go on to our next topic at hand, which is the advice for researchers. Are someone for deeply involved in digital innovation. What advice would you give to researchers exploring the role and impact of digital technology in innovation as part of their academic pursuits?

Interviewee I think maybe first is still always rely with the real business. Try to be practical, try to solve the problem. Then innovation is how you solve the real problem. Problem is anywhere you need to focus on the real problem, no matter what area solve the real problem, then maybe the be fast iteration, right?

If you have any idea, try to verify no need to wait in a long time to get a very well planned or well-prepared plan. Verify your idea, run a small business, or run a small project, then get on so be quick. A third, I think you think in the as a platform I not just a small business anything in the you can set on the platform and let the whole ecosystem to address the big vision. So maybe think big, be practical folks and real problem and be quick to verify idea. Indeed, I think these three otherwise,

Me thank you so much for your insight. And I believe that concludes our interview of the day. Thank you so much for your time。

Appendix 8: Kuaishou's Interview Responses

kuaishou.m4a

Me

Before we begin, let's briefly review the purpose of this interview and the information related to data collection, I don't know if it is possible. Good. So that's right, the main purpose of this interview is to collect information for my graduation thesis, and then the topic of the thesis is around the new impact of the new digital technology on the environment, and how they are used in various companies for practical application, and then about the data collected this time is the Internet sorry Internet industry, and then the data collected this time will be summarized into a small point of view, and then as an expression or expand the point I want to elaborate in the graduation thesis. This data is completely anonymized and then confidential, and your personal information or country is mentioned, there is no possibility of leakage, and eventually the data will be destroyed, i.e. if everything is okay. Could you please briefly outline your role at Kuaishou, highlight your experience in digital technology and innovation, and introduce yourself?

Interviewee

I’m now the head of a gold medal in charge of a certain direction of Kuaishou, and we are mainly a model for doing business.

Me:

How Kuaishou fosters a culture of innovation within its digital division? What strategies or practices are particularly effective in encouraging employees to think creatively?

Interviewee

Because we are Kuaishou, it should be a technology-driven company in China, and other companies may not be the same, for example, Taobao its operation will be very important, because it is an e-commerce business, such as JD.com, right, but too Kuaishou is a pure content community, so it is a technology-driven, and then basically in Kuaishou there are some similar competitors, we are a technology brought about by this large-scale user growth and user activity improvement, in fact, there is similar Facebook is right, and then we are very encouraged to innovate internally, or the innovation of technology actually accounts for a very large proportion of our business, forcing us to pay more attention to technology, and then we will set up some technology innovation awards, and then because of the business breakthrough award brought by technological innovation, to encourage our researchers to do some planning.

Me

In question 1, you introduced yourself as the person in charge of the gold model, would you like to ask if the big data used in the recall stage is the same compared to the gold model?

Interviewee's use of big data is basically the same, but the performance of the recall card and the gold medal is not the same in the model, generally speaking, it is recalled to the license plate to the gold medal, our model's ability will gradually become larger, the performance will gradually become stronger, but the resources it needs, such as the required hardware resources, GPU, graphics card will grow exponentially, which is its only difference is that this model is essentially not much different.

Me

Given that short-form video applications often rely on advanced algorithms for content discovery, can you take advantage of how the digital sector is refining these algorithms to display relevant content and adapt to changing user preferences, such as decentralized algorithms.

Interviewee

For example, if you follow a user on Facebook, he will sell you a user, that is, because its competitive model uses your user's behavior, so it is because it uses your user behavior, so it can adapt to changes in user interests. Then I will give you an example later that it is decentralization, and in essence, personalization can solve decentralization, so our own model has this ability.

Me

Would you like to ask, are there any major improvements in the model, capabilities, mechanics, and now compared to the original arrangement?

Interviewee

Involves the rapid development of the field of recommendation in recent years, the early may be with some relatively simple statistical models, later will be upgraded into a deep learning network, major companies similar without essential big difference, major companies are such an upgrade route. Then the latter is to say which department determines the process of evolution, in fact, our model team does it. So could you please share some examples of how Kuaishou's technology department is leading or facilitating digital transformation initiatives that have a significant impact on the company's innovation landscape?

I give you an example, you guys from the second half of '22, Openai launched his own GPT, then it should be 3.5, and then with GPT pair, so Kuaishou China is also firmly following up, and there is some large-scale investment, and then it should be in Q3 We just announced the Kuaishou big model called Kuaiyi. Right, and then this should be a bigger upgrade of us in terms of innovation. So the next question is that new challenges have emerged as technology evolves, such as content moderation and data privacy, and how Kuaishou's data department is innovating to address these challenges to ensure that users are safe and respectful while leveraging cutting-edge technology.

Me

We are doing more in terms of accounting, Kuaiyi is close to the Super BT3.5 indicator, how do you think this technology will affect Kuaishou's digital transformation? Considering that this is a language learning model, its principles will be very different from the gold model.

Interviewee

Different, the download PPT simply estimates that a certain technology and the gold model should be two things but does not affect the application of technology in mineral water, such as today's PPT applied to our search, English, dialogue, these may not necessarily exist now, but the future may gradually do in this direction.

Me:

How does Kuaishou measure technology? Are there indicators or other references to highlight the impact of digital technologies on innovation outcomes?

Interviewee

we are mainly the Internet is also universal, we mainly through experiments to verify, and then for example, a new technological innovation, we will evaluate its community stickiness to our scale, users, and then may say more abstract, such as whether our click-through rate is improved, from these dimensions.

Me:

What are the indicators of user activity? Can digital technology bring some innovative technologies to measure user activity more accurately than ever before? For example, the click-through rate sometimes appears, because or the customer does not necessarily have a subjective consciousness to see, the video is also counted in the click-through rate, how does digital technology continuously optimize the push?

Interviewee

We have on user attention. In fact, one of the most important indicators is also listed above is the click rate This kind of wrong click is our such a platform, which can avoid a lot of false touches, such as users, this kind of positive clicker is some dirty data Dota, and then then but for a community, this kind of data inevitably exists, but for the macro level, it is still a very objective indicator to measure the activity of our community, so even if these dirty data do not affect us an indicator, from the macro point of view of a platform.

ME

With competition particularly fierce in the short video market, how Kuaishou's digital division is responding to international expansion and cultural adaptation while maintaining the essence of the platform's innovative features.

Interviewee

Mainly needs us because Kuaishou also has a lot of this kind of international business, a very important and important need to do, that is, we need to do localization when introducing talents, only localized talents can best understand our local and local needs of our users. Yes.

Me:

How does Kuaishou ensure that it is competitive from the market, especially in terms of digital technology?

Interviewee

Right, because how we go to see whether a company is competitive in the talent market in China, mainly depends on whether the company gives everyone an objective impression that this is a technology-driven company, so as mentioned earlier, because we are a content consumption community, we rely more on this technical ability, rather than some operational capabilities, such as in the operation of Amazon JD.com, it relies on its warehousing, It depends on the ability of this operation of these products to develop its user scale, and then for Kuaishou, in fact, each of our products is actually a short video. Therefore, more needs to be driven by technology to improve our laws, so how to ensure market competitiveness? As far as technology is concerned, because we are a technology-driven company in our own right, it naturally has greater competitiveness.

Me:

Okay, from your perspective, what emerging technologies do you think digital technologies will play a central role in shaping the future of rapid and innovation across the tech industry?

Interviewee

My side mainly lists some download PPT, which may also be like how we apply GPT to what field, and then how to apply the recommended field, and even how to better land in some subdivisions, such as medicine, such as law may be some good points, but these directions are not necessarily done quickly.

Me

This is more than the entire technology industry, so what is the previous one is how GPT will be applied to Kuaishou's recommendation field, and how will it be gradually subdivided? Expected supplementation. So the last question, as someone deeply involved in digital innovation, as part of your academic pursuit, what advice do you have for researchers exploring the role and impact of digital technologies and innovation in innovation?

Interviewee

In recent years, the field of recommendation has developed very rapidly, there are two reasons, the first is that the academic community has done a good exploration in the early stage, explore what we recommend from the existing regression of statistical models to, for example, statistical models What is this called? A GPT model, and then later generated a tree model, and then upgraded to a deep model, these models are essentially the academic community is the forerunner, and then the industry came into contact with these technologies, and put it in the industry, achieved good results, but promoted the development of the industry to academia. For example, in recent years, the industry should have issued a lot of such academic papers, and then also attracted more researchers from our academic community to participate in the industry, so the two academia and industry are actually complementary to each other, the suggestion is that including our personal work, will also follow to our front-line papers as much as possible, Follow to our industry and academia, and then to ensure that our technology is leading, is at least advanced, and then leading.

Appendix 9: Didi's Interview Responses

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Me

The purpose of this interview is to help me complete part of my graduation thesis, all of which will be protected by privacy, and no personal information will be left or submitted in the dissertation, so I need to let you know about this.

Interviewee is easy to understand.

Me of all, we start with a simple and natural personal introduction, can you accept your role at Didi and highlight your experience in digital technology and innovation?

Interviewee my own personal background is almost 8 years of work experience, in fact, it is still first in the field of automotive engineering and autonomous driving.

I am in the traditional car manufacturers, you are like Volkswagen, and then there are some German iron fists have not been supplied, and then in some autonomous driving companies to some domestic Apollo like Didi to now Didi work, and then my current actual work content is still biased towards the entire autonomous driving fleet of an operation expert such a role, and then I myself in this piece, the core is to lead the 0 ~ 1 leading the landing of the autonomous driving operation platform, in fact, including the operation center of this strategy, including the physical construction, Then there is also the planning of software platforms, then there is also the integration of smart hardware devices, and then finally the automation of all the platforms.

Then these centers are probably divided according to this business area, in fact, our company also has at the press conference, including business centers, security centers, IRC remote support centers, and then customer service operation and maintenance centers and so on. In fact, the core purpose is to enable our unmanned fleet to be efficient and cost-saving in this automated operation and maintenance in the front and back office, right.

Me

Next, I would like to ask you about Didi's innovative ideas and leading projects. Didi has revolutionized China's transportation industry, can you share an example of how the digital sector is driving innovation within the company and shaping the development of ridesharing and other mobility services.

Interviewee Didi's core business is still ride-hailing, and then ride-hailing will be divided into many areas under it, such as limousine luxury cars, and then carpooling, right?

There are also some businesses such as intelligent public transportation, because I myself am actually in the autonomous driving business, so in fact, for other businesses I just said that some colleagues have some in-depth understanding, and then I follow my personal understanding, I can actually give an example like bus carpooling, in fact, in China, many of these large cities, it is actually in the suburbs, its bus lines are actually quite single, and relatively fixed, especially the elderly, they often often have no bus stop at their doorstep, He may have to walk for 10 minutes and 15 minutes to get to a bus stop, so for them, their travel is actually very difficult to be satisfied.

