How to run an infinite game with limited resources

This article starts with the example of Internet enterprise transformation, analyzes how to build your own infinite game with limited resources from the aspects of finding resource depressions, establishing cooperation mechanisms, and ensuring stable operation. It is recommended for those who want to leverage the power of others to maximize co-creation.

I have a friend who works in an Internet company. In order to explore the second revenue curve, they started to try physical fast-moving consumer goods and blind box business. It was their first time to transform from online to physical. The imagination was beautiful, but when it came to the actual implementation, they were dumbfounded and faced many difficulties.

First of all, their team resources were insufficient, with only one visual designer, and he had previously worked on traditional UI and had no experience in blind box character design.

Secondly, their promotion funds are extremely limited and cannot support the purchase of resources with good exposure effects.

Most importantly, the boss is in a hurry and wants to see income within 3 months.

What would you do in this situation? Quickly hire someone to fulfill your boss's mission? Or communicate with your boss, manage his expectations, and try to get more time?

Answer: NO!

Not only did my friend not hire any new people, he also guaranteed to go online in March, and he made a profit right from the start.

How did he do it?

01 Traditional thinking

In our traditional thinking, we should do as much work as the resources given .

One A produces one N. If you want to produce 2N, you need to increase it to two A's.

Therefore, we often see a scenario in the company where things progress slowly or are not done well, and employees will complain: It’s all because xx resources were not provided!

But at this time, will the boss think that his decision was wrong?

Of course not. He would just respond bluntly: With so many resources, everyone can do it. Otherwise, what’s the point of having you?

So, for friends, the question is, how can we do more with limited resources?

Faced with such a situation, I believe most people would simply give up, thinking that this is simply impossible to achieve.

But is it really like that?

My friend did it, and his answer was - to use a bigger lever .

He told me the secret, which is to leverage the power of others to maximize co-creation. The key is to find resource depressions, establish mechanisms to introduce partners, and ensure stable operation .

So how did he do it? Let's take a look.

02 Identify resource gaps

If you want to leverage resources, the most important thing is to first sort out the entire business process and find the links that are resource-rich .

What does it mean?

To put it simply, it means from the starting point to the end point of a business, try to sort out each process in detail and find where resources are insufficient or missing.

Let's take the case of a friend as an example. His key points are to find resource depressions, establish mechanisms to introduce partners, and ensure stable operation. Then let's see where his resource depression is for making blind boxes. A blind box is divided into three stages from having an idea to designing and then selling.

The initial stage of establishing a plan starts from having an idea, to starting visual design, and then to internally finalizing the plan.

The mid-term physical implementation stage starts from making molds in the factory, to continuously optimizing the physical product, and then to scaling up mass production.

The later promotion and sales stage is from market promotion to sales.

Following this line of thought, my friend discovered resource gaps in several areas:

First, user preference

During the plan establishment stage, since the designer previously worked on traditional UI, he was not sure about the user's preferences. However, this is a very critical area. If the design is not good, all will fail.

The second is promotion costs

During the promotion and sales stage, the promotion funds are very limited, and resources with good exposure effects cannot be purchased. At the same time, it is also very important to choose which product to promote.

Now that we know where the problem is, how can we solve it? Don’t worry, let’s continue.

03 Establish a cooperation mechanism

His solution is simple to say, the core point is: establish a cooperation mechanism and introduce more roles.

As mentioned above, when my friend was in the stage of establishing the plan and faced the problem of lack of design resources, he was thinking, apart from recruiting people, where can he find these "professional" people?

So he thought of gathering places for enthusiasts like Douban and Tieba. The more he thought about it, the more excited he became. That evening, he launched a design incentive competition, allowing everyone to DIY design their favorite characters or dolls.

Those who are selected can receive certificates, cash and other incentives. It is said that there were hundreds of submissions at the time, and my friend was very excited to receive these materials.

This problem has been solved, but the promotion budget is still insufficient. How can we

How to expose more works?

His approach was very pleasing.

