五根電線桿戰術 X 三段曲線佈局! 沈尚弘為何能帶大亞電纜超前轉型?

五根電線桿戰術 X 三段曲線佈局! 沈尚弘為何能帶大亞電纜超前轉型?

The process of a company exploring its second curve is not always successful This plan went on for about ten years Finally we had to face the painful truth that it probably couldn’t continue We had to shut it down Looking at it from the perspective of energy transmission our business development opportunities gave rise to many many opportunities The early introduction of the independent director system to review our thinking and our strategy However no matter how supportive the board is you ultimately have to deliver results to further convince the board that this direction is correct For a business to go from A to B the journey can be quite long But if you break down the journey from A to B into many segments like the distance of five utility poles you’ll find that before you know it you’ve gone from A to B Hello everyone Welcome to Pacemakers I’m your host Tu Feng-en On Pacemakers we invite the leaders of Taiwan’s top enterprises to share their untold stories and from their decisions we learn the wisdom to break through challenges In 1995 when Taiwan’s economy was just taking off Taiwan’s electricity supply was also developing slowly There were two brothers Shen Ta-chih and Shen Chin-cheng They opened a small factory in Tainan called Ta-Yeh Industrial Factory Seventy years have passed Through the efforts of the two brothers that small factory from back then has now become a large enterprise Ta-Yeh is now Taiwan’s leading enterprise in the wire and cable industry And that’s not all In recent years they have also expanded into different industries including solar energy biomedicine cybersecurity and so on Behind these changes there is an important key figure who is the second generation of Ta-Yeh the current chairman Chairman Shen Shang-hong Today we have invited Chairman Shen Shang-hong to Pacemakers to talk with us about how at the young age of forty he took on the heavy responsibility of being Ta-Yeh’s chairman and has led Ta-Yeh to continuously break through barriers and carved out his role as a leader of Taiwan’s traditional industries as a pacemaker Welcome Chairman Shen Hello viewers I am Shen Shang-hong Chairman of the Ta-Yeh Group Hello Feng-en Chairman today we are going to talk about the many things you have done at Ta-Yeh I have a figure here Ta-Yeh’s revenue when you took over twenty years ago in 2003 was 6 7 billion By 2023 it had reached 26 4 billion This year is the company’s 70th anniversary and it’s expected to exceed 30 billion Everyone will surely ask How did you do it Of course it’s the collective effort of all our colleagues Over these decades the company has been thinking about how a business can accept challenges and how to continue to grow Of course we have some of our own ideas some attempts and the mistakes we made I’ll have a chance to share with everyone later in more detail Of course As I mentioned earlier when you took over as chairman you were around forty years old That’s really young Taking over at that time what did it feel like When I was about twenty-six I went to study in the U S at twenty-four after graduating from university in Taiwan Then I worked at AT&T for four years In 1988 I remember when I was thirty my father called me and said the company was going public that year and there were many new tasks Perhaps he had no experience with them in the past and didn’t quite know how to handle them and that it was time for me to come back and help So I quit my job in the U S and returned to Taiwan I was thirty that year I didn’t expect that at forty I would take over as general manager Of course from a timeline perspective it was a bit premature But my late father a few years after I returned his health began to decline
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In 1998 the year I turned forty he passed away So you could say that I wasn’t completely prepared when I had to take on this responsibility In the first ten years after I came back I was mostly doing these things that I thought should be done but hadn’t been done But after taking over as the company’s general manager the company’s development at that time was mostly still focused on the wire and cable industry At that time the wire and cable industry still had a lot of room for development So relatively speaking although the succession was a bit rushed this business for me was a relatively familiar one You could say I grew up in the factory So I didn’t particularly think about what the challenges were I just focused on what the company was doing at the time moving towards cables towards higher value-added products developing in that direction and moving towards internationalization So from making low-voltage cables high-voltage cables extra-high-voltage cables ultra-high-voltage cables these products with higher technical levels were constantly being developed But Taiwan’s power system only goes up to a maximum of 345 000 volts In the early 2000s we had already completed the development of this product and successfully obtained the supply qualification from Taipower So moving further up this product had no room for technological breakthroughs It’s not like TSMC where we talk about going from 0 25 0 18 7nm 5nm 3nm 2nm and even talking about the world of angstroms There are still many technologies to break through and room for technological development But for the wire and cable industry technological breakthroughs seemed to have reached a bottleneck So at that time I particularly felt that the old shell of the cable