近日，美国《时代》杂志刊发华为轮值董事长徐直军的署名文章，该文讲述其1993年入职华为，三十多年亲历的创新之路：从程控交换机起步，经IPD变革、分布式基站与SingleRAN确立移动通信领先，到2012实验室孵化5G、自动驾驶与昇腾芯片，华为如何靠人才和持续研发投入实现全球引领。
TIME
以下是原文，观察者网翻译，未经作者确认：
1993年5月，我博士学业即将结束，去深圳找工作。在朋友家里，我随手翻看《深圳特区报》，一则华为的整版招聘广告一下子吸引了我。广告上特别写明，要招硕士和博士。这有点反常。作为中国改革开放的前沿，深圳当时是加工贸易的聚集地，很少有企业招高学历人才。出于好奇，第二天我就去面试了，结果拿到了录用通知。
临近毕业，我手里已经有好几个录用通知，但华为的那份与众不同。他们的人力资源经理每周都给我打电话，说一切都准备好了，就等着我过去。这份尊重、这种急切，再加上承诺的薪水是我博士生导师的五倍，让选择变得毫无悬念。我选择了华为。
8月入职后我才发现，公司600名员工中，有200多人是研发工程师，还有一大批研究生。同年入职的博士就有五位。这在中国任何地方都难以想象，深圳尤其如此，因为当时全国每年毕业的博士也只有约2000人。华为在创业初期就在人才上下如此重注，清楚表明了它对创新的执着和面向未来的投入。
当时，研发团队正在做数字程控交换机。随着中国经济高速增长，家庭和办公电话的需求远远超过供给。有好些年，装一部电话既难又贵。西方厂商的交换机在中国也能买到，但标准五花八门、互不兼容，每线价格约3000元人民币。这在当时是一笔巨款。
这里就藏着机会。当时，中心城市周边散布着大量地理上分散的乡镇和村庄。每个点都建一套完整的交换机，在经济上不划算；用铜缆连接偏远地区，不仅成本高昂，还容易造成信号衰减。于是我们研发出光纤连接的远端交换模块，用一套集中式系统就能为整个县提供网络覆盖。
客户很认可这个方案。我们就是这样在与西方老牌厂商的正面竞争中快速做大了业务，而这些厂商无一例外都与我们的客户建有合资企业。我们的产品更便宜，每线大约1000元，利润率还超过20%。这支撑了华为的快速增长，也给了我们急需的现金流。短短十年间（1993—2002），员工人数增长到2.2万人，其中研发工程师超过1万人，收入逼近40亿美元。
许多美国领先企业都是从小做起的。它们靠自己闯荡，一步一步摸索前行，靠卖产品赚钱，再把赚来的钱投回研发。它们正是“自力更生、白手起家”精神的生动写照。华为同样如此。
2002年，我意外地被安排负责一项名为“集成产品开发（IPD）”的重大变革项目。2005年，我被任命为投资评审委员会（IRB）主任，负责审视公司所有的产品投资。2011年我出任轮值CEO时，卸下了与IPD相关的职责，但直到现在，我仍投入大量时间推动IPD与时俱进，并牵引华为的业务发展。
IPD从根本上改变了我们开发产品和进行研发投资决策的方式，也彻底重塑了我们的研发结构。变革之前，我们在研发上的成功高度依赖个别特别优秀的人才，能否做出高质量产品带有很大的偶然性。IPD变革为我们建立起一套体系，使我们能够稳定地交付满足客户需求、富有竞争力的高质量产品。
IPD是我们创始人任正非的构想。1997年，他走访了几家美国科技公司，深受它们产品开发方式的启发。访问归来后，他请来IBM担任顾问，帮助我们设计并实施一场全面变革，覆盖研发投资决策流程、组织和文化。
变革于1999年启动。起初我只是众多参与者之一；直到2002年，我被委以主导权，与IBM顾问并肩推动变革，把IPD流程推广到整个研发体系。
十年间，我们建立起更高效的研发投资决策流程、集成产品开发流程，以及相应的组织架构、能力和IT系统——统称为IPD管理体系。正是这套体系，让我们不仅能够管理一支不断壮大的研发队伍（从当时的1万人增长到如今的11万人），还能持续交付满足客户不断变化需求的创新产品。
1997年到2006年，华为向IBM支付了近6亿美元的咨询费。这很可能是中国历史上规模最大的单笔企业咨询项目。
2003年，我被任命为无线产品线总裁。当时这个部门只有2000多人，正在研发3G产品。我的使命，是推动华为从固定网络设备供应商，转变为同时提供固定和移动网络设备的供应商。由于中国一再推迟发放3G牌照，我们被迫转向海外拓展市场。
当时，余承东负责WCDMA产品，这是支撑3G网络的主要技术之一。在与荷兰运营商Telfort一同查看基站机房时，他发现欧洲的站点获取成本高得惊人，而且根本没有空间再新建基站。他从欧洲打电话给我，商量能不能把基站拆成两部分：一部分安装在铁塔上，另一部分做成一个小盒子，可以塞进现有基站的机柜里。我们都觉得这个方案可行，于是决定研发分布式基站。
这个方案遭到许多运营商和设备商的抵触，但最终成为如今3G、4G、5G基站的标准形态。余承东还在与西班牙电信德国公司（Telefónica Germany）的一次讨论中，提出把2G和3G集成到同一个基站里。后来，我们与沃达丰合作推出了SingleRAN，把2G、3G、4G、5G在物理上集成到同一个基站中。这同样成为全球基站的事实标准。分布式基站和SingleRAN这两个开创性方案，确立了华为在移动通信领域的全球领先地位。
为了在即将到来的数字信息洪流中找到我们的“诺亚方舟”，我们加强了基础研究。2011年，我们把公司的研究团队整合为一个新组织——2012实验室，名字取自电影《2012》。它将作为持续创新投入的平台，涵盖基础研究、核心技术和工程能力。与此同时，我们改变了研发投入模式：2012实验室的资金一部分来自公司，其余来自各业务单元。从成立第一天起，我就一直在塑造这个实验室的组织、团队、能力和面向未来的研究项目。自动驾驶、5G和昇腾，都是在这里孵化出来的。
我们早在2009年就启动了5G研究，最终成为5G标准的主要贡献者和全球最大的5G专利持有者之一，巩固了华为在该领域的全球领先地位。2012年，我主导在2012实验室下成立了车联网实验室，研究未来汽车技术，这一举措催生了我们的自动驾驶解决方案，也为我们在这一领域的领先奠定了基础。2016年，实验室开始研究人工智能，让我们在即将到来的竞赛中占据了一席之地。
得益于2012实验室在基础研究、技术成熟度和工程能力上的开创性工作，华为得以持续推出领先于市场需求的创新产品和解决方案。
1993年，我加入华为从事研发，职业生涯的绝大部分时间，都在见证、参与并引领华为的创新之路——这也是我们研发团队数十万人共同走过的路。
我们对人才的承诺，背后有利益分享机制作支撑——几乎每一位符合条件的员工都能获得公司股权。我们每年把年收入的10%以上投入研发，2007年至2025年累计研发投入超过2700亿美元（1.8万亿元人民币）。我们高度尊重他人的知识产权，同时也保护好自身的知识产权，截至目前，华为已获得授权专利24.5万件。我们这套有效管理研发投资的体系，帮助汇聚了大批杰出工程师，为持续创新奠定了坚实基础。
所有这些因素，让华为能够不断突破产品的极限，在高度竞争的市场中推出一个又一个有竞争力的产品，成长壮大。
徐直军 副董事长、轮值董事长
2026年9月29日
以下为英文原文：
