40: Chapter 40: A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire, A Fertile Ground for Talent

The euphoria and clamor of breaking through a market capitalization of 250 billion did not last long within Spark Technology. Like a precisely programmed machine, the company quickly transformed this boiling energy into more forward-looking and strategic action after a brief period of excitement. Su Chen and his core team knew that market value was only a momentary evaluation given by the market, and what truly supported an enterprise in becoming great was a solid talent base and a never-ending source of innovation.

On the very first working day after the market value surpassed 250 billion, Spark Technology's Human Resources Department, together with the Group Office, jointly released an announcement titled the **"Spark · Set Sail 2017" Large-scale Talent Recruitment Plan**. This announcement was like a heavy bomb, not only causing heated discussions within the company but also setting off a huge wave in the national job market.

The announcement opened with impactful data:

Spark Power (Battery Business): Building two new super factories, recruiting 12,000 employees nationwide, covering positions in advanced manufacturing, equipment operation and maintenance, quality management, logistics and supply chain, etc.

Xinghuo Chip (Manufacturing and Design): The Guancheng manufacturing base has entered the peak period of equipment installation, and the Shenzhen design center is accelerating its expansion. It plans to recruit 8,000 elites, including talent in cutting-edge fields such as chip design, process integration, equipment engineering, materials science, and software algorithms.

Spark Technology (Consumer Electronics and Headquarters Functions): To restart and expand the production lines for the "spark 3" drone and "Spirit Eye 2" camera, and to support the group's increasingly large operational system, 5,000 positions are offered, involving comprehensive functions such as R&D, production, marketing, sales, finance, and legal.

**A total of over 25,000 job positions released!**

This means that the cumulative number of employees of the Spark Technology Group worldwide will break the **50,000 mark** in one fell swoop, officially joining the ranks of large-scale technology enterprises.

On the morning of the announcement, Spark Technology's official recruitment website briefly crashed due to excessive traffic. Human Resources Director He Jing's office phone was ringing off the hook, and her inbox was filled with cooperation inquiry emails from headhunters across the country and even overseas.

At a special recruitment fair held at the Shenzhen Talent Market, the scene was unprecedented. At six in the morning, a long queue winding for hundreds of meters had already formed outside the venue. Young job seekers, with faces full of expectation and urgency, tightly gripped their carefully prepared resumes.

"I studied materials chemistry, and I've dreamed of going to Spark Power's R&D department!"

"I've been using their products since xinghuo no. 1. Thinking about participating in the manufacturing of spark 3 makes me excited!"

"I heard that the treatment and growth potential offered by Xinghuo Chip are top-notch, and they are working on a cause that truly breaks monopolies!"

A Spark HR manager in charge of on-site recruitment sighed to a colleague beside him: "I've been in recruitment for over a decade, and I've never seen such a grand occasion. This isn't just looking for a job; it's more like... rushing towards a shared ideal."

Launched simultaneously with the large-scale social recruitment was a more far-reaching "Spark Scholars" Deep Integration Plan for Industry, University, and Research, looking ahead to the next ten years.

In the main auditorium of Spark Technology's headquarters, a high-profile "School-Enterprise Cooperation and 'Spark Scholars' Plan Launch Ceremony" was being held. Sitting below were presidents, deans, and heads of top laboratories from dozens of domestic top 985/211 universities, including Tsinghua, Peking University, Zhejiang University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Harbin Institute of Technology.

Su Chen personally attended and delivered a speech.

"Colleagues in the education sector, friends," his voice was steady and powerful, "Spark Technology's ability to reach where it is today is inseparable from the country's emphasis on technological innovation, inseparable from the market's trust, and even more inseparable from the precious talent that the universities represented here have provided us over the years. But we believe this is far from enough."

"The competition in technology, in the final analysis, is a competition for talent and a competition for the accumulation of basic research. In the past, cooperation between enterprises and universities often stayed at a shallow level, such as project commissions and student internships. Today, we hope to break these barriers and initiate a brand-new, deeper integration model."

He elaborated on the core of the "Spark Scholars" plan:

1. Targeted Training and Joint Laboratories: Spark Technology will co-build over 50 joint laboratories with the advantageous disciplines of various universities. The enterprise will invest funds and equipment and propose cutting-edge topics, while university professors will lead teams to conduct basic theory and frontier exploration research. Research results will be shared by both parties, and intellectual property rights will be clearly defined.