business could it still carry the company forward for another five ten twenty or thirty years I couldn’t help but I think just like all of Taiwan’s traditional industries we had to ask what is our next step Where is our next growth driver What exactly is our next shell This is what we especially want to talk to you about today Because as you mentioned Ta-Yeh has a second curve and even a third curve Let’s talk about the second curve first You just mentioned that 2008 was a very important turning point for Ta-Yeh So how would you describe the new changes at that time or the emergence of new strategies I think in 2008 everyone knows about the Lehman Brothers incident that year That year Ta-Yeh lost a lot of money I remember I joined the company in 1988 and by that year it had been about twenty-something years Up until this year the company’s 70th anniversary in my thirty-eight years of service at Ta-Yeh I’ve probably only experienced three loss-making years One of those loss-making years was in 2008 That year because our main raw material copper dropped from about 10 000 to just over 2 000 So in terms of inventory we had a very large write-down loss We also suffered considerable losses in foreign exchange Coincidentally I must mention around 2010 or 2011 I attended the Global Entrepreneur Program at National Taiwan University This is a program between NTU and Peking University It has a total of four modules at Peking University NTU the University of Oxford in the UK and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in the U S During the course I took a class by Professor Lee Ji-ren He was talking about growth strategies This was the first time I systematically thought about the company having this urgent need for growth and that we needed a more systematic mechanism for growth and transformation So I invited Professor Lee Ji-ren to come from Taipei to Tainan to teach our colleagues I remember he taught several classes because we have many colleagues I was thinking that within the company I couldn’t be the only one urgently feeling the need for change the need to find another shell It should be the mid-to-senior level managers of the company who share a common consensus with me knowing which direction we should go and working together I think this probably initiated starting from around 2011 a more systematic exploration of how to transform again Many people want to transform Many companies especially in traditional industries do want to transform So I’m a bit curious in this process of exploring the second curve what do you think was the most difficult part the most challenging The most difficult part is of course finding a suitable new product And this new product must have a market it must have prospects More importantly we must have the ability to make it This ability includes technical capability and we also need financial capability to support this path of exploration So this path of ours simply put the second curve is usually related to taking stock of our existing core competencies So we tried to ask what exactly are our core competencies Is it the ability to process metals Or is it the ability to handle the fluctuations of futures markets Well simply put of course it’s all related to metals So our initial exploration for the second curve naturally started from the perspective of metals Since we are in the copper business related to wires and cables is there non-wire-and-cable related copper We can make copper alloys We’ve tried things like making copper balls for PCB electroplating and later new technologies like copper oxide powder also for PCB electroplating as well as copper wires used for semiconductor packaging and bonding to replace gold wires or palladium-coated copper wires These are all somewhat related to our core competencies But I can tell you some of these attempts were successful At least we are still doing them now and it looks okay But some were also very painful experiences We kept going until we found we couldn’t go on Are there any examples you can share with us I can tell you for example our venture into bonding wires for semiconductors was not a very successful example I also encouraged colleagues to go down that path It also seemed like a very reasonable second curve because at that time gold was very expensive and copper could be used to replace gold wires for semiconductor bonding wires You know Taiwan is a major hub for semiconductor packaging It seemed the market was here We kept going with this plan for about ten years Finally we had to face the painful truth and make a decision that we probably couldn’t continue We had to shut it down So I must say that in a company’s process of exploring a second curve it won’t always be successful There will definitely be setbacks There will definitely be failures But I think the key is how you view this setback how you view this failure and whether these experiences will stop the company from continuing to make the necessary efforts to open another second curve And whether your board of directors is willing to support you in doing these things I think these are all some of the lessons learned from moving towards the second curve This is also what I want to ask you more about The concept of the second curve everyone is talking about it But many companies seem unable to do it From your own observation what difficulties might they be encountering Or from the experience of your success what advice would you give them Actually pursuing a second curve is like starting a business That’s like us asking now why do startups fail