Wang Xing
Watch the core, not the boundary
The test for expansion
Interview with Caijing, 2017
With Meituan fighting on four fronts at once, everyone asked where its boundary was. What he replaced the question with.
What actually happened?
In 2017 Meituan was fighting at the same time in food delivery, hotels, ride-hailing and groceries, and Caijing asked Wang Xing where the boundary lay. He swapped the question. Nothing really has a simple boundary, so he saw no reason to fence himself in. Too many people watch the boundary instead of the core. The core he had set was one line: the service core is eating, and the platform exists to help people eat better and live better. The test follows from it. A new business is judged by its distance from that core, not by an industry line.
Boundaries are drawn by other people; a core grows out of you
Industry boundary is taxonomy, drawn on an observer's map: delivery company, hotel company, transport company. Run the business by the map and every expansion looks like trespass. Run it by the core and the question becomes what else the same users and the same fulfilment can serve.
A bookshop reasoning by boundary can sell books. Reasoning by core, the hours of the same reading people, coffee and talks and objects are all in range.
Distance from the core sets the odds
No boundary does not mean anything goes. Measure each new business against the core: how much user overlap, how much of the fulfilment network is reused, how much of the supply side is entirely new. Near expansion spreads fixed cost. Far expansion is founding a company again.
Score a new business on three lines: existing users, reused capability, things to be built. When the third line is the longest, do not call it expansion.
Having no boundary assumes the core is thickening
The move carries a hidden condition. The core has to keep hardening, or fighting on many fronts only spreads a thin thing thinner. While Meituan fought everywhere, delivery scale and fulfilment efficiency kept pulling away. Let the core stall and no boundary turns into no focus.
Diversification launched as the main business slows is the dangerous kind: not radiating from a core but jumping off a sinking boat. Ask whether the core thickened this year.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: an opportunity sits outside the usual industry line and the team is arguing about whether to take it.
Ask first: how far is it from our core, how much of the users, the capability and the supply carries over, and is our core thicker this year or thinner?
Where it goes wrong: using no boundary to license aimless diversification; or defining the core so narrowly that genuinely adjacent things are all ruled out.
Lines to keep
Nothing really has a simple boundary, so I refuse to fence myself in.
As long as the core is clear, we know where to go.
Same situation, other people are asking
Every option makes sense and I can't choose.They're all good ideas. That's exactly the problem.I'm climbing and it isn't the thing I wanted.What I want to do and what I should do are two different things.Too many paths · all 9 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.