After Huawei became the world’s number one telecom equipment maker, Ren Zhengfei said the industry had entered an unpopulated zone. Past the top seat, there are no companies ahead. The era of following others is over, and the quota for copying homework has been used up. The tuition of leadership only starts being collected on the day the first chair is taken.
Humility Is Not a Posture, It Is Information
Some say being number one is glory, and humility is a posture staged for the press. Exactly backwards. After taking the top spot, Huawei became humbler than before, and began to genuinely respect former leaders of the market such as Motorola — because those who have walked that road know how hard leading is, and how many times each step nearly slipped. Humility is not a performance of virtue; it is information. Those who have not walked the road talk big. Those who have, talk less.
Following Is Rational, but the Ceiling Belongs to Someone Else
Others say following is the rational strategy: low cost, low risk, and survival for whoever copies fast. Half right. As a strategy, following holds up completely — respond instantly to every new rival product, favor application over research, compress the R&D investment rate to the minimum, spend every coin where returns are visible. But this playbook has a hard ceiling baked in: no pricing power, no standards, no direction. The follower’s ceiling is set by the leader. However fast the copying, it replays a road someone else has walked; it never reaches the place where the road ends.
One Step Ahead Is One Step Closer to the Cliff
Still others say the leader is merely early, and can simply wait to be copied back. Consider the price list of being early: research intensity maxed out, investment rate maxed out, the distance to the state of the art pressed to the smallest — and the position closest to the frontier is also closest to the cliff. As for being copied back, that requires someone catching up; in an unpopulated zone, even the chasers must first clear their own road. There is nothing left to copy. The leader’s risk exposure is full; a follower loses at most the cost of one imitation.
The Zone Is Not Roadless; It Is Untrodden
A final objection: the unpopulated zone is marketing talk; roads always exist, they are just unseen. Half accepted — the road may well be there. But no one has verified it ahead of the leader, and that is what the word empty weighs. On roads others have walked, an error comes with a frame of reference: foot or road, someone can tell. In the empty zone, errors have no frame of reference, trial and error is paid in full, and even the cause of death must be named by the one who dies. Companies that fell from the top mostly did not lose to rivals; they lost to the stretch of road that had no reference points.
This Tuition Is Not Charged in Every Industry
The argument does not apply to industries with mature reference points: a track crowded with rivals, benchmarks ahead, samples alongside — that is ordinary competition, and invoking the empty zone is flattery. Nor does it extend into investment advice, and it does not judge corporate politics. It describes one situation only: when there are truly no companies ahead. From that position, judgments have no precedent to consult, and errors no one to underwrite them. Humility, at that altitude, is not manners. It is the only free insurance on sale.