There are many reasons why a startup might fail Maybe you chose the wrong product the wrong market or your board of directors doesn’t support you I think there are all kinds of reasons Another possible reason I think is that for many companies if they have the opportunity to try a second curve it’s usually because their original business is doing very well and is quite successful When a business is already very successful they might be more conservative about failure So how to view failure I think is a very important key Think about it why is a company’s ability to tolerate failure or its intolerance for failure is mostly because the company might be starting to feel the pinch in its first curve The generation of financial resources can no longer support making more mistakes So for a company to explore a second curve it must start early You must be doing well in the first curve when the company has good financial resources to start exploring You have to ask where the future lies This is actually what I wanted to ask next We’ve been talking about the second curve But I also mentioned at the beginning what’s interesting about Ta-Yeh is you also have a third curve at the same time Did these two start around the same time More or less This idea is very interesting But strategically they can also be complementary Let me first talk about our second curve So our second curve as I mentioned earlier was initially geared towards the direction of metals There were some successes and some failures But it didn’t seem to lead to a very large scale Later my colleagues began to rethink how we could pursue a second curve how to pursue a business suitable for our development You see we make cables If you ask what making cables is what is making cables It’s like asking in the past what is making cosmetics Making cables is actually about energy transmission Isn’t it If it’s about energy transmission does it have to be cables If we define our business as energy transmission then there is also wireless energy transmission Looking at it from the perspective of energy transmission our business development opportunities gave rise to many many opportunities We make bubble wrap which is about energy conversion Whether it’s the conversion of kinetic energy sound energy electrical energy or light energy the opportunities for energy conversion are numerous This has invisibly broadened our world broadened it a lot We are no longer looking at it from the perspective of metals to explore the space where our business can develop So what other opportunities are there in the world of energy You see moving upstream energy must first be generated That is power generation Downstream is energy storage and management So naturally we redefined from this definition from this scope of business we redefined Ta-Yeh as a leading brand in energy connection In the context of Taiwan it is relatively new and there are relatively fewer competitors This is an environment that can be entered early And in its business model it has relatively lower risk Because its customer is not selling to Taipower selling green power to Taipower selling solar power to Taipower or selling to some of the major domestic companies like TSMC and large semiconductor manufacturers and the large ICT electronics industry These have relatively lower risks This lower risk provides us with the opportunity to try again the future third curve But as you just mentioned this third curve is even more different From many external observations it might seem that Ta-Yeh why would they venture into something that seems to be quite far from their original core business So first tell us how you think about this third curve First of all I have to say why think about a third curve This is related to how we classify assets is related So you could also say that the second curve might support us for the next five ten or twenty years Then the third curve might have to look towards the more distant future twenty years from now thirty years from now the opportunities that might arise from the third curve are which ones It’s about laying out for the longer term horizon Of course the third curve the second curve and our original business are after all related to energy which is more although we still need to acquire some necessary technical capabilities to do these things but after all with our business the distance is relatively short The distance from our existing business is shorter But when it comes to the third curve as you just mentioned whether it’s biotech new drug development AI or drone defense systems compared to what we do now with cables and in the energy field they are worlds apart So we must have another set of different methods to pursue the third curve to pursue the third curve How do you decide on these Because in the third curve Ta-Yeh mostly adopts an investment approach That’s my understanding How do you decide which businesses to invest in Remember everyone was talking about Taiwan must move from contract manufacturing to high value-added industries All industries need to transform At that time I was thinking what are Taiwan’s very unique assets I believe Taiwan’s brainpower Taiwan’s IP is a very unique asset Taiwan should have a very rich pool of scientists researchers compared to other researchers and scientists in the world they should not be inferior But Taiwan’s cost compared to the United States should be very different So in the future how to let these industries with brainpower and IP because with IP with brainpower with wisdom that is the future And it must have