So in this case, one is to solve the travel problem of the elderly in the city, and to make the bus stations of our city, including its transportation capacity, more intelligent, so we actually do the core business also do intelligent bus This business is probably what kind of model? First of all, we especially have to understand the needs of users, in those suburbs, right? What exactly is the need it needs to be met.

Secondly, there is a big problem is that the bus line is known to everyone, it is actually a loss-making business, that is, the government does some people's livelihood construction, it will do its own bus, in fact, its profit is very low, it takes a route may be a day is a loss of how much money, and then we are also to let the government in this piece, if it does not contribute, it will have more investment, so in fact, it is a positive cycle, it can constantly invest more buses, and then to meet the needs of users, So we were at that time because we had the data of online car-hailing, and we probably knew that if you were in the suburbs, many people couldn't take the bus, he would go to the ride-hailing car, right?

He will know its starting and ending points, what its destinations are, this high-frequency demand route, and some people he may find ride-hailing expensive, he will go to ride a bicycle.

Then from here we can also learn about the beginning of the destination, the beginning and the destination of the easy bicycle. Then secondly, in fact, we are of course the local bus stations of the government, and which of its bus stations have more passenger demand, and we must have these data. And we will also use some local data that may be some local, such as popular business districts, supermarkets, schools, office buildings, we will take out these data, and then we will have some priority ordering, in fact, or according to its current economic value to sort.

Finally, we will form such a demand network, but under this demand network, we will also use the safety of the group, because we will find which roads, for example, its safety accident rate is relatively low, and then we will give priority to opening, which can also ensure the safety of the elderly and social groups.

So in this case, we later compared with the ride-hailing network its site density will basically increase dozens of times hundreds of times, so that the user may walk 100 meters from the community to 200 meters, he can go to the bus, and our bus line because of carpooling is a strategy for carpooling, that is, to know from which stations you drive, and then people on the bus, its efficiency of a carpooling is extremely high.

So it can be understood that in addition to increasing the density of stations to meet people's travel needs, we can also maximize the efficiency of its warm luxury car, and at the same time its cost will be reduced, so that the government can correspondingly have more income, and then do more bus routes, which is probably such a model.

Me

I would like to ask, in this example, how is the data of the smart bus point connected? For example, whether there is a parameter weight for hot spots such as the office of the Genesis School, or whether it can be decided whether to set a point there completely according to the route of travel and the number of routes.

Interviewee

First p0 level is the highest priority, the route must be the frequency must be the demand priority, I know that I am which route is the highest, this site will definitely be prioritized, because you can meet the travel needs of the vast majority of people, but secondly, because the bus route It is actually a mode of transportation that you can understand as a public welfare.

So we will focus on opening some hospitals and schools, because I am to meet the needs of school students, right? The elderly send their children to school, especially the elderly are unwell, I can also go to the hospital to do some examinations and the like, these in fact, in addition to how to say, in addition to according to the interests, in fact, more we will also consider this social security. Yes, having some of these put in it will affect us these weights.

Me

it is good for us to understand the industrial aspects of Didi. I would also like to ask, I heard how to specifically increase the company's income, is it more than the private car express car under the same number of kilometers?

Interviewee The income of full-time jobs in the same kilometer will be higher. Authoritarianism is like this, in fact, its model is relatively simple, such as from point A to point B, right?

Point A is the starting point, point B is the destination, under the destination it is actually getting on the bus, it will have a rule for example, the starting point, such as how many kilometers it is within the radius, it will also be possible for users to play can go carpooling together, in fact, then it is a detour ratio, it may mean that I have three passengers, and then three passengers get on the bus at the same time, and then I walk from A to B completely for an hour, after I get on the bus with three passengers, this detour ratio may be 10%, Or I may have an extra 5 minutes and 6 minutes, under the restrictions of this rule, he will go to the order, then after the order, he will follow the principle of priority, that is, which passenger of mine is the closest I will pick him up first, and then which passenger gets off the bus, the nearest route puts him off first.

On the whole, the price of carpooling, three people carpooling will definitely be higher than the price of one person taking the express car, but at the same time, he spends the same distance, he will spend more time, so to completely balance it, overall carpooling for its entire overall benefit, it actually does not have a particularly large increase, but what kind of advantages does it have?

It is to say that during the peak period, because the demand for capacity is not so much, but it can act like a car is equivalent to charging three capacity, it can solve the travel needs of some users, and at the same time, each user when he goes to the car, he will spend less money, so his experience is satisfied, and then for the design of the car, it may be more to increase a small amount of income, but more likely to be mainly to increase such a sense of social responsibility such a role, good.

Me

I would also like to ask, how is carpooling efficient in terms of digital technology?

Interviewee The efficiency of spelling is like this, one is so, it is generally I just talked about earlier, it is actually very efficient, there are several weights, the first is to say, for example, we are in a certain place and an operating area, right? And there must be a lot of people who choose him to fight the single, and I'm in a meeting later, and then I think he's going to fight the single, right? He has two very cores, the first is the radius, and one of its sudden radii is that I can choose to fight from point A to point B, and the person who is within the radius of the starting point destination can choose to spell the order.

Then the second point is an LP, that is, after I put it alone, then the entire detour ratio accounts for my entire route of the express train, how much it can get, we will set a ratio, will not make it too high, then too high the user experience will be very poor, which loses the original original of carpooling An initial of our appeal.

Then in fact, it also has a really powerful place in the carpool in real-time dynamic path planning, for example, I have set off from A, from B to point B, I may have got off alone, then I may be from point C to get off after I get off the car, but I only have two in the car now, and at the same time from point C to point B, he can also have a person to fight, he is also based on this rule, when he walks, the two rules have been based on, once he reaches this rule, He will have a fight, he will not get on the car, you can understand that in the process from point A to point B, he can fight infinitely as long as he can meet him, as long as your path is long enough, it's quite interesting.

Me This greatly improves the efficiency problem.

Interviewee The efficiency of carpooling will be relatively high, of course, the two points I just mentioned, such as the radius of the single single and the detour ratio, these two points must be continuously optimized in the process of practice. Good.

Me I would like to ask how Didi fosters a culture of innovation in the digital field? Are there any strategies or practices that are particularly effective in encouraging creative thinking?

Interviewee

In fact, the innovation culture of this piece, my personal understanding is about three or three aspects, the first summary is called the business front desk, in fact, everyone knows more about Internet companies, every year will produce innovative business, because the core business after he reaches a certain order of magnitude, and after its entire growth trend changes, the company will definitely say to do some new business, and then make the value of the company higher, Or can do more to meet the needs of the whole user, so in fact, I think a slightly larger company like this should have it, so my side. Especially today, there will be a lot of innovative business, in fact, the innovative business will also have this kind of strategic group to first do research on feasible solutions, and then everyone will do a small MVP product, and then go to the market to trial and error, depending on whether this product will be used with users in a short period of time, there will be such opportunities.

Then it is said that because there is already such a large group of network associations, it can actually provide a lot of support for these innovative businesses, one is the data middle platform, such as our ride-hailing these important data related to various business categories and some of our economic data, such as GMV and then some demand routes and so on, including security services of various party products, and some technical competition such as experience, which can support our new business. Then provide a lot of valuable data support for business implementation.

And then there is Didi, because it is a ride-hailing network, in fact, it is in the ride-hailing It is not just a taxi, in fact, there are many services and service backgrounds inside, including I don't know that you all usually use the Didi APP, right? There are many others, including refueling charging car wash, especially like insurance, and some other platform functions are available in it, which actually provides such a tool for travel, but also provides things other than small tools of the service platform, he can also be satisfied.

Me Could you please explain what innovative solutions can be finally implemented in terms of cultivating an innovation culture in Didi's digital field?

Interviewee Programmer he actually although I go to a failed programmer, although in the end it failed, and then it itself in the early stage it is also a market that everyone is not very clear, but maybe everyone in the epidemic stage it derived such a business, right?

Everyone may be saying that this kind of community group buying such a project, at this time, in fact, Didi also did some strategic research, and then finally had such a small product came out, and then found that the early stage was not bad, the whole small product was actually used by many people, and the users were also increasing rapidly, and then Didi began to spend tens of billions of dollars to pave out is the entire resignation, and then to various businesses across the country, but perhaps the final business model may indeed include the entire asset-heavy industry, Various places to build warehouses, and then to ensure that it reduces costs and increases efficiency, the whole overseas Chinese because of the asset-heavy industry is also very important, may be a loss when it is larger again, I said that if it continues to be too large, maybe this business can not be done, although it is a failure in the end, but there are actually many such examples, including our autonomous driving business, in fact, the early stage is also from 16 years to have such an idea, because to the later stage of technology technology to change the world, I think the end may be to put manpower, Because the cost of NetEase car is still relatively high, I hope to replace it with unmanned driving, so far the business logic on our side has also been certified, and then including the current ones are slowly doing unmanned commercialization, and in fact, from foreign micro and vivo, not micro and cos their own autonomous driving company, right?

They already have a large number of strategies in each region and have been certified in the United States, so the industry is like a positive example, and it may actually mean that this innovative business may even replace the company's core business in the future, and it can do such an autonomous driving operation in the country or even the world. Yes, there are both positive and negative examples.

Me Is there anything specific that can be mentioned in terms of backstage?

Interviewee

I can cite one for this hardware, I see that you two bureau situation products, that is, online car-hailing, everyone knows that since safety has been used as a particularly important indicator for us, especially Didi Group, so we installed our company is also using the hardware team to do the situation product, it is equivalent to saying that we will record and video in real time in order to protect passengers in the car, and then of course this thing will be coded, including the cost, Then there is its hardware equipment It has a good role, the first is to say for the safety of passengers, and then in fact, the situation, it also has some A big s is in the intelligent driving equipment, it can help NetEase drivers, such as me I am about to run into other vehicles, or when I am rear-ended, he will go to the police driver to pay attention to safety.

And then another piece is to say what kind of ability it has, it can be because when you have millions of such ride-hailing cars on the road to operate, the situation it can continue to put this kind of scene, because it runs long enough, kilometers enough, its scenes are rich enough, then these scenes can be stored in the cloud on the network, right? Then automatic driving It is a very useful data for automatic driving, and then we go to obtain this data, and then put it aside to do scenario training simulation training, so that the active algorithm framework that helps our automatic driving algorithm model and the algorithm model are constantly optimized, which is equivalent to a whole link.

Me We all know that safety is paramount in ridesharing platforms, how can the first digital department innovate in safety features such as real-time monitoring, emergency response, driver, and passenger verification, etc.?

Interviewee In fact, if you monitor in real time, everyone actually because of this piece if you use a frequency meter, everyone knows that we are in this piece, everyone knows that there is a common APP in it, what kind of audio and video can there be, right?