Back in May 1993, as I was wrapping up my Ph.D., I took a trip to Shenzhen to look for work. While at a friend's house, I was flipping through theShenzhen Special Zone Dailyand was immediately drawn to a full-page recruitment ad from Huawei. It specifically highlighted that they were looking for people with a master's degree or doctorate. It was odd. As the frontier of China's reform and opening up, Shenzhen was a hub for processing and trade, and very few companies were hiring people with higher education. Out of curiosity, the next day I went for an interview and ended up getting offered a job.
As the day of my graduation neared, I had already received several offers but the one from Huawei stood out. Their HR manager would call me every week, saying everything was ready and they were expecting me. The respect they showed me, the urgency of their calls, and the promise of a salary five times more than that of my Ph.D. supervisor made the decision easy. I chose Huawei.
When I came onboard in August, I realized that, of the company's 600 employees, more than 200 were R&D engineers, as well as a ton of postgraduates. Five Ph.D.s joined that same year. It was unimaginable anywhere in China, especially in Shenzhen, because the entire country was producing only about 2,000 Ph.D. graduates a year. Huawei's huge bets on talent in its early years were a clear sign of its commitment to innovation and forward-looking investment.
Back then, the R&D team was working on digital stored program control switches. As China's economy soared, demand for household and office phones far outstripped supply. For years, getting a phone line installed was difficult and expensive. Switches from Western vendors were available in China, but they used a wide range of incompatible standards and went for about 3,000 Chinese yuan per line. That was a fortune at the time.
This presented an opportunity. Back then, major urban centers were surrounded by geographically dispersed townships and villages. Setting up a complete switch for each location didn't make economic sense, and connecting distant communities with copper was both expensive and prone to signal loss. So, we came up with a fiber-connected remote switching module, which allowed for a single centralized system to provide network coverage for an entire county.
Our customers liked it. And that's how we managed to rapidly grow our business in a head-to-head race with established Western vendors, all of whom had joint ventures with our customers. Our product was cheaper, around 1,000 yuan per line, with a profit margin higher than 20%. This helped sustain Huawei's rapid growth and gave us much-needed cash flow. In a short span of ten years (1993–2002), our headcount climbed to 22,000, including over 10,000 R&D engineers, and revenue was closing in on $4 billion.
Many leading U.S. companies started out small. They struck out on their own, probing forward one step at a time, selling products to make money, and investing it back into R&D. They epitomized the ethos of "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps." And the same can be said for Huawei.