a global market Today we see TSMC why it’s so successful because it’s a global market Its market is definitely not for Taiwan Today we are doing new drug development we are doing biotechnology we are doing cybersecurity we are doing semiconductor packaging and so on These are all global markets So the third curve is more interesting The third curve looks forward looks at human society and which industries in this world have future potential and prospects So it’s even more necessary to break away from Ta-Yeh’s original field and think from a more macroscopic perspective You just mentioned the second curve is mostly still closely related to the core business The third curve is really if we think about it from the perspective of human civilization and industrial development then it’s not necessarily related to the core business So its risk is higher But what we are pursuing is a high-risk high-reward concept But I’m a bit curious when you are thinking about the second curve and the third curve how do you allocate between the two including resource allocation That’s a very interesting question As I just mentioned because the second curve is relatively low-risk and a high cash flow industry We from this low-risk high cash flow and what we are doing now the wire and cable industry the cash flow generated from it we have to decide how to do asset allocation Right Look at the cash flow Ta-Yeh can generate A portion of it we have to put into keeping our wire and cable industry competitive Then we have to put a portion of our resources into solar energy into energy storage these relatively high-asset industries But although they are high-asset they are low-risk and will generate a lot of cash flow We put it into the third curve these investments in the future are very high-risk Your investment might be a one-way street It won’t necessarily be successful It won’t necessarily be successful So how to decide the cash flow you generate yourself and some allocation principles I think this is more detailed Especially with the third curve I’m a bit curious For example in internal company discussions will there be doubts or different opinions Because this is after all relatively more distant or as you just said the risk is higher and you might not see immediate returns How do you convince everyone that this is the direction we should strive for For this I must thank and also thank our elders When I took over as chairman in 2003 after I took over as chairman our old chairman who is also my uncle he was actually very hands-off He let me lead the board of directors to decide the future direction of the company This of course was a series of explorations with successes and failures in between To be able to convince the board to say we put our assets into the third curve into the second curve of course it requires some persuasion But I must also thank our board of directors for their support Our board of directors is quite united Our brothers Additionally before the Financial Supervisory Commission required it to introduce the independent director system we ourselves proactively introduced the independent director system to review our thinking and our strategy to see if our thinking and strategy are correct But no matter how supportive the board is you ultimately have to deliver results Only by letting the results can you further convince the board that this direction is correct and it’s easier to get the resources needed to continue executing these strategies So I think it’s still about at the beginning whether the board will support you you’re also half-believing half-doubting This is based on judgment based on your past track record But whether a strategy can continue to be executed ultimately you still have to deliver results But this board how much patience will it have to wait for you to deliver the results In this aspect I think we are also very fortunate to have a very understanding and supportive board In fact the support of the board is very important for the stable development of the company I think the board itself also needs to have such a long-term vision to know that these decisions are actually to invest in a better future So I’m a bit curious how would you describe your own decision-making style Because we just talked about actually the second curve and the third curve are for balancing One is relatively risk-free you could say conservative but also more stable The other is quite bold stepping out Which one do you think you lean towards Good question Since I started working in the U S to later becoming chairman until today it’s been almost forty years During this time my leadership style has definitely been changing From starting as a front-line manager I might have been quite detail-oriented leading by example to slowly planning projects and leading colleagues to execute them to slowly later on it became more about being able to think about the future direction and strategy of the company Today it’s more like a helmsman But as a helmsman if you say you want to go here why should everyone listen to you Right In this process you must use persuasion to make everyone believe and be willing to move forward in the same direction together Some people say a leader is actually like a missionary Especially a business leader is indeed like as you said you need to constantly communicate internally and persuade Do you have any secrets you can share with everyone about persuading those around you whether it’s the board of directors or such a large team of employees How do you usually do it There are no secrets