Then if you are a little farther away, a customer service will call you to confirm that you are wearing a seat belt to ensure the safety of passengers. Or when your time is a little like I go to a site, and then I'm not a person going to a site, and then I'm in a certain place with a ride-hailing service, stay in this route map for a few minutes, and then you'll be alerted, right? Finding this reminder and the large number of functions we did in it, including one-click alarm, and then including some additions such as the contact information of the third party's own relatives or family members, in fact, these are some innovations we have made in this monitoring, which is to ensure the safety of some passengers. In fact, I think the emergency response is relatively ordinary, in fact, how to say that it was certainly not so complicated when the car was out in the past, but now because of the ride-hailing many are modernized, such as including this on-site linkage alarm, passengers one-click alarm, including we have a safety organization team, including the entire national network, the accident can be rushed to the scene as soon as possible to solve, so it still relies on big data, Didi can obtain the data presented by these ride-hailing cars in time, Then you can call his emergency response team or network, and then arrive at the scene at once, which can ensure that passengers and drivers are right?

They can assume that something can be sent to the hospital in the first place, otherwise you think if you don't have the Internet, you probably shouldn't have time to call, right? In fact, it can greatly reduce the risk of user passengers surfing the Internet. Then there is the driver-passenger certification, in fact, including the fact that now he is a special driver in China, and his information is scattered to be high, and he has to have his own certificate, including he has to have a qualification certificate for online ride-hailing, right?

And you may have to have a local hukou, right? The binding with the vehicle, and then anyway, there are many restrictions on playing here, I am not particularly clear, anyway, the requirements are quite high, and then like the passenger, you must be real-name authentication so, and then there is some personal information authentication, so that when we get on the car, there will be a mobile phone tail number matching, confirmation and so on.

Me Like you mentioned the problem of autonomous driving above, I would like to ask if Robel taxi else is safe in the current situation? What about one piece for current customers?

Interviewee

In fact, there is already a large number of safety data on the network if the company starts, including actually like foreign right, Wemercres, including like the domestic Didi pony is not far away, in fact, they have tens of millions of kilometers of test miles, but they actually have an accident rate is actually much lower than the accident rate of human driving, right. It may be a few thousandths, the specific data I forgot, its safety is undoubted, it must be higher than human driving, because it is controlled by the programming system after all, so it is not like human This is accidental randomness is so great.

In fact, in this area, small and medium-sized companies they also do a lot of such things, including first of all they have system security at the entire system level, they generally do easy system, of course, its main system has a For back system, it can take over the entire vehicle, I let the car can stop to ensure the safety of your vehicle.

And then from the technical level, we have a lot of scene data, right? This scenario data can be taken to the simulation platform for training, so that the entire algorithm after training can be taken to the actual scene and the actual to do a closed-loop test, so that the continuous loop can make our entire algorithm model more and more accurate, so that the underlying control of the entire vehicle will become more and more accurate.

So in the operation, in fact, we are currently saying that for example, the entire fleet may slowly be unmanned and unsafe, but when there was safety before, in fact, we are very strict with the training of safety officers, including some theoretical practical training, including they will be in some test sites, and some practical roads, they will have a special training, and only after meeting the access conditions will they go to the car to do emergency takeover.

Then in the whole operation process under the idea, in fact, we also have the entire software platform to monitor in real time, and some DMS warning, and then include our entire from the car end right, the vehicle end cloud will go to warn of these faults, and then can be solved remotely. Including what happened to us, there is also a hard foundation network that we are not able to reach, and there are personnel who can go to the scene in time to deal with it.

Me Based on the satisfaction of wood-based autonomous driving, do you think it will be possible to achieve this kind of autonomous driving in the future?

Interviewee Fully automated driving is l5 L5, that is, in any Austria, that is, any corner of the world's cities, in theory, it is actually 8 words from the current status quo, which should be 100% realized. Yes, in fact, if it is in the United States, in fact, to experience the vivo car, it has been in some cities like Phoenix, it has basically achieved 4.5 almost, basically you go to take a taxi, and then there is no driver inside, you go to take a taxi, and then get in the car to deliver safely to the destination, he has been in continuous operation for a long time, and there have been no accidents in terms of funds.

Me Real-time location tracking is fundamental to TD's services, but if txt, which currently performs 10 points well in this area, can you elaborate on how this technology will improve the user experience and driver efficiency?

Interviewee

In fact, the entire implementation process tracking in fact, the technology of the entire industry should be the same, anyway, Didi here, in fact, the main is currently the core is the integration of three directions, first of all, the first is that we will have to take the entire odd range of high-precision maps in advance, and then our entire net in the vehicle operation process net will sweep the surrounding point clouds, he will go to match this scene with high precision, You can know where you are.

In fact, we have IMU pipelines on the car, which can also monitor the attitude and position and position of the vehicle in real time, even when the GPS starry sky suddenly disappears, it can use the short crown and the attitude of the vehicle to first understand their own location, and then we are currently building a base station near Austria, so that the base station cooperates with the entire GPS satellite, and then through the GPS positioning of the station, right? It can have an error through GPS, can accurately know the location of our car, and then after these three data are further integrated, the location of its entire vehicle will be very accurate, which will lead us to ensure that our entire vehicle because of automatic driving It is equivalent to not a road machine, but a lane level, just like many maps now, we see that a road may be three roads turn left straight or turn right, it has been reached, because its entire positioning to reach the centimetre level, thank you.

Me I think the cost of navigation using inertia will be too high? IMU does not rely on the inertial navigation of the external environment, how to innovate in the future to reduce costs and achieve comprehensive production.

Interviewee

In fact, you only mentioned an IMU, in fact, the entire sensor, but the current price is high enough, but in the future, this is actually equivalent to a chicken egg and egg hatching chicken such an example, that is, when you have the whole Locke to start mass production, when you have a large enough demand, the cost of the entire sensor hardware will be reduced, but when you can't repay the amount, in the research and development stage, Because your demand is already small, it's like you are producing a component in the automotive industry.

Its mold cost is already high enough.

Then at the R&D level, if the local amount is small, it is expensive, so in fact, the price is not a very worrying factor, as long as our future culture is realized, when we need a large-scale community operation, we do mass production, its price will be constantly evenly distributed, will become smaller.

Me

I believe we can move on to our next topic, the next topic is the impact of digital technology, can you please share how Didi Technology is leading or driving examples of digital transformation initiatives, and what significant impact these initiatives have had on the company's innovation landscape? Are there any positive examples you can share with us?

Interviewee

In fact, the transformation of this industry is still relatively obvious, now everyone knows that I go out of the car travel is actually in front of the driver, in fact, the pain point for the company is still more obvious, first of all, because you have a driver, he has his own thoughts, so you have to do vehicle scheduling, to the dispatch room of the car show is actually very difficult, because the driver he will have this idea to develop which place.

Then it is difficult for your company to completely mobilize him, in fact, that is, especially in developed countries, the labor cost is high, and the cost of revenue is relatively high, so its realization in the entire network is still an industry with a very low gross margin.

Because in this case, if there is a driverless car, it is actually equivalent to you without a driver in the entire car, then my vehicle completely belongs to my self-operated fleet, which is like JD.com, right? He has bought all the products to the warehouse first, when I want to deliver him, I have it everywhere, I want to deliver him, I can probably deliver to the user quickly, this is a good experience.

So when we have self-driving cars, right? We want to be a car to pick up a passenger, he has to listen to the command of my system, he will not have any emotions, he is a robot, so at this time its scheduling efficiency is extremely high, as the utilization rate of the vehicle will increase, including the waste of energy It will also decrease. So from this positive impact, using technology to meet people's needs is a more positive example.

Me As we all know, will the increase in the proportion of heavy assets cause a financial burden on the company in the short or long term, resulting in its lower viability?

Interviewee You answered together with me below, and that's right. The asset-heavy industry often requires a lot of investment in the early stage, which means that it may be 3~5 years or even 5~8 years in a short period of time, it is a loss-making business direction, which is like JD.com, right?

He spent a lot of money on his own warehouse before, and then it has been losing money in the early stage, in fact, it was not until the first two years that JD.com began to make a profit, in fact, including our automatic driving, when we want to have such an increase strategy of 100,000 or even millions in the future, in fact, we have to build a lot of places for him to store, right?

Let him charge, let him go to maintenance, this is a strong strong very large self-operated platform, and the assets of the vehicle are still quite high, so this is a company's capital is very challenging, so automatic driving for only a company with a lot of money it can do, so for small companies it may be difficult to do, so it is a great advantage for large companies, so it is said that small companies want to do this thing is feasible is actually very low.

If a large company can have such an early capital investment, and then slowly increase efficiency through cost reduction, then the internal operational efficiency gradually increases, and the operational efficiency of the vehicle increases, right? Including the online market of his vehicles can be guaranteed, they slowly snowball, it will gradually become profitable, because the cost of the initial investment can be slowly shared.

Me For example, with the development of technology, new challenges are gradually emerging, such as internal content moderation and data privacy, I would like to ask how Didi's digital department is innovating to meet these challenges, or what cutting-edge technology is being leveraged while ensuring privacy security and due respect for customers.

Interviewee We have two, the first is to say that our user has some particularly private information, like his ID information, like his order information, right? These are the highest red line data of our company, it is all in the company's database, that is, in the country it is the company's no one can see, this is the company's red line, after all, there is training every year.

Secondly, if we are on the road, it can code in real time, that is, it can shoot the range of its ability, and all the passenger's facial information is coded, that is, you can not see the whole true face of him anywhere. So in fact, the company actually does a very heavy job on the privacy of users in this area.

Me We invite us to our next topic, measuring impact. How is Didi measuring the impact of digital technology and innovation outcomes? Is there a fixed indicator or something else that has been taken to see if a project is successful?

Interviewee In fact, the core indicators of our company are three or three blocks, and then security experience efficiency, and then if it is a commercial indicator, the core is still the user scale and number of users, as well as identification and profitability. Active users, for example, this depends on how you define it, we have daily activities, weekly activities, monthly activities, daily activities, that is, on the day he has completed, he for example, there are users who send orders to play, and then weekly activities are also in a week, he has at least once. A monthly activity is at least once in a month. Yes, maybe the quality is not the same.

Me If you are guided by this data, excuse me, but will the company invest more in the technology department with more operations?

Interviewee

Because the current Internet companies are technology is a barrier for various companies, all your things, especially in the back-end algorithm, these are gradually optimized every year, when you have this year, you definitely need to continue to optimize, right?

It's also a barrier to competition, so this company will have it every year, and you will have how much technology investment increases every year when you report earnings.

Me

I am also curious about Didi's cross-company project cooperation, I would like to ask how Didi's digital department works with external partner startups or research institutions?

