Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Huawei, wrote an essay called Huawei’s Winter. Sources differ on the year. One says 2001, another 2000. It opens with a question: “Have all employees of the company considered what we would do if, one day, sales fell, profits fell, and the company even went bankrupt?”
“For ten years I have thought about failure every day,” he wrote. “I ignore success. I feel no sense of glory or pride, only a sense of crisis.”