But there must be some logic to things Why do we do the logic of these things If you can see this logic you must be able to articulate it to let colleagues and directors agree to be convinced and to follow is very important There are no secrets This has to be accumulated slowly through experience I can’t really describe in my forty-year career what things have shaped my influence and my views But the little things that have happened in the past including my previous work experience in the U S including the books I’ve read and my family’s upbringing have all influenced me bit by bit and indeed they have influenced me Let’s change the topic then and talk about your personal experience Because this show is called Pacemakers This is something that the audience might not know but if you ride a bike you must have heard this term As far as I know you also have a habit of cycling When did you start this habit I was probably about fifty Before I was fifty I actually didn’t pay much attention to exercise I was also very busy But after my fiftieth birthday I remember telling myself Wow you’re already fifty If you don’t take good care of your body if you don’t exercise properly your physical strength will decline very quickly So actually when I started exercising the initial motivation was just to maintain my physical strength and slow down the rate of decline I wanted to continue fighting in the workplace and I needed better physical strength In different interviews I’ve seen you mention a five-utility-pole theory Can you explain it to us again What is five utility poles Let me give a simple example For example riding from the National Palace Museum to Fengguizui riding from the National Palace Museum to Pingdengli to Lengshuikeng is all uphill For a man in his fifties to ride a bicycle uphill at that time I was also quite heavy about eighty-something kilograms To carry my own eighty-something kilograms of weight to ride a bicycle to Lengshuikeng is not an easy task The most painful part is actually when going uphill So I always tell myself grit your teeth and ride slowly My goal is just to ride five utility poles first After riding five utility poles I’ve probably ridden fifty or sixty kilometers seventy or eighty kilometers of uphill road Another five utility poles another five utility poles like this slowly I eventually rode to Lengshuikeng So actually this is a way to help myself get through difficult times a way to encourage myself So I call it the five-utility-pole theory Every time just focus on the goal of the distance of five utility poles It’s a concept of thinking big but starting small Do you share this experience with your colleagues in the company Of course Actually the five utility poles I found that in our business it has a great correlation For a company to go from A to B the journey can be quite long But if you divide the journey from A to B into many segments of five utility poles you will find that five utility poles five utility poles slowly walking like this we will unknowingly go from A to B So whether we are doing like the development of ultra-high-voltage cables from 25KV to 69KV to 161KV to 345,000 volts from we do solar rooftop type slowly to ground-mounted type slowly to fishery and electricity symbiosis that is if we say at the beginning our goal is to set we want to do 500Mega solar project colleagues will definitely feel it’s too far away not sure if they can get there But if we are we now want to reach 50Mega this year next year to 100Mega slowly walking slowly walking I find that we are more likely to persist and more likely to celebrate our own small achievements in the middle eventually we will reach the goal This sounds like a very inspiring realization that is with this kind of more feasible goal and continuous progress in the end maybe you can achieve a originally unexpected goal that surpasses yourself Let’s talk about another one I’m particularly interested in maybe it’s our common interest I see you also like to read history What kind of history do you like I actually read all kinds of history The inspiration from history I have to say in particular when I was a child I remember you probably don’t know your age is probably very different from mine From the youngest age I read Oriental Publishing House’s Xue Dingshan’s Conquest of the West Xue Rengui’s Conquest of the East Luo Tong Sweeps the North I still remember the names all the way to when I was in college our freshman Chinese teacher he assigned us to write a book report What did he assign It was Bo Yang’s Zizhi Tongjian from a chronological history to a narrative history but he only wanted us to write about the Sui and Tang dynasties From then on I became very interested in history Chinese history Japanese history Western history in the same era in this place what was being done what happened in another corner of the world what happened By reading history we transcend time and space You can go back to BC you can go to modern times You can be in Asia in Taiwan you can be in Europe It’s about transcending the limitations of time and space to learn what paths humanity has taken what things have been done and what results have been seen We should invite you to help the major history departments in Taiwan to rally support I’m a bit curious for you reading history is it just a hobby or does it have any inspiration for running a business or business For running a business more or less because business is in a larger environment Let me give a simple example I’ve also mentioned before like Western history I read the