Interviewee For a technology company, and then we are talking about cooperation with external companies. Right, actually, from the software level, right? At the software level, we may cooperate with other Internet companies, like in the hardware field, we are an integrator, including many lidar companies, like Jose and some in the United States, and then China and some others like Zhang Zhen.

Then there are some computing unit chip cameras will cooperate, because these are our software advantages, but we also need this ability in hardware, so there will also be this cooperation, and then on the platform, we will also cooperate with many other domestic companies, because for example, such as charging cars.

We ourselves we only do the user platform, but you these hardware you do car wash charging hardware, we do not have itself, we will integrate his ability into our use of my platform to control it, right, so we are a dealer, and then provide the entire platform in this interface, so that in fact, we can make our platform capabilities more and more abundant, and then provide services to the outside.

Me Like I am still more interested in autonomous driving, is there any project that you think is innovative for Didi in these collaborations? Like smart driving?

Interviewee You're like we just posted at the conference. We cooperate with a domestic one, the name company can see it there, we went to jointly develop such a laser platform, and then at night it will see farther, and compared to the previous LiDAR, it will capture some information that could not be captured before It will capture more accurately, which can prevent the occurrence of accident rates, which is very meaningful.

Then in the field of this platform, for example, we made the entire automated application platform, and then ours because of the future unmanned car, you can't still be like someone's driver, you can manually refuel and charge him, right? Or to clean him, and then our automation application platform can charge it and clean it through machine automation, which are some innovative examples derived from automatic driving.

Me

In a fierce market, how the digital industry is cultivating experimentation and continuous learning of these new cultures to ensure that Didi remains at the forefront of digital innovation in the transportation sector.

Interviewee I think that it may be that is, because now the competitiveness in various fields is very large, in fact, how do you find suitable or find your own unique technical products or operational advantages in this field, and then this thing actually once the advantages continue to snowball after expansion, then it is actually easy to occupy the market, in fact, including the entire industry is basically relatively similar.

Then the first thing is actually in the digital field, first of all, I think I want to give an example of intelligent driving, our pursuit of unmanned technology, this piece, in fact, we will also invest in research and development every year, and then it will be very large, and then we will also have that kind of various patents, and then go to the research and development of some new model frameworks, right, and then go to practice and so on. And then there is a piece that means that in addition to you have this technology, you still need someone to take a taxi, so because its traffic is very important, we also continue to make users feel that our platform is very good, so that users can improve user satisfaction.

Then including our Didi brand influence is also continuous investment every year, so that users actually have such a mind, feel that using Didi is such a symbol of safety and reliability, it will be used, then mobile traffic can be reliable and stable. Then in the future, for example, if we have a large number of asset operations, we may go to say how to do the operation on the sprint in this area, and then refine to achieve the purpose of reducing costs and increasing efficiency.

Me As you mentioned in the previous question, the current driverless technology is already more complete, but I also want to ask if there is more room for innovation for the digital sector to cooperate more?

Interviewee From the technical point of view, the current development is actually relatively mature, I think that the future needs innovation is probably because Didi is still a ride-hailing car at present, it is still its corresponding assets are drivers to operate and maintain, it itself does not do the operation of such a large asset.

So the challenge for us is actually the future, right? After the company has a large number of strategies, how do we manage these strategies, how to make these strategies efficient to efficient areas, in this network, whether it is the front office operation, or the background accident we to guarantee, and then how to do the operation and maintenance security, this is actually the challenge of this company.

Me

Does digital technology play a key role in building asset-heavy operating systems?

Interviewee

That's automation. Because of asset-heavy operation, if the manpower is very large, it is actually a very costly direction, so in fact, how can we use digital technology or software industry combined technology, can allow robots to replace labor, and then let them efficiently turn, in fact, this is a very large effect on the company's internal efficiency costs.

Me The next topic is the orientation of future technologies, in your opinion, which emerging digital technologies do you think will shape the future of innovation at Didi or the industry as a whole?

Interviewee I think it's artificial intelligence electrification, intelligence, connected chips, and intelligent transportation location or whatever.

Me I wonder if you can give an example of a specific project, and you personally think about what specific changes he will make to the future?

Interviewee I give one is related to intelligent transportation, in fact, there is a concept of artificial intelligence is very large, in fact, including now HTC should know a little, right? He is also right, so like aigccaigc for automatic driving, it is actually very large, you say our current model training, right? Then including our future words, if it belongs to a huge fleet, I have manual customer service, so can I use the act method and do it, right? This is actually very promising.

Then include our current intelligent transportation, in the future you like automatic driving it after all, it is only doing very well at the end of the car, but many of these scenarios that we are currently happening, I will give an example, such as blind area cars, for example, you are originally blocked by the car, and then pedestrians crossing the road may increase your increase no one can see, may hit pedestrians, in fact, this different scene, you may not be able to do it by the bicycle system alone.

But if I deploy vehicle-road coordination-related equipment in the entire national transportation network, it can make up for these scenarios because its equipment is high enough or wide enough, so that it can more ensure the safety of the bicycle autonomous driving fleet in operation, which is very helpful for the entire future transportation including travel.

Me

As EVs are established, how the digital industry is innovating in supporting EV adoption, from charging station partnerships to EVs integrated into the first fleet to enable greener and more sustainable mobility solutions.

Interviewee This piece is actually known to everyone, because China it is actually developing relatively fast in the entire electrification, and now the share of domestic electric vehicles is getting higher and higher, then the demand for its charging pile is actually very high, because in the future, because in addition to the C-side charging demand, especially on the B-side platform, it also needs to charge such a large number of equipment, so in the choice of Didi, in fact, his side is also 0~1 created a community charging such a platform, so that in fact, he will cooperate with charging piles in parking lots in various cities, he will also have some free brand charging piles to build, and then will also cooperate with other brands from your brand, so that the entire B-end of such a fleet network, of course, when it needs to be charged, you can charge through the Didi platform, and then there will be some price advantages, and then he can also know where the rental company is free for the first time to use, This can also save the driver's time to find a charging pile, which is actually complementary. I think there is also a relatively big advantage is that the charging piece is actually honest, because electricity is still a government-related business, so in fact, we can also know the advantages of electricity prices, for example, for example, you may be right during the day, 8 o'clock to 5 p.m. charging time may be less demand, it may mean that our electricity price can not be lower, and then when its charging demand is relatively high, Electricity prices are relatively high.

So if we know this information, me and our own fleet, right?

I don't know where, for example, to charge when the price of electricity is low, so that the application of energy is guaranteed, because when you charge at the peak, it may be very likely that this power may not be able to meet, when you are in the time to do it with everyone, for example, it may be able to have a lower electricity price for a while.

The second is to avoid the crest of the wave, which can also be more beneficial to the government.

Me We move on to the final project, as people deeply involved in digital innovation, as part of the academic pursuit, what advice would you give to researchers exploring the role and impact of digital technology in innovation? What advice do I have for future people?

Interviewee

What advice would you give me? I'm talking about your research direction, I think I should be there this year, right? Digital in the field of science and technology, such words can actually make there a certain belief, through science and technology to make people's lives become beautiful direction to study, I think there is more of a landing significance, and then the impact surface in fact I think a technology can only be applied in a certain country or a small region, in fact, there is still a lack of certain generalization, in the end or can be studied from the international market, can be recognized in our international market, I think it is really valuable.

Then this is a landing expectation, that is, maybe the direction of your research I say is too long-term, right?

In fact, if you do it at present, it is not so big, as far as possible, in the relatively short next 5 to 10 years, and maybe even more than 20 years or 20 years, it can be used on a large scale, and it can really produce a better concept in this direction than human society and life, like Musk, right?

Although they said that it was more difficult to find rocket technology, I think it is very good to be able to have good wishes and take people to see it with other hearts.

Me About what we mentioned earlier, I have a more curious want to know more deeply, like I think how digital technology is applied in the selection of charging piles, what role does it play?

Interviewee

The community charger is like this, that is, the first thing in the community charging is to rely on us to build a parking lot, self-built parking lot is generally said that you can understand, in fact, it will basically be in the demand for travel demand is more strong place, but say these places, because after it is charged, it is very convenient to go out to receive orders, we will do some resources in these places, Then there are some places that say that in order to make your own charging network is very large, you must say that you have to go to which small e-commerce to cooperate, in fact, for us, the current expansion of the network as the core, that is, the larger my network, the more users you have to use.

These are actually you can understand that these are these things, you have to cooperate with the government, and the second is to have a professional is network data.

Appendix 10: Google's Interview Responses

Me:

First, let's start with introduction. I would like to stay here that all day, all your information will be confidential and anonymous. So, it will not be written or carried on anywhere through my dissertation. It will be mistake. could you kindly introduce yourself and provide an overview of your role at google? Emphasizing your experience with digital technologies and innovation?

Interviewee:

Yeah, I was a software engineer. I worked at google for over 10 years. And in my most recent role, I was the tech lead of a team that is building the system to support management of android phones for enterprise.

Me:

That’s impressive? Could you kindly? Does a little bit deeper into the subject on him? Like, for example, what do you say? Do you build the app for the android phone as a whole? Or is there any specific function routine focus on?

Interviewee:

when I experienced, I was focused on the management of endpoint devices for companies. So, for a google, there are two operating system that is owned by google. One is android, which is the mobile phone operating system. And one is chrome OS which is the operating system, empowering chrome book. And for both these systems, there are some features that companies need. So, like, say, a company want to adopt android for its employees, but I say the company has 1,000 employees. And there's a lot of the employees to use android phone to check their work email, then they need to make sure that the phone is cheer and say the employee complied with the company policy. And all the company policy may require setting a password on the phone. So, then we provide a system for the police, add men to configure the policy or how the device for what are the policies, what is considered a secure system? And only when the system is considered secure, can the employees access their work? Data, the android device. So that is the system we built.

Me:

Very interesting to hear that. Thank you for the introduction. And let's go to the second topic at hand, which is innovation philosophy at google and leading projects. First question would be, how does google foster a culture of innovation while its digital sector and within its digital sectors? And what strategies or practices have been particularly effective in encouraging employees to think creatively? All right.

Interviewee:

For a smaller company, the projects are less top down. By top down, so that in which generally when we hear about it, their employees say that maybe one and there are two manager or product managers, they've decided on what product they want to build. And then the other engineers are hired, writing the code, right? But they don't have a lot of, say, in the frame of feature, right? There's like some companies.

Me:

their fault sword. So just as they all source, some of their programming.

Interviewee:

No, it's not the outsource, but it's just like companies are not generally. What I hear about is that it is more talk about. Engineers do not design the product. They only write the code. The design of the product is already designed by either like some senior manager or senior product. The product manager, they already designed the product, and the engineers rewrite the code. But my experience at Google that there are more engineers than product manager. Saying on my previous team, as a result, a lot of design of the product is also done by the engineer, say we just had a goal. The is this feature that we heard that companies need the other companies that they would like to be the term as for hotels are left for each individual engineer to think about. That is why I work to this, start at a product voice, their opinion on how the product should be created.

