For enterprises in general and technology enterprises like Viettel in particular, innovation is a mandatory requirement. Without innovation, businesses cannot survive. The development of technology requires businesses to always change and be different. Technology development gives birth to a series of new services and new businesses. No change, no difference means self-rejection.
At Viettel, innovation has become one of Viettel's core values, playing the role of "life force" for production and business activities, research and development, and strategic planning. In the 10-year period, from 2011 to 2021, Viettel has 79,000 registered ideas and ideas (SKYT) internally. Thus, on average every hour Viettel has a new idea for 10 years. More than 10,000 medical devices have been recognized, bringing benefits of more than 5.3 trillion VND for Viettel.
Looking back at Viettel's development process over the past 33 years, what do you think are Viettel's most impressive breakthroughs and innovative decisions or actions?
In each historical period, Viettel people are always proud of their achievements in innovation, serving as the foundation for the development to bring Viettel to where it is today. In the period 1989-2000 Viettel operated mainly in the field of construction and installation, Viettel engineers had bold solutions to erect TV tower projects in difficult places that "no one dared to accept".
In the years 2000-2010, when Viettel entered the telecommunications field, there were many extremely bold and creative ways of doing things, but the story of turning two fiber optic cables into a backbone became a "legend". Viettel has become the first company in the world to successfully apply wavelength multiplexing technology on an optical fiber with a distance of up to 2,000 km and a capacity of 2.5Gbps. The first wireline military information backbone of the Army was built and installed in nearly a year, entirely by Viettel experts.
When Viettel provides mobile services, the design of a mobile base station (BTS) is also a clear demonstration of Viettel's continuous creativity. Viettel has self-researched and developed a method of network planning in the way of "drawing meshes" to multiply the speed of station construction by hundreds of times.
Another innovation, at the strategic thinking level, is Viettel's definition of mobile as a popular service. This is a radically different mindset from the popular view at the time that considered mobile phones as a luxury service only available to the rich. From this mindset shift, Viettel launched the strategy of "taking the countryside to surround the city" with wide coverage, opening up a different development direction. Those are really bold things to create a breakthrough development for Viettel.
From 2010 to 2018 is the time when Viettel transformed from telecommunications to combine high-tech industrial production. This period also has a lot of innovation in research, manufacturing step by step building the foundation for development. From this process, Viettel has successfully developed and mastered 4G and 5G technology to high-tech military equipment.
It can be said that each period Viettel has unique and excellent innovations, contributing to creating a Viettel like today.
In 2021, Clarivate, the leading company in providing information on research quality, innovation and reputation globally, announced Viettel for the second time in a row. B2B Việt Nam có sức ảnh hưởng nhất về ĐMST khu vực Nam Á và Đông Nam Á. Đâu là “bí quyết” quan trọng nhất đã giúp Viettel trở thành một công ty sáng tạo có tầm ảnh hưởng như vậy, thưa ông?
Firstly, "Creativity is vitality" is one of Viettel's core cultures. From the first generation to the new young people, all learn this core value. Creativity will help Viettel survive, creating better products and services for customers. That has infiltrated the culture of every Viettel person.
Secondly, it is not just now that Viettel talks about creativity, but from the very beginning, our previous generations of leaders have always appreciated this. Creativity creates a difference, uniqueness of products and services, and effective management. Innovation at Viettel is the continuous succession.
Third, at Viettel, management always listens and respects even the smallest health care. This has created motivation for all employees of the Group. I think that in any organization, when innovation has penetrated into the culture, infiltrated the subconscious from leaders to employees, the story of innovation will happen very naturally.
Besides, Viettel also has a very specific way to promote innovation through high goals and great pressure. Thereby creating great pressure requiring innovative and creative ways. Viettel has had many ways to promote innovation by setting challenging goals. Viettel also applies the principle of "dividing big things" to promote small groups to actively and creatively, regardless of, not doing, and creating instead.
Finally, in order to promote innovation, innovation must be ingrained in the subconscious consciousness of each employee as well as the will of the commander and manager.
It can be seen that at the national B2B, the human factor always plays a decisive role in innovation, creativity and development. In fact, the competition to attract talent, especially in the technology field, is considered quite fierce. Can you tell how Viettel is doing this?
Viettel's employer brand positioning focuses on three factors: leading enterprises, dynamic and creative working environment, challenging work, and development opportunities. The factor that creates Viettel's attraction to high-level human resources is that only Viettel has all the conditions of resources, technology and data for large and important national projects. There are many specific fields that only Viettel is deploying at present, such as military technology, 5G core network systems, etc. With rich data sources, Viettel is also a "gold mine" in the field of big data research. (Big Data), artificial intelligence (AI), far ahead of other businesses.
Regarding the current remuneration, Viettel's general income is about 20% higher than the industry average. With key positions in new fields, it is difficult for Viettel to be ready to offer remuneration mechanisms in the top 25% of the market, even for some specific positions of important projects that can be located in Top 5% even Top 1%.
However, Viettel wants to attract highly qualified personnel not only based on the income factor. At Viettel, there are many leading experts in the industry who are receiving a lower income than their "profile", but these personnel still choose Viettel because they have the opportunity to participate in big projects, have technical conditions to implement. challenging jobs.
The last factor is the environment, assessment methods, and respect for talents. Viettel always upholds the respect between employee leaders, always listens, understands to persuade, creates a cohesive environment, each achievement is recognized.Recently, Viettel was awarded the Ho Chi Minh Prize for two defense projects by Viettel experts. This is a great pride and motivation for Viettel staff.
Innovation is not often required when an enterprise encounters B2B difficult job, requires great effort. In your opinion, with Viettel today, what can be considered challenging and difficult?
So many. We think that if Viettel no longer sees a challenge or a difficult job, it means that Viettel has put an end to it. It is not because of creativity that Viettel chooses to work hard, but because Viettel's existence poses challenging tasks. Viettel considers that the problem is difficult, the challenge is a 5-year story, an annual, quarterly, monthly, even weekly story. Thus, there are always challenging tasks ahead for each individual and collective of Viettel.
To solve those challenges requires a different and creative way of doing things, not because of creativity that Viettel poses a difficult task. Difficult jobs and challenges require innovation such as food and water for Viettel people. In any field, Viettel now has many challenging tasks. For example, the development of 5G or the growth of telecommunications business in foreign markets... Those are challenges and difficulties that require innovation to do!
Thank you Sir !