— 3,000 tons of apple juice, a contract valued at over $5 million. The canned food factory used the advance payment from this contract to procure raw materials and launch a new production line, thus securing its first major breakthrough. Subsequently, its development has been smooth and steady. Recognizing a product gap in the domestic market—fruit juice beverages—the company quickly moved to fill it, rapidly growing and eventually establishing a leading position. In 1994, the company’s headquarters moved from Shandong to Beijing, and today it has grown into the largest fruit juice producer in the country. Many of our friends drink fruit juice beverages produced by this company every day. By now, everyone should have guessed who the once-bankrupt canned food factory was—none other than the predecessor of Huiyuan Group. The plant manager who, at the time, could only afford a plane ticket and had no translator to attend the food exhibition in Germany single-handedly, is today’s renowned entrepreneur Zhu Xinli—now worth billions. We looked back and reviewed the development strategy: by making a commitment to sustain the enterprise, we acquired state-owned canned food factories; through compensation trade, we exchanged future product outputs for advanced production lines; we used prepayments from overseas contracts to launch the production lines, and then financed and repaid them with new contracts—thus achieving initial capital accumulation and continuous growth. Eventually, we identified juice, a product that had not yet matured in China, and, leveraging our early-mover advantage, rapidly established ourselves as the market leader. As soon as Professor Qian Jinsui finished speaking, Professor Qian immediately stood up and clapped, exclaiming, "Excellent! The example is very well chosen! It truly shows that Director Gao has a far-sighted vision—what a wonderful achievement!" The other students one after another raised their thumbs in praise and gave enthusiastic applause. They turned to Pan Jinlian and exclaimed, "Haha! What good fortune! You've actually become friends with our Director Gao!" Pan Jinlian blushed deeply. Yet she maintained a composed demeanor and turned to Director Gao, asking, "Director Gao?" May I ask, what can we conclude from these two real-world cases—the Olympic Games and Huayuan Enterprise? Highlight smiled confidently at Pan Jinlian and said, "Success always has a method; operations always have a strategy. Both cases clearly demonstrate a well-defined business strategy. We refer to this kind of operational strategy as a business model. Specifically, what exactly is a business model? What makes a business model successful?" Highlight deliberately kept his answer vague. With just a little inspiration from Qian Jinshui, Gao Liang could leverage his powerful handheld computer to access relevant materials—though these materials were often primitive and not direct answers. However, Gao Liang was exceptionally skilled at absorbing, learning, applying, analyzing, and synthesizing information, and by integrating his own insights, he ultimately developed his own clear and distinct answer. The audience continued to hear Gao Liang say: This example vividly illustrates what a business model is, and also demonstrates that the concept of "business model" is a foreign import—indeed, every Chinese enterprise has always been selling products and recovering funds, which is essentially what a business model is, even if we used not to refer to it as such. The development journeys of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and the Huiyuan Group each describe a complete profit-generating process and articulate their unique business models. In 2000, the dot-com bubble burst, and numerous network "stars" with little tangible value and lacking solid foundations went out of business. Michael Dunn, former CTO of Time Warner, told BusinessWeek in the U.S.: "A new enterprise must first establish a solid business model; high technology is secondary. Throughout the course of running a business, the business model is more important than high technology, because it is the fundamental prerequisite for the enterprise to stand on its own feet." Peter Drucker, a management scholar, said: "Today's competition among enterprises is not about products, but about business models." This clearly underscores the pivotal role of business models. According to survey data, among Chinese startup enterprises, 23% fail due to strategic missteps, 28% due to execution issues, and a staggering 49% fail because they cannot establish a sustainable, profitable business model. Among all forms of innovation, business model innovation represents the most fundamental type of enterprise innovation. Without a sound business model, other management and technological innovations lose both the potential for sustainable development and the foundation for profitability. All successful large enterprises have grown from small businesses that successfully adopted and maintained a winning business model over time. We often say that Walmart is essentially a grocery store, Coca-Cola sells beverages, Microsoft sells software, Guomei operates an appliance store, and Xiao Fei Yang runs a hot pot restaurant. What do these seemingly ordinary industry successes reveal? In fact, this illustrates a principle: regardless of whether a technology is high-end or low-end, success is achievable—as long as you identify a viable business model and fully leverage its profitability to its peak. Gao Liang's speech was well-structured, logically sound, and compelling, demonstrating the strength of his presentation skills. Under Professor Qian Jinshui's invitation, Gao Liang stepped onto the stage to deliver a speech, during which he opened his slides and presented a seamless integration of visuals and text, ensuring that everyone remained fully engaged. "Excellent! Excellent! What a wonderful presentation!" Many students clapped enthusiastically. Pan Jinlian was deeply absorbed, truly amazed at Gao Liang's profound insights into business—despite Professor Qian Jinshui's national reputation in business education, Gao Liang's presentation was not only on par with, but actually surpassed, Professor Qian's. "Thank you, Mr. Gao, for your insightful presentation on business!" A female student from the Business Administration program stood up, bowed to the highlighted speaker, and then asked, "Could I also ask the Chairman High—one more question: How exactly is a business model defined?"