Me:

It's very interesting seeing how the different company structures, different projects at hand. Second question we have would be go has made significant advancement in areas like machine learning and natural language processing. How does the digital sector contribute to the development of these core technologies? And how do they subsequently influence innovation in various google products and services?

Interviewee:

I think what empower google and these ai and natural language processing in is that our system is very scalable. And we have a lot of data because the number of users is very large. Then at google, we design our system to be very scalable in terms of we collect. So from this, we can pay in the model, it is designed to handle a very large load of requests. So that's why I feel a lot of a meaning of intelligent service more accurate.

Me:

I do believe there are positive and negatively that of the modern technology per se, ask for positive. Could you share examples of how google technical department has led or contributed to digital transformation initiatives that have significantly impacted the company's innovation landscape?

Interviewee:

I was working in the chrome os department and so cropped up. It's a very lightweight operating system that is very secure. And so, I’ve witnessed the transformation, because in the past, computer operating system is more dominated by Microsoft, but for Microsoft system, it is more vulnerable to virus since it's more of a heavyweight operating system. So, when google introduced chrome OS it is more of a secure because it's a very simple system that it is basically web based. So as a result, in years, there's like significant adoption in the enterprise and school involved. It's not just the commerce itself, but the whole way that the computing is being used now, it's able to reach a wider audience.

Me:

I my perhaps myself have been benefiting from such functions. Just to bring back on previous topics, such as you mentioned, there's a lot of data being collected and or to for programming or reasons the man asked. It is allocated and used and by and what department will decide how it is being implicated.

Interviewee:

Generally, for each google product. When there is user, user data being collected, then first, a product need to evaluate. Why do we need to collect the user data? Usually, it must serve some feature. So, for example, if for g email right, then the data is collected, it must be the data that user, but they create the email, right? In this case, we must collect the data or so you like the google doc, right? And it's the data that the user created using google website as to how it is used. There is a there is a policy that every product launch needs to go through security and privacy review. In the privacy review, usually we have to fill out the questionnaire of what data is being collected, whether it's sensitive or not. And for example, if it's sensitive, it's usually some users’ private data such that their name, address, phone number, email like these data. We consider sensitive. If it is sensitive, then there's more, there is more checks that must be done in the privacy review to make sure that this usage is appropriate. If we find that the user in the user first must agree share the data with us, and we must put it in the in the document to third, the user agree. So there are a lot more of these project to, yeah, so make sure it is being used correctly.

Me:

I am also curious about, is there any department or team that would like to take a judge on some information collected to see whether it is effective information or is a defective.

Interviewee:

There are right the privacy department. in addition to the people whose role their job is like a no privacy engineer, then all the tech leads are also trained. We must take some training, privacy. And there are engineers who join a privacy committee that make decision. What I give you, one example is when we want to launch a product, like we want, we want to give IT admin, the ability to check if an application is installed correctly on the user’s android device. We must collect some data from the phone in which each app can report an error if it's not installed correctly. But in this case, we find maybe the app can report any kind of information they want and whether we should allow it admen to view this information or not. So when we created this feature, then this feature had to go through a privacy review with a person on the privacy committee. And they raise like this data must be encrypted. So it's not accidentally leaked to any internal employee. So, we did have the discussion to make sure that it is all encrypted, then we find maybe this feature is okay for launching. So there are some safety mechanism。

Me:

Would you say there is some method that was used to? Their information is effective, or is all done by the privacy department, which collects the data that judge whether information is useful or not. Yeah.

Interviewee:

It is this information it is judged by the people in the privacy. As to elect it, they will have a review by whether it's useful such that the benefit is outweighing the risk. There are some criteria or like If it uses the data, then it must be more properly, but whether we should have this feature, not a lot of time. It is just up to the discretion.

Me:

How does google measure the impact of digital technologies on innovation outcomes? Is there a matrix or indicator being used?

Interviewee:

The metric is more like number of active users. We do have kind of log analysis and dashboard to know like how many users are using our product or feature. Yeah, so generally we collect the data on how many active users say like weekly active user, how many users per week use this each or this product or number of 30-day active user. We have it in a chart, right? We know like when there are more users, maybe like in the data or more user, that evening there's fewer users. And these are to kind of guide if this is very success or not.

Me:

How does google collaborate with external partners, startups, and research institutions to leverage collective expertise and drive innovation for, especially in digital technology like computing related fields.

Interviewee:

One way is Google does acquire startups quite a lot. So, during my time, there are multiple products that got acquired. Yeah. So first, like android is also applied, right? So, we find it valuable. So, we continue to innovate on top of it. And then the in terms of entry management, there is a startup in Hong Kong that was like working on the android system to enable like a company to manage, to separate the data from the separate the company data and make it more secure. Yeah, so we also acquire that startup and made those features available as part of android system. So, there are a lot of acquisition in which google acquire and continue to develop on, although there are other startups that we will acquire. And then later we find it does not align with google strategy. So, it just continued, in addition, there are other products that will have developed that is kind of for supporting the research institutions like google scholar. And there's the collapse number a lot of cloud computing technology. And we developed that that is intended for helping other companies or research institutions when they want to need to do some the training of artificial intelligence model that we provide the cloud computing platform. So, they can leverage our system to do the research they need. So, I think for a large company that very expert in cloud computing that they were able to provide the platform, the cloud computing platform, which other institutions we can use. A lot of times what we created the open-source language that is widely adopted in research institutions. A lot of the language models for artificial intelligence, it is created by google.

21:51 Me:

innovation requires a willingness to take risks and learn from failures. Can you share an instance where a digital innovation at Google didn't go as planned? And what did the key take away from that experience?

Interviewee:

The product fails because any sort of new technology. A lot of time it must for to succeed, it must be in the market and have enough user adoption that they find it valuable to adopt. So, the example, which is a few years ago, google created a product called google play for education. So that is the google play store, record for downloading applications to android. So, at that time, google wants to create a version that is targeting the education segment where teachers can and purchase education specific application of app developers who create educational content. And maybe then the teachers can push these advocates to the students, android tablet. So then in the classroom setting, the students can have the apparatus. When the teacher and to create a classroom experience to use this application. Then they created a to build such a product and have some trial with educational institutions. Then after it was built, it did not receive a lot of adoption from schools. So, there are a few reasons why fail. And one is that for android as operating system, it is designed for usually like one or two users. The android is not really mind and the shared kind of model where you give the tablet to anyone, but you usually require log in, right? So therefore, in the classroom setting, it is very challenging to get other kids logged in. And they find that it is not very reliable when the teacher wants to install the application for a whole group of devices, they find that the time in which it gets installed is not completely predictable. They cannot have the system be reliable enough to like to install all this within 5 minutes. So, since it takes longer, it will not go very well in the tests, as a result that failed. And so, this product got cancelled. So, I think they learn from lesson from this. So, in the next iteration, maybe they consider factors when they build out educational institution.

Me:

What will the related members and teams being reconstructed back into google? Will they be distributed into different teams? Or will they come back to the as a team? Or do I know that happened?

26:12 Interviewee:

Then first, for the current users, there's still a period that the system needs to be maintained before it is completely shut down. There are some engineers who need to continue to maintain. But for the extra engineers and managers, then they are given the option to find another product within that department to work on or they can find enough another team. So that's traditionally how so usually if the manager, right, if the manager finds another product that needs a manager the other engineers can also stay with that manager if they always infer.

Me:

It's more like manager's personal choice, then a company decision would you say, for them to go to whatever team they want?

Interviewee:

They can choose within the any opening of other areas that we think when this project is cancelled, maybe there are some other projects that are starting in the same holistic organization that they can choose to move there.

Me:

How does google prioritize its innovation efforts across these diverse areas to ensure a cohesive and meaningful digital ecosystem?

Interviewee:

I feel like it's more for the higher up executive tips to decide on the priority. And for any calendar year, there are some departments that are more prioritized and other areas that are less prioritized, depending on just a current ecosystem of where google one invest. But generally, there are different product area. Beers, for example, for cloud computing is one part area. It's under a different VPs than the departments like search and YouTube. So, these areas are all led by different v ps. So that is why actually, within the different departments, generally, I find it is not very cohesive. Because like YouTube has a very different focus than cloud computing.

Me:

What do you think is the main challenge now for clone computing is distributed. Computer really saving the cost of oscillating power in cloud computing.

Interviewee:

I think the main benefit more like each customer can develop the application, and they do not need to manage the underlying servers, of a distributed computing environment that now we make it easy for them to port their application from one cloud computing system to another. For example, if they write their application once, they can choose to use either google cloud computing or amazon web service or Microsoft azure, which company they want to run their application. And they can decide what feature is available, but they don't have to redevelop their application. And they also don't need to hire people to see if the server is like failing or need to restart the popular machines. Are handled by these large companies like Microsoft and google. Cost of value, the data center. And for the reliability, because the reliability is also like a big cost. Because for google, we have like engineers called reliability engineer, which need to be on call, right? Like include from system is down. Then they need to fix it. So, these costs are very costly for smaller companies. So, if they use a cloud computing platform, then they do not have to hire these engineers to work on this. I see.

Me:

From view, which emerging digital technologies, do you believe will play a central role in shaping the future of innovate and at google and across the whole tech industry?

Interviewee:

I feel like the cloud computing is more of the area that will grow a lot because I signal because other companies, right? Like a start need a cloud computing environment. This is the area that a lot of innovation can still happen. It is also kind of a recent development.

Me:

What's the trend in future distributed computing? Is there any possibility to happen a fundamental logic change or algorithm reform in computing soon.

32:41 Interviewee:

I think right now, it's just like a yeah, so there's a lot more functionality that is being added to cloud computing platforms. Now, maybe he previously we only provide the virtual machines in which other companies can have this virtual machine and they can run the application there. But now there's a lot of software and age service in which we not only provide at the machine, but also have more advanced cloud computing entire environments. For example, a lot of existing software already installed for like either running your artificial intelligence model, such that if you just pay, then you don't have to even configure these machines. You don't have to configure the machine yourself, right? This is all done for you that you can just use our resource and write your code and upload it and the entire thing will run for you. This area is becoming more and more advanced such that it means more convenient force is to use.

Me:

I'm very interested to see how the am computing can benefit the users as a whole concert. And as the time is coming, sure, let's move on to our last question, like advice for researchers. And is someone deeply involved in digital innovation? What advice would you give to researchers exploring the role and impact of digital technology in innovation as part of their academic pursuits?