2. **"Spark Scholarship" and "Postdoctoral Research Station":** Establish special scholarships covering outstanding students from undergraduate to doctoral levels; set up an enterprise Postdoctoral Research Station in the Spark Central Laboratory to attract top doctoral graduates from around the world to enter the station and engage in the most cutting-edge applied basic research.

3. **"Pre-employment" Mechanism:** Launch a "pre-employment" plan for outstanding students in their junior year of undergraduate or second year of graduate school, locking in talent in advance, and providing customized curriculum design and corporate mentors to achieve a seamless transition from campus to enterprise.

**In 2016, the plan aims to directly recruit 1,000 top R&D technical personnel, with doctoral degrees accounting for 30% and master's degrees accounting for 60%.**

After the ceremony, the Vice President of Tsinghua University shook Su Chen's hand and said excitedly, "President Su, you are doing something of great merit for the present and benefit for the future! This kind of deep integration can truly open up the 'last mile' from theory to product, from laboratory to market. Our Tsinghua will definitely give full support!"

Located in the core area of the Spark Technology Park, the heavily guarded **Spark Central Research Institute** is the ultimate carrier of all these talent and scientific research strategies. This was no longer the R&D department with only a few offices from the startup period.

Su Chen personally served as the Dean of the Research Institute, which has over a dozen first-level research institutes under it, including materials, energy, chips, artificial intelligence, optoelectronic technology, and precision manufacturing. After nearly a year of frantic construction and investment, it has already become a behemoth with **over 3,000 active R&D personnel**, including over 400 with doctoral degrees and nearly 1,800 with master's degrees. The talent density is astonishingly high.

Walking inside the Research Institute felt like being in a palace full of futuristic technology. On both sides of the corridors were transparent laboratories, filled with various expensive cutting-edge equipment:

* In the Materials Institute, an imported aberration-corrected transmission electron microscope (valued at over 30 million rmb) was performing precise observations of the atomic structure of new battery materials;

* In the cleanroom of the chip Institute, a second-hand immersion lithography machine from ASML (modified and upgraded by Anderson Li's team) was undergoing early principle verification of the 7-nanometer process;

* In the computer room of the Artificial Intelligence Institute, a computing cluster composed of thousands of GPUs was training neural network models for next-generation drone autonomous flight and image recognition day and night...

"In the past year alone, the funds we invested in laboratory equipment procurement and platform construction exceeded 4 billion rmb," introduced the Executive Vice Dean of the Research Institute, a senior expert poached from a national-level research institute, while accompanying Su Chen on his inspection. "This doesn't even include the R&D expenses continuously invested every year. According to the Finance Department's estimates, the total R&D investment for the full year of 2016 will steadily break the 8 billion mark, accounting for over 8% of revenue. This investment intensity is among the highest for technology companies globally."

High-intensity investment has yielded fruitful results. On a huge "Patent Wall" in the corridor of the Research Institute, patent certificates newly applied for in 2016 were densely hung. From graphene composite electrode materials to high-efficiency motor design methods, to low-power chip architectures, and new image processing algorithms... **the number of new domestic and foreign patent applications for the year is expected to exceed 2,500**, with invention patents accounting for over 70%!

In an office filled with young researchers, Dr. Zhang Wei, who had just returned from MIT, was leading a team to tackle core problems of next-generation lithium batteries. He pointed to the complex molecular dynamics simulation results on the screen and said to his team members, "The boss has given us the best platform and investment regardless of cost. We have no reason not to produce world-leading results! What we need to do is to carve the name of Spark onto the cornerstone of next-generation energy technology!"

As night fell, the Spark Central Research Institute remained brightly lit, as countless brilliant minds continued to work late into the night for the shared dream of "breaking the shackles and leading the future."

Su Chen stood on the top floor of the Research Institute's main building, overlooking this "Spark Fertile Ground" where the dreams of 50,000 employees, the wisdom of 3,000 R&D elites, and nearly 10 billion in annual investment converged. He knew that what burned here was the true, never-extinguishing flame of Spark Technology. This flame not only lit the company's path forward but also quietly injected a vigorous and powerful new force into the entire country's scientific and technological cause.

A single spark has started a prairie fire, and its momentum is already established. This carefully cultivated fertile ground for talent and innovation engine is poised and ready to perform even more heart-stirring legends on the broader world stage.