former chairman of CNN’s probably Walter Isaacson he wrote many biographies of famous people Among them he wrote a book about American think tanks called American Elites It describes from before World War II until about a decade or two ago the influence of American think tanks on foreign policy Especially it talks about a certain diplomat’s observation and evolution of the relationship between the U S and the Soviet Union My feeling is why didn’t the United States learn from these think tanks the U S ‘s relationship with the Soviet Union and later the U S ‘s relationship with China it can be said that it was the same mistake repeated all over again So this further confirms my belief that by reading history we can we don’t have to experience many things firsthand We can understand what has happened to humanity and even to some extent it can help us predict how things will develop Does this have anything to do with business judgment I think it probably does Because we are after all operating in a larger environment Actually as you said earlier I think what you’re saying is very persuasive because in Ta-Yeh’s third curve development many times it’s not just a simple business consideration There is an observation of the major trends of the times And as a historian I do feel that studying history can help us have a longer-term perspective on such trends of the times So back to Ta-Yeh it’s been seventy years it’s a not-so-short history Looking to the future in which direction do you hope Ta-Yeh will go Which direction it will go is probably not my homework anymore But what I must leave for Ta-Yeh I must leave a good corporate culture for Ta-Yeh I must leave sound financial resources for Ta-Yeh The soul can be immortal the shell cannot be immortal In the future this world will continue to change Now we are doing energy connection we have explored many third curves we have made many investments in biotech and pharmaceuticals In the future these investments can they grow into another shell What kind of shell I don’t know But I must make sure that for this organization to continue to move forward we must have a good corporate culture we must have good financial resources sound financial resources Only then will this company have the ability to continuously explore what the next shell will be So if at the end of the show you were to give some advice to young people who want to join Ta-Yeh or this industry what advice would you give them I understand our company very well We are not TSMC We are not a high-tech industry So it’s hard for us to attract NTU Tsing Hua NCKU these outstanding students Our colleagues may not be the most outstanding but I believe they are the best We believe we only find the most suitable for Ta-Yeh colleagues who are willing to grow with Ta-Yeh We must give these colleagues opportunities to let them grow at Ta-Yeh help Ta-Yeh grow and grow within Ta-Yeh and also help Ta-Yeh grow I must tell you my boss when I worked in the U S told me Mr Shen you are responsible for your own educational development What do you want to learn What classes do you want to take You tell me and I will give you the resources I think the company’s view on talent is the same Today at Ta-Yeh people who come to Ta-Yeh to study and work study part-time finish their undergraduate degrees finish their master’s degrees and finish their doctorates There are many who have completed their EMBAs doing EMBAs But I must tell you all of these are paid for by Ta-Yeh Our investment in education and talent cultivation is something we take very seriously We are willing to invest in cultivating talent that grows within Ta-Yeh and can also help Ta-Yeh grow So if this you feel meets your needs you feel you can grow within Ta-Yeh you can help Ta-Yeh grow we are very welcoming to join the Ta-Yeh family Thank you very much today Chairman Shen Shang-hong for sharing with us the very rich history of Ta-Yeh over the past seventy years especially in recent times through the second curve and third curve there have been many new developments We can also tell that the development over the past twenty years is not accidental but through very careful step-by-step strategic investments and explorations to achieve such wonderful results today Once again thank you Chairman Shen Shang-hong Thank you And thank you everyone for watching today’s Pacemakers I am Tu Feng-en See you next time From Ta-Yeh’s story we see a company challenging itself and breaking through While many were still hesitating about whether to start a second curve they had already invested in the creation of a third curve While growing steadily they were also willing to challenge risks and enter unfamiliar territories As a team leader Chairman Shen Shang-hong fully demonstrated the spirit of a pacemaker When the company was striving to transform he stood at the front of the team opening up new fields and finding new directions carving out a brand new track It is this strategy and spirit that have allowed them to continuously thrive and grow even after 70 years of business It is this strategy and spirit that have allowed them to continuously thrive and grow even after 70 years of business

在本集「破風者」對談中，我們邀請到 大亞電纜董事長沈尚弘先生。他以「五根電線桿」作為象徵，講述大亞從主業電線電纜轉型，一步跨越到 能源串接產業 的過程。他談及企業如何 提早開啟第二成長曲線，並同步布局 第三成長曲線 作為長線戰略，以低風險高現金流支撐高風險高報酬的創新投資策略。這段訪談深入剖析企業轉型的關鍵思維與實務經驗，極具啟發性。

#大亞電纜
#沈尚弘
#第二成長曲線
#第三成長曲線
#五根電線桿
#傳產轉型
#能源串接
#企業轉型策略
#傳產創新
#轉型成功案例

00:00 Intro 精采預告
02:53 轉型的放手與承擔
15:12 構思第二與第三曲線
23:14 決策風格和「五根電線桿」信念
32:29 回望歷史 展望未來

感謝場地提供：敦南詠楽

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