Interviewee:

it's more like a network with more professionals in the field to you must learn what are the technology they are working on to that hear more case stories. Yeah, with either small company and larger company and hear people's stories. If it's not more academic, I do feel like it's more like you build more relationships with people in various roles and follow up with them on and the project and maybe interview them periodically make create a relationship. Yeah. Then you can follow some case study.

Appendix 11: Amazon's Interview Responses

Me:

Hello. I am student from king's college, London. Today we're going to do an interview that helps me to do my presentation, which is around the topic of digital technologies in innovation, unraveling their roles and impact. In this interview will be completely anonymous. We will not mention your name anywhere in our dissertation. We just need the data collection stuff. So sounds good. The first question is, could you please introduce yourself and provide an overview of your role at amazon emphasizing your experience and digital technologies and innovations?

Interviewee:

Sure. my role in amazon is a software engineer. And I work and the amazon technology along with automotive partners. And we help them do digital transformation. So basically, we work with different OEM. Original equipment manufacturer over the world. We work very closely with the partners and helping them on integrating the software into their cars. And eventually it will get into the hands of the customers are driving the cars. But basically, it involves technologies, including ai and ai voice technology and OTA software update. And we also help the basically integrate their stopper stack, relying on amazon technology like web services. It will have services. Things like that.

Me:

Thank you. The next question will be innovations often involves experimenting with new ideas. Could you elaborate on amazon approach to fostering experimentation within the digital sector and how these experiments contribute to the development of the new technologies or services?

Interviewee:

Yeah, definitely. So, our organization to start with, there are many different organizations within amazon, as you might know. There are many businesses that we touch on. Specifically for our work, we foster experimentation through the mechanism of hacker thorns. And we encourage people to think big and invent and simplify. We are people are encouraged to try in innovative solutions to solve unique customer problems. And we transform we translated those experimentation into actual features and delivery to what customer needs and solve their pain points. Yeah.

Me:

thank you so much for the explanation. And how does amazon foster a culture of innovation within its digital sector? And what strategies or practice has been particularly effective in encouraging employees to think creatively?

Interviewee:

Yeah, I think that's a good question. I think the during our daily work, I think our leadership has a keyway to encourage people to think creatively and try different things is to do not take risk, allow people to take risks. So, acknowledging that some experiments should fail and might not work, but even that we are encouraged to try different things to solve some unique problems, we have different approaches and compare the pros and cons of different approaches, and most importantly, were backwards from other customers. So really understand what problems we are trying to solve before with instead of trying to, just like, come up with some features that no one needs. So, I think that's how our organization has been trying to foster this innovation control within our sector.

Me:

Okay, I’m also curious about, does this mean the leaders will push this new technology, for example, to earn the group members and make them use it or does it, can a normal just team member use it by themselves and then suggest to the whole group? And then we as a group will adapt to this new technology.

interviewer:

I think both ways. So, for example, recently the ln has stormed the world. And I think as the company, like leaders are really emphasizing the adoption of power and making sure teams are evolving into that direction. But at the same time, we internally like from within the team, within the colleagues, employees, we also can share the knowledge and like come up with them, unique solutions that might be helpful for the entire team or entire organization, in both ways button up and up the top down, both approaches are like encouraged.

me:

If this is the case, will this? How do you put in trigger any structural effect of the team or would? The group structure also hold for how the team works, what is triggering changes to it? Or?

Interviewee:

I think it's not because every team has their own roadmap and has their own feature. As you might know, amazon adopts the micro service kind of the team structure or two of so called 2 pieces that team. So, each team is managing and owning us a particular area. And so, if there are some major changes from the leadership, from the high-level direction of the organization there will be team structure real like real world happen that my shuffle people around to make sure the priorities are properly handled. Yeah, I think I hope that I’ll answer the question.

Me:

It does thank you. The next question would be an amazon go stores showcase cashier less shopping using innovative technologies. How does the digital sector contribute to the development of these physical retail experiences? And what role do digital technologies play in enhancing custom convenience? How does this relate to it such as how it's being affected to show me at amazon fresh? It's cut cashless. You just take stuff out.

Interviewee:

I don't believe I haven't worked on this project, but based on what I knows across the news and some internal news as well. Indeed, the I think amazon is trying to innovate or transform some legacy or not legacy like physical world. So, we're trying to do experiments with the retail sector, pharmaceutical sector, many different sectors. So, we're not like actively expanding, but it's mostly based on customer needs like we saw. We probably saw the needs that this could help our customer to shop more efficiently. And especially doing homework, I think people don't want to like people is probably safer and better to just brandies out and just exit the shop without interacting with anyone. So social insistency, but that's just my guess.

Me:

Good time for another point of the inside. Next is the amazon prime ecosystem integrates various digital services from swimming to eBook and fast shipping. How does the digital sector approach the integration of these services to provide a seamless user experience? How does innovation in the software play a role in keeping amazon prime offering compelling?

Interviewee:

I think. So, when amazon started, it was an online bookstore and now we expanded into many different services are as packaged into this prime membership. So, we keep we increasingly add values to this ecosystem. So, to benefit our customers, and I think it's kind of like a flywheel. When more people join this ecosystem, become prime member, we use we used what our customer has paid it to invest and trying to bring more values to the prime membership ecosystem. So, as you have listed here, e books for shipping, and they're also like video streaming on the audio books, many more to come. So, I think the digital sector by introducing new products, new services will continue continuously improve the prime ecosystem and attract more customers to be part of the ecosystem.

Me:

Yes, me personally are very interesting how it will come, let's proceed. Amazon web services has transformed the code computing landscape with 33% market share in global cloud service which exceeds Microsoft Azure. And google cloud how does the digital sector continue to innovate within AWS, both in terms of technology, technical in advancements, and the services offered to a diverse range of customers.

Interviewee:

For AWS, it has a pretty good momentum in trying to capture more market share by helping startup of small to me and businesses and like big tech like net flicks. The whole net flicks. Stack is on aside so definitely we are continuing innovating also following the or following or leading some of the macro trends, including block chain and ai as you might know about the news that analyst has announced analyze that rock service that will help that can expose API for people to use different large language models or we call it foundation models, offered by first parties or amazon built foundation models or third party foundation models like some hugging phase and model financial models in hugging phase and of the other providers like. And topic, I think, given that, I believe amazon has been invading and leading the some of these efforts in the cloud space. And this also tailors to a wide range of customers as so whenever they need, we try to make it scalable and example to other customers as well. As part of the AWS operates.

Me:

It's interesting to see how the block chain is being adapted into all these aspects. So, is this your, sorry, do you if you, do you have anything to say more about that?

Interviewee:

I just thought to mention block chain, because of the past few years, the block chain before ai block chain was a big thing. And then a lot of customers, I think they wanted to some existing us customers want to see how they can leverage block chain technology to transform their business. So that's how I think in the list got into the space. So, it's more about solving customer problems instead of like the usual pump and dump scheme of the block chain space, right? Or crypto currency space.

Me:

Yes, because I think most of them are hoping to decentralize in a way. Exactly. So next question, could you share examples of how amazon technical department has led or contributed to digital transformation initiatives that have significantly impacted the company's innovation landscape? Yeah, so actually.

Interviewee:

so, I think one of the examples is what I my team is working on. There is also public information. So, we started with like maybe a few years ago before this ai we work with all the automotive partners, a different automotive partner. And specifically, we had one partner, BMW we work with BMW to help them build their ai voice assistant. And then basically, our department has led that digital transformation of our voice technology in the automotive space. And that also got expanded into other vehicles like we work with not only non-automotive partners, but that led by other teams in other organizations within amazon. Now, we see adoption of the similar technology in other that sectors.

Me:

Let's proceed. What's the increasing concern around the data, privacy, and security? How does amazon approach the innovation of digital technologies while ensuring that user data is protected, and ethical considerations are met?

Interviewee:

Customer data is aa top very important critical aspect of our work in amazon as we want to earn customer trust and what I make sure your data is safe and protected. So, every employee has proper training on data privacy, how we should handle the data? How should we treat the data, whether they are confidential or personal, highly confidential, highly personal data. So, we in amazon, we do a lot of those training, and we have mechanism to mechanisms or process to make sure the software will deliver and practice. As we do in amazon are compliant to the legal requirements, legal compliance. and we also have like separate teams to just for making sure the privacy is met and privacy requirements are met. All the teams need to comply and be plugged into those processes.

Me:

Thank you. How does amazon measure the impact of digital technologies on innovation outcomes? Is there a matrix or indicator being used?

Interviewee:

Yeah, I think for every feature we release there will be metrics published to make sure we understand the teacher are working for the customer and too. So, we can also set up alarms and monitors to detect any anomalies or failures are. After we launched the product or services. To answer your question, there are a lot.

Me:

I see us Amazon expand into industries like health care and entertainment. How does the digital sector drive innovation to address unique challenges with these sectors while leveraging amazons’ digital expertise?

Interviewee:

So, for this one, I believe our digital expertise mainly focus on like internet services, the all the tech stack, the cloud we are cloud native. So, for health care and entertainment and other industries that are going through digital transformation. We are in a very good position to help them transfer, transform digitally and by adopting Italy as cloud services. For example, for help here, I believe we are trying to do tell the hell, all the video calls and all these digital transcribing, all those health care related legacy or technology can be transformed very naturally into what we are at best.

Me:

Okay. Amazon’s marketplace has enabled come to a third party sellers to thrive. How does the digital sector innovate in terms of tool, data, insights, and infrastructures to support these sellers and ensure a dynamic and competitive marketplace?

Interviewee:

That's not what I am familiar with, because that's a specific organization that I understand, but based on what I know, they have all these two cities, insights, infrastructure, they have for third party seller to make sure they have visibility into when they're selling in. But when I take it back to the privacy and competitive competitor data, I don't think you can cross share competitors’ data to us and better seller. That's part of our core value to protect the customer data. So, sellers are also our customers. So, I don't think you are Free to see what other sellers at the Top selling products, et cetera.

Me:

Next question is innovation requires a willingness to take risks and learn from failures. Can you share an instance where a digital innovation at Amazon didn't go as planned? And what did the key take away from that experience? Are there any inner secrets that you can share with us? Or what do you think about them? No, let's leave that to the next part. Just are there any instances?

Interviewee:

Yeah, I think one failure I can think was the fire phone. The Amazon built a while a few years ago, maybe a while ago. So that was a failure that we were trying to penetrate the phone type of home market, but that product was not well received. So, we are basically aborted that whole project a while ago. Their learning for the employees and before the products, for the leaders to when we in that as this type of experimentation or trying to long be launched these products, we need to make sure that's what customer wants. And instead of trying to build some of the paint beds that we take customer market. I think there are some recent failures as well, but that's AA part of the culture of Amazon individual trying to innovate. Yeah, so I think we have many will continue to see some failures coming out of some of these expansion or innovations. But I feel our companies evolving much faster and learn from failures, but not faster. In the best case. I think the main Challenge is mostly around the competition from the open-source community and the recent AI transformation. Because the, as you might know, like Microsoft has partner with open AI and Google has announced their own AI assistant. So, I think Amazon is still trying to catch in terms of the AI race. But I think we're in a good position, because this is going to be a merit of, I'm not like a sprint, but I guess that's just my view.