First, let enthusiasts vote for their favorite designs. Retweeting can gain more voting rights. Relying on these users' reposts, they can gain greater exposure and attention, and also screen out products that may become popular.

Then, he invested in promoting products based on the winning products in user votes, and this approach really brought a lot of attention.

What enlightenment can we gain from his series of actions?

Although we do not have the resources to add more designers or increase promotion expenses, we can use the mechanism to bring in more roles to make up for our own capacity gap.

Through the cooperation mechanism, we can find people who can "help" us in a single link, and implement them as single points. When the scale is large enough, a line will be formed.

When various characters continue to pour in, the lines are connected, and finally so many characters, operating through the mechanism, form a surface .

04 Ensure stable operation

After applying the above model and finding it effective, in order to ensure stable operation, we began to build mechanisms from the individual to the individual to ensure healthy operation.

It is mainly implemented from three aspects: threshold, responsibility and motivation :

In terms of threshold , previously active users have already taken action, and by limiting the threshold, capable people can be identified.

In terms of responsibilities , what you need to do after joining the organization will be divided into different levels according to your abilities. Users of different levels will have different responsibilities, such as how many times you need to submit articles a week at least, or what quality standards your submissions must meet.

In terms of motivation , users are rewarded for their efforts, such as bonuses or honorary titles. Here, the honor should preferably be related to the interest itself, rather than hard currency. For example, a fan may not be interested in money, but he may be interested in the autograph of a star.

Based on such a stable system, we have a group of stable "employees". However, employees alone are not enough. If we want to make resources flow, we must let good money drive out bad money.

This involves promotion and elimination. Only after meeting the requirements of the previous level can one be promoted. At the same time, those who fail to meet the requirements of this level will be continuously eliminated.

In addition to elimination, you need to build up a reservoir for yourself, allow some new players to join, and formulate some identities with low thresholds and simple operations to take over, such as internship identities.

By constantly having new players join, unqualified people are eliminated and those with potential are promoted. In this mechanism, suitable people are constantly screened out.

It can be seen that his sound user system ensures the stable operation of the business.

05 Last

What have we learned from the above cases?

To summarize two points:

1. Introducing partners

It is normal to have resource depression when doing something. The conventional idea is that the resources belong to me. A better way is that the resources may not belong to me, but I should use them. Establish a mechanism to introduce more roles to join.

2. Users may also be partners

Traditional thinking holds that the relationship between users and platforms is relatively simple, a buying and selling or transaction relationship. We can try to break through the wall in the middle. In fact, users can help us a lot.

Summary of the model : find resource gaps -> establish mechanisms to bring in partners -> ensure healthy operation.

Partners are sometimes not so obvious or visible to us at first glance, but can be dug out from the crowd through mechanisms.

This reminds me of a friend of mine who runs an office rental business and earns several million in profit every year. With such profits, you might think he should be very busy, right?

Not only is he not busy, he doesn't even have an office, let alone employees. You must be curious about why he seems to be so unmotivated in his career, but his business is still doing so well. This is what he said.

The essence of the office rental business is information asymmetry. On the one hand, one has to take on clients who need to find a house, and on the other hand, one has to understand the situation of available offices. However, it is difficult for one person alone to complete the entire chain well.

So, this is what he did. On the one hand, he continued to train "little brothers" to help him understand the situation of available offices and synchronize new results to him every day.

On the other hand, he continued to get to know bosses' resources and obtain customer sources. When he got to know more people in this circle, many bosses would recommend other bosses to him, and these people were his potential customers.

Therefore, he only needs to get to know some people every day to increase his own enhancement loop, generate trading profits in the end, and then share the profits with various characters.

In other words, the more bosses he knows, the better his business will be and the more profits he will generate. The more profits everyone makes, the more "little brothers" he will have to work with him, turning his limited resources into an infinite game.

So, please also think about how we can build our own infinite game with limited resources?

Author: Yangy

Source: WeChat public account "Sister Yang talks about operations (ID: Yangy_Baby123)"