In 2002, I was unexpectedly put in charge of a major transformation program called Integrated Product Development (IPD). Then in 2005, I was appointed the chair of the Investment Review Board (IRB), a role that oversees all of the company's product investments. When I became rotating CEO in 2011, I handed over the IPD-related responsibilities, but even now I still devote a lot of my time to keeping IPD up-to-date and driving Huawei's business development.
IPD was a game changer in how we developed products and made R&D investment decisions. It also completely reshaped our R&D structure. Prior to this transformation, our R&D successes were highly dependent on individual outperformers, and high-quality products were a matter of chance. The IPD transformation put systems in place for us to reliably deliver competitive, quality products that meet our customers' needs.
IPD was the brainchild of our founder Ren Zhengfei. In 1997, he visited several U.S. tech companies and was inspired by the way they developed their products. Following this visit, he brought on IBM as a consultant to help us design and execute a sweeping transformation across our R&D investment decision processes, organization, and culture.
The transformation kicked off in 1999. I was one of many participants in the program until 2002, when I was given the reins to work alongside IBM consultants and drive the transformation forward, rolling out the IPD process across all of R&D.
Over the course of a decade, we developed a more efficient decision-making process for R&D investment, a process for integrated product development, and the corresponding organizational structures, capabilities, and IT systems – collectively called the IPD Management System. It's this system that has enabled us to not only manage an ever-expanding R&D team (from 10,000 members then to 110,000 today) but keep delivering innovative products that meet our customers' evolving needs.
From 1997 to 2006, Huawei paid IBM nearly $600 million in consulting fees. This may very well be the largest single corporate consulting engagement in China's history.
In 2003, I was appointed president of the Wireless Product Line. At the time, the division had just over 2,000 people, and was working on 3G products. My mission was to transform Huawei from a fixed-network equipment supplier to a provider of both fixed and mobile network equipment. As China kept delaying the issuance of 3G licenses, we were forced to pursue market expansion overseas.
Back then, Richard Yu was responsible for WCDMA products, one of the main technologies that powers 3G networks. While visiting a base station equipment room with the Dutch carrier Telfort, he discovered that site acquisition costs in Europe were exceptionally high, and there wasn't really any room for new base stations anyway. He called me from Europe to discuss whether we could split a base station into two parts—one part placed on the cell tower, and the other into a small box that could be installed inside the existing base station's cabinet. We both thought it was a plausible solution, so we decided to create a distributed base station.
The solution was met with resistance from many carriers and equipment vendors, but it eventually became standard for the 3G, 4G, and 5G base stations we see today. Richard also proposed integrating 2G and 3G into a single base station during a discussion with Telefónica Germany. Later, in collaboration with Vodafone, we launched SingleRAN, a solution that physically integrates 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G into a single base station. This, too, became the de facto standard for base stations around the world. These two groundbreaking solutions—the distributed base station and SingleRAN—established Huawei's global leadership in mobile communications.
To find our Noah's Ark amid the coming flood of digital information, we strengthened our basic research efforts. In 2011, we consolidated the company's research teams into a new organization—2012 Labs, named after the film2012: Doomsday. It would serve as a platform for investment in sustained innovation, including basic research, core technologies, and engineering capabilities. At the same time, we changed our R&D investment model: Part of 2012 Labs' funding would come from the company, and the rest from its business units. From day one, I have been shaping the Labs' organization, team, capabilities, and future-oriented research projects. Autonomous driving, 5G, and Ascend were all incubated there.
We began researching 5G as early as 2009, ultimately becoming a major contributor to 5G standards and one of the world's largest holders of 5G patents, cementing Huawei's global leadership in the field. In 2012, I led the establishment of the Internet of Vehicles Lab under 2012 Labs to conduct research on future automotive technologies, a move that led to our autonomous driving solutions, and laid the foundation for our leadership in that domain. In 2016, the Labs began researching AI, securing us a place in the race to come.
Thanks to the Labs' pioneering basic research, technology readiness, and engineering capabilities, Huawei has been able to continuously launch innovative products and solutions that keep ahead of market demand.
I joined Huawei in 1993 to work in R&D, and have spent the vast majority of my career witnessing, taking part in, and leading Huawei's innovation journey—one shared by hundreds of thousands of people in our R&D team.
Our commitment to talent is backed by a benefit-sharing mechanism that gives virtually every qualified employee an equity stake. We invest more than 10% of our annual revenue back into R&D, with a total R&D spend of more than $270 billion (1.8 trillion yuan) from 2007 to 2025. We have the utmost respect for others' intellectual property while protecting our own, with 245,000 patents granted to Huawei to date. Our system for effectively managing R&D investments has helped us bring together a large swathe of incredible engineers, laying a solid foundation for sustained innovation.
All of these factors have enabled Huawei to keep pushing the limits of our products, launching one competitive offering after another to grow and thrive in highly competitive markets.
Eric Xu
Deputy Chairman, Rotating Chairman
September 29, 2026