Me:

It is from your view, which emerging digital technologies, do you believe will play a central role in shaping the future of innovation at Amazon and across the tech industry?

Interviewee:

I think the two things, AI I think we mentioned that a lot, but it had it’s going to change the digital industry on tech industry. Everything might need to be rebuilt or build along with AI super charge with AI.

Me:

yes, it is. So lastly, someone deeply involved in the digital innovation, what would advise would you give to researchers exploring the role and impact of digital technologies in innovations as part of them examine proceeds?

Interviewee:

I think, appreciate all these crunch questions. They're great questions and deeply tied into what as an engineer in the industry. I think that the questions resonate a lot. And I believe it will be helpful to probably have more collaboration between the researchers and the in between industry like what you are doing right now like to interact with the people working on the field, right? To understand, to get gone, to go to the trend. And I think that's the that is to predict the future.

Me:

So that will conclude our interview, as I’ve been truly interesting talk to see. Different point of view is an exciting thing to the whole field. And thank you so much for your time and lawyers.

Appendix 12: Facebook's Interview Responses

me:

First, I understand your part of the Facebook corporation. Could you please introduce yourself and provide an overview of your role at Facebook emphasizing your experience with digital technologies and innovations?

Interviewee:

I'm the tech leading of Instagram ads leading the development of ad supply, which is the goal is to optimize user experience as well as like trying to drive the company's revenue.

me:

thank you so much. How does Facebook foster of culture of innovation within the digital sector and what strategies or practices has been particularly effective in encouraging employees to think creatively.

Interviewee:

This large question like, can you like make it more specific?

me:

Yes, of course, for example, when you're doing a groups project, do you suggest your entire group to just a mind storm or something like just that kind of thing that encourages their creativity.

Interviewee:

To be honest though, in fact, with different teams have different goals. I so for I’m not sure how you define innovation. I it can be like creating a new app or creating a cutting-edge technology, but it can also be like some small innovations on top of existing products. So, this can be very different team by team product by product.

me:

I understand it's quite interesting for us to look at the how different teams works among themselves.

Interviewee:

I can only speak for my own team. So here in my team, so we are an ads team trying to drive the revenue which has some so whatever changes we make are making a lot of impact. So, I the revenue impact. So, it can directly affect like how many ads a user will see and how many impressions like how many as conversion can advertise against. So, when we are making a change, we must be very cautious. And so basically for picking up innovation like we are not doing like rebuilding something all the time, but we are just making small changes. And this thing, a framework or an existing product and trying to like whenever small changes we must design very carefully, test thoroughly and make sure that it's behaving as expected instead of giving us some surprise. Here the innovation is more like a step as a very small step instead of like a having a very big breakthrough innovation in my team. So, for example, we will try different ways of showing ads to users. For example, if you want to show two ads, do we show it back-to-back or do we show it having some like post between the ads, something like that?

me:

Okay, so as our topics more around a digital technology, so I believe I could decode my question into when there's some new digital technologies appear like how would it affect your developers and team members and how do you utilize all these new stuffs? Like how you would go around it and adjust your strategies? for example, there are like more technologies regarding to the ai in the industry. I believe and what I want to ask. I am curious about how you take that into impact while you're constructing your new strategies for advertising to the users of your platform.

Interviewee:

There are a lot of applications of using the advanced ai technologies. So, for example, we are trying to use generate ai to create different ads and different say test. Like for example, if you want to and we have a say apple watch ads and we are trying to have different variations when showing it at apple watch ads for example we want to if you care about the battery life we will show we will the ads will show like long battery life for apple watch and if you are outdoor lovers, we will just advertise saying this is like waterproof. We are using ai technologies to create all these different variations of ads so that we can show what the users are interested in. They are more likely to click on ads when we are showing something their interest.

me:

Thank you so much. That's a quite interesting insight. Also, this new technology affects how your group structure is constructed, like what the change, how your teamwork like, do you focus more on one subject.

Interviewee:

so, the technology itself is not affecting like our team prioritize or what our goal we want. What's the goal we want to achieve? It's basically a tool. It's not like it's changing the team structure or changing our priorities. It's just that if there's tool out there, we just see if it can fit our needs. If so, we just use it to grow our products. If it's not, we just don't use.

me:

Thank you so much. So, I believe we can safely move on to the next question. So, Facebook advertising platform is a significant revenue source and has control over 17% market share of online advertising with google, which is like more than 90% of their revenue. How does the digital sector leverage that are insights, machine learning and targeting capabilities to innovate in at delivery? Lakers kind of invalid it at some points and like the amount of button clicked, how it helps optimize in your home seizure and stuff. Sorry, noise kind of bored questioned again.

Interviewee:

but I’m just trying to understand this. So basically, the question is about how we leverage data like you have to have data to train machine learning models and we are basically just collecting all the data we can collect from users. For example, they are engagement-based polls, their engagements with ads, their engagements with friends. we're just using all these data and trying to learn what interested in and try to categorize users into different groups so that we can like target do as targeting more efficiently. because I want to show the right ads to the right people. How do you know that? you need to like use this historical data to build like a cluster and to understand what the peoples in a certain group are and what are the characteristics and what are the ads are the best for these group of people. So, all these things you need to collect data and trim different machinery models. I do it as targeting better and, we are doing like user targeting collect data to do user targeting too.

me:

I see very interesting. I'm also curious about all these data. The thing is utilizing the air technology and compared to the previous ones that like before all these ai agents, how do you think it makes changed to your productivity like how does it starts? How do you as a team starts to use ai is it by is a decision from the top or is it started being utilized it from the day-to-day life by your colleagues and stuff? Like what started the whole ai data collecting trend.

Interviewee:

are you trying to ask like how like our daily work use data to train machine learning model or。 trying to understand what your。

me:

Let me restate my question like because we're curious about how this ai technology is utilizing your daily life and we're curious about is this thing while using ai started from the top decisions makers or is it just being utilized day to day by your teammates and stuff or is this decision made by the management level or started from the colleagues just starting to use in during their own letters?

Interviewee:

Ai is just a tool, it's not either, it's not like top down or bottom up saying our manager or our boss ask us to ask us to say you must use it’s not like that. It's just for engineers, we just find tools that can help us solve the problem. Ai technology is just some kind of tool. We're saying if I have machine learning model, it can help me some problems I just use it if I don't need a machine learning model. But using some say, statistical method or some like just rule-based method. If it can solve my problem, I would just use it. It's not like we necessarily must use it’s just that for some problems UI can help us solve it more efficiently. That's why we just choose to use ai over a lesson. Thank you.

me:

So can next question be on Facebook, ai competitiveness are evidence in features like counter recommendation and facial recognition. Could you discuss how the digital sector employees air to continually enhance user experience and engagement across Facebook ecosystem.

Interviewee:

As I said, so we collect the different sorts of data to understand user behavior, to understand user interest, to understand like also so we have the user understanding and the countenance sending. So only we have knowing like what users like, what kind of content we can connect them together. I think we touched on this before in early questions. So, we have all sorts of models to like categories users in the categories content. So, for example I have a sports content and we know this a group of users are sports fans. We just recommend this sports content to that。

me:

right until we were touched on and us virtual reality and augmented reality are gaining tractions like the apple's new thing; how does the digital sector explore innovative use cases for these technologies? Both with the core Facebook platform and through ocular products?

Interviewee:

My team doesn't directly work on any of the VR or AR products. I’m not very familiar with the like latest status or the latest technology there. So probably we can keep this one.

me:

That's all right. As the digital landscape involves, Facebook is exploring e commerce and payment solutions. How does the digital sector innovate in these areas create seamless shopping experiences, facilitates secure transaction?

Interviewee:

Also like this is another big team and basically doing like even more transactions. So we're familiar with their work either.

me:

I the sink is for a way we could reconstruct. I think it's more about how the department can push innovation. Sir, just any example case like we're curious about a new technology is being a plea is being applied to her.

Interviewee:

But there's a research department at Facebook like doing all this cutting edge, ai research and machine learning research. So, whenever they have some big breakthroughs, for example, the llama the dark language models, when they publish it, all the product teams will just try to find a use case in their own product. For example, the ads will try to see how to use it. The messenger app, the Facebook app also try to build like customize model on top of this foundation model. So, it's basically this research team are building a foundation and the product teams are doing customization on top of the is fundamental research project. So that is fundamental ml model or llama model, or the research work can be applied to product and make the product experience better to Facebook users.

me:

Thank you. And we are curious about how is the decision of the using this new for example, being made like her to side? You want to use it or is it also just something like ai models is just a tool and it can decide you want to use it or not.

Interviewee:

It depends how much impact you can make. For example, our acting leader delayed leadership doesn't care at all like what will you use it? They just care about like how much revenue you can drive. You see. It's not about like what will you use? It's about if you can solve the problem. As I said, ai is just a tool. It's all about what's your best way to solve the problem.

me:

So, it would suggest it's not something they for what you to do is just whatever you think it's the most effective at drawing the revenue as long as you give them for your outcome that is good, and they don't really care about how you do the things. Let's proceed. Could you please share examples of how? Sorry, that's the wrong question. Sorry. Diplomacy and securities have become paramount concerns. How does the digital sector at Facebook innovate in terms of safeguarding user data and ensuring transparencies were still delivering personalized experiences?

Interviewee:

We define a lot of access level for different data and only engineers that need to access those data can use. So, if you are not, your work is not directly related to the data. You are not supposing you're not going. You don't have access to those data. You don't have permission to use that.

me:

We're like moral codes were written down. These。

20:35 Interviewee:

like technology like you to use inside to do this permission control.

me:

I see. So how does Facebook measure the impact of digital technologies On innovation? Outcomes? Is there a matrix or the indicator?

Interviewee:

Again, like a different team have different metrics measured product success. for us its revenue like for messenger is about like how many users use the messenger daily or how many message sent. it's different team by team.

me:

Okay, thank you. So as Facebook developer ecosystem has contributed to the platforms expansion, how does the digital sector foster innovation through AP is tools and partnership that enables third party developers to create innovative acts and integrations. Like, for example.

Interviewee:

I just answered the last question like but why someone gave to researchers exploring role and impact of digital technologies. I think the best advice can give is that you don't like tie yourself to a particular technology, but you must adapt to the changes I you can spend years like doing product like learning some technologies, but it just developed so fast. And when you are like step out of school, what you have learned in the college may be outdated. I think the thing is like you keep the mindset that everything is changing, and you must adapt the changes very quickly. They have to like not just learning the specific knowledge or technology, but like develop a methodology framework like how you adapt to this fast-changing world. Yeah, that's the advice I can give。

Appendix 13: TikTok's Interview Responses

Me I'm going to say an introduction which includes what the data was used for and how it will be confidential.

Interviewee Sounds good. So cool. So right now, my role at tech talk or by dance is so I’m working on the tech talk e commerce in the us right now. And I am the data scientist lead and especially focusing on merchant side. So I’m responsible for the whole merchant journey starting from merchant acquisition merchant on boarding all the way to merchant growth.

Me Thank you for explaining that. So, let's go on to the next topic. How does by dance approach the integration of digital technologies to drive innovation within the organization?

Interviewee It's I would say right now it like it. So, there are two points or two directions we want to explore this. Or so first, like furfur, bike dance, further innovation is because it especially for ted talk e commerce now like it's growing super-fast in the us you see, we want to make sure.

Let's say this. We have lots of we put lots of efforts into making sure data accuracy and data safety. That's number one. That's the most important data. I would say that's the most important data expense we have is to make sure like all the data in for infra, all the data security can be secured.

Second, for digital innovation, we have a lot of on that we want to make sure all the innovation or what is digital in innovation, focusing on provider very strong support to the business need. Because like they talk right now is growing very fast take on e-commerce is growing very fast. Yes, so all the innovation is focusing on business, use cases.

We went so for this type of efforts or。

Me That's confidential as you can totally just ignore this part were flying just your general view that does not include composed. Compromising any company policy would be fine.

Interviewee We for this type of approach to better support business growth, we didn’t. it's like our method is quick try and quick fill. So, we will not think of like what's the plan for next year. any plan more than 6 months is useless. Take part now to support the business needs because it's growing so fast. And every time if we make any plan more than 6 months, so till the 6 months everything going to change, so it's literally use useless.

That's number one for all the innovations supporting some sporting the business niece or business growth, we want to make sure it's faster tried and faster fill mode. On the other hand, we pay lots of attention on some long-term digital innovations, especially like recently, we put lots of efforts on part of the resources.

So that's we put lots of efforts on that. So, there are lots of areas we are by to export within were within tech talk e commerce using algo for example, we are exploring our own gpt. Second, we are exploring with our own gpt or with chatgpt itself. Like we want to explore like how the algo two can like better to fulfil the needs for enormous need for e commerce content. So that's very important. We realize like charity but can do lots of things, for example, provide educational content to sellers or to creators.

For example, we can in enormously create short video contents using GPT for example, for live streaming e commerce perspective, we try to explore any opportunities for ai generated content to build, for example, of the live stream scripts for creators like to make some schedules or product selections for the creators.

So, these are some typical approaches we would try. And I believe that's the second part. That's the digital innovation.

Me Thank you so much for answering our question. I believe we could safely move on to the next topic at hand, which is the innovation process. Can you please online the process that follows to identify, evaluate, and implement digital innovations?

Interviewee So for digital innovations, it's also short term and long term. I believe ii sort of answered this question in the previous one. It's so for short term.

the short chain anything can support business growth in the short term.

We're going to put efforts. And in the long term, we would try we will put lots of efforts like make sure if the area is worth is worth of our time or our efforts, for example, chatgbt or algo we can invest.

Me Is there any specific criteria you could tell us like or mentioned if it doesn't violate any policies that was used in identifying the impact and the feasibility of objecting such new technology? Are there any specific methodologies?

Interviewee  ii I don't think so. It's I don't think there's like specific methods.

Me So whether this technology is being useful to your company will be judged on the revenue or the views that get like. If you understand my question.

Interviewee We highly relied so for tech talk, e commerce and not for with by dance itself, but for tick tock e commerce, we specifically focusing on the GMV or the revenue. Yes. That's we call it more store metrics. Every like so that's the p zero matrix. We going to have several like p one metrics supporting the p zero metrics. Yes, but for p zero is GMV. we have many like regular, for example, weekly meetings for monthly meetings during this meeting. So, it's bottom up. So, we're going to select several proposals things like that. So, make making sure like the top proposal can goes to the leadership.

Me I believe this part is sufficient. Let's move on. And the next we will be user centric innovations. And how does bike dance get our user insights and feedback to guide its digital innovation initiatives?

Interviewee Everything about user is it's all aggregated data. And for example, like for example, for one single live streaming, if the live streaming has less than 250 viewers, we will have no data for that live streaming.

Me Let's proceed to next topic, which is cross functional collaborations. How does by dance it forced the collaboration across various team and department and to drive digital innovation?

Interviewee There were lots of I wouldn't say chances or lots of projects is down through cross functional a structure is like I believe every project is done though. And for example, if we want to do so take my area as an example, so I’m focusing on merchant growth and all the merchant journeys.

For us to like to successfully finish this project for let's provide a more detailed example seller on boarding. So, do I need to provide some contact information about seller on boarding?

For example, like we need to on board sellers to our platform. So that whole process is seller on boarding. They need to upload their company KYC information. We need to go through the moderation process. After that they need to upload products and make their first sales something like that. So that whole process is seller on boarding for us to making sure we have a smooth experience for sellers to on board. So, this whole process involves lots of cross functional help like for us to do this.

First, we need to align with the operational team, or we can say sales team, so sales team needs to approach all those sellers through multiple methods, for example, key now, for example message, for example, organic as we need to reach out, so we need to find efficient way to reach out.

Yes. And then we also need to align with the product team so that we have like a smooth product experience for sellers like but how we reach out like by which method is more efficient. Once they are interested how we can further approach once they are trying to upload their company information like where they can upload that information, how we can make sure that information is securely stored in the system, all those kinds of kind of things we need the product team to build a smooth product to support that. We also need the moderation team or the compliance team to making sure we are doing our job so that we are not on boarding risky cellars or risky sellers because we need to make sure like the shopper can protect their benefits on our platform. Yes.

We need to make sure like for example, there's also like third party Team which is you can imagine like when they are trying to on board and provide your company information like we want to find a third-party API way so that they can click one button and then everything can show up on our system. So then we also need to align with the third party us teem so that they have a very easy and smooth way to provide their information and provide their products and provide their inventories something like that.

This is only one example, but I can guarantee 90% of the projects we need to align with multiple teams and use this across functional structure process that the process that project。

Me

It is a lot of cross functional collaboration happening. Is there any specific digital innovation that occurred because such requirements? Are there any examples you could provide us or? Cool.

Interviewee Another example I can share is that like by dance is called it has a nickname in China which is app factory. We so at Bydance of where were they talk? We are all the digital tools are invented by us. We are seldom they use a third-party tool. For example, we didn't use zoom, we didn't use slack. All the tools are in internally built nice. Everything, for example, like for further operating system, we r working on. With the lark system. For all the data, for example, dashboard or database, it's down through illness a system so that's also built by death itself.

Looks so my.is for all those digital in innovation like every method or every idea is that we want to make sure we build it from the very bottom by ourselves. In this way, we can constantly make iterations for our products, data products specifically.

Second, most importantly, we can make sure there's no third party involved so that the data security issue can greatly be protected nice.

Me It's good to hear very interesting that but much manpower must be investment in such a development I assume.

Interviewee I believe bydance is very good at it. That's why we are called the app factory. Yeah. Yes, you will be with us. We have lark. We have our own email system, something like that. Everything is built by me us.

Me Thank you for answering. We can proceed to our next topic at hand. It's just a data driven decision making. Yes, how does button leverage data analysis?

Interviewee I balance we're tech talk e commerce this may be is due to like right now we are we are still at the very early stage and the company is growing super-fast. Everybody needs the data inputs because we need like in a very fast-growing environment, we need to find the directions. I believe that's one of the major reasons. The data team is playing a very, very key role in t top e commerce now. Previously I worked for amazon.

At amazon I feel like there's so ii learned a lot from my amazon experience, but ii have a strong feeling like so myself as a data scientist at amazon, I’m just an employee over there focusing on my stuff. So that ceiling is very strong like iii can make for like the work assigned to me. I can make sure it's done and that's fine. But at tick talk, since the data team has the data and therefore, we have the insights, we are ii wouldn't say we are expected, but we have the scope to drive the whole process for the entire project.

For example, for seller on boarding or seller growth and the data scientists lead, therefore I can be the lead for the entire project. I can escalate and get the help from office team. I can ask it and get the help from product team. But since ii have the data and insights, so I’m the person who strives the direction of the projects.

Me I can feel you are very passion and your love for you and now compared to it before.

Interviewee Very excited about like ii joined to talk since last November. Nice. It's less than 1 year, but feels like 3 years, but I’m still like very excited about like the pace and the scope.

Me Different company cultures have different effects on people, I assume. Yes. Could you please give examples if possible and what scenarios are you where data analysis influence the development of a new digital solution or product features. Is there any example we could give? If it doesn't breach anything. I miss you。

Interviewee Like there are accomplished like examples for example for seller acquisition. First our acquisition, we are a as a data team, we have all the data as we can see the trend furfur on boarding on for actors, for specific for acquisition.

We know so we are responsible for any we are responsible to determine the ok are for the top team like which channel like so every quarter we need to a have an estimation for their goal. Like in this quarter, you need to acquire how many merchants using which channel like because we have the data in the past. We going to do the predictions for them. They will rely on this. I can provide another example like for us to better support sellers to grow at a talk, we are doing lots of seller grouping method. All the saddle grouping method are risk is data team's responsibility. We are responsible or we oversee how to differentiate sellers, how we can define like some popular seller growth, roots, or path so that they can grow at a talk.

We are also in charge of making the GMV tier or the seller tier based on their GMV level so that we can analysed and provide insights based on these different tiers like for smaller type of cellars. What's their strategy for mid-tier sellers? What's their strategy and how they can go from the lower tier to upper office a strategy decision. We are highly involved. I shouldn't say highly involved. We're in charge of that own ice. Yes.

Me How does by to ensure that its digital innovation initiatives, a line with organizations or right, sorry, a ranking story, business objectives and long-term strategy.

Interviewee So like but so that also depends on like two directions. First, for long term investments, for example, algo like that's if that's your one, like every everybody knows that like it needs long term investments. It's already determined. And so there will not be any short-term outcome or measurement for that. As a big companies, for example, for talk of an amazon for google like these areas, what long term investment you need to make in order to compete with others and making sure you can catch up with others and especially for furfur tiptop itself.

Me You have provided more than enough information for me already sounds good. So it sounds good. One sounds good. And so I like to let you know again, thank you so much for joining us for today's team interview. And the purpose will be only to collect data for my graduate dissertation and the data will be summarized into key points and the details will not be this close to any anyone except for my tutor. It will be completely anonymous and no personal detail or information which may cause suspicion of identity will be published at all. Nothing will occur in money.