By Elizabeth Witcher

Featuring websites such as Wikipedia, Quora, and MOOC, and their Chinese equivalents Baidu Baike (百度百科), Zhihu (知乎), and Dedao (得到), respectively, the online knowledge economy has spawned enterprises that make our lives more convenient.

Digital technology has allowed information, knowledge, and learning to be parceled into bite-sized pieces. By making information more easily digestible, this technology has increased our overall learning and cognitive abilities as a society. However, a sole reliance on search engines, question forums, and online courses has its limits. The reality is, despite spending a great deal of time online, many internet users find themselves unable to solve their problems.

Wisdom sharing was created to meet this challenge. In February 2021, Global Internet of People, Inc. (师董会), a wisdom and knowledge sharing platform company, was listed on NASDAQ, trading under the symbol ticker: SDH.

A Undervalued “Green Shoot”

Wikipedia is the world’s largest online encyclopedia. Despite its non-profit status, Wikipedia’s valuation has exceeded $10 billion. Baidu Baike, the world’s largest online, Chinese encyclopedia, has helped create a market cap of more than $70 billion for its parent company Baidu.

Quora, a well-known American question and answer website is valued at about $1.8 billion. Recently, Zhihu, China’s largest question and answer website submitted an IPO application to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, with a valuation of $5.5-7.6 billion. On March 26, it was listed on the New York Stock Exchange with an offering of $850 million for its IPO.

Compared to these traditional knowledge sharing platforms, Global Internet of People is still relatively “green” and has a market cap of only $100 million.

However, this “green shoot” has an advantage that is distinct from the more traditional knowledge sharing platforms.

As of spring 2021:

Zhihu (NYSE: ZH): 10 years after its establishment, Zhihu, a leading enterprise in the commercialization of the content community, submitted its IPO application to the US Securities and Exchange Commission for the first time. According to the prospectus, Zhihu’s total revenue increased by 101.7% year-over-year in 2020, while its losses narrowed by 59.2% year-over-year. Although it has remained in a state of loss since being established, by the end of the fourth quarter of 2020, Zhihu accumulated 43.1 million content creators and 353 million pieces of content, including 315 million answers. It has also added around 75.7 million monthly active users. Zhihu has grown into the largest online question and answer website in China, where it also belongs to one of the top five comprehensive content communities. According to the Prospectus, Zhihu’s IPO is valued at between $5.5 and $7.6 billion. From a business model standpoint, the website’s open question and answer forum, articles, columns, videos, in addition to the other available knowledge, experiences, and opinions create a future limited only by imagination for the creators.

Global Internet of People (NASDAQ: SDH): has mobilized its social capital to invite many successful entrepreneurs, scientists, and investors who are interested in acting as mentors to join its platform. At the same time, Global Internet of People has also brought in numerous senior experts in various fields to provide reliable “intelligent” services to its users and members though an online-merge-offline mode. These mentors and experts act as the earliest form of the “smart nodes” that will make up Global Internet of People’s “Internet of Wisdom”.

Currently, more than 2,000 mentors and experts are already serving as “smart nodes” in Global Internet of People’s Internet of Wisdom. Additionally, over 5 million users have already joined this Internet of Wisdom to learn from and grow with each other. Through memberships, customized enterprise services for different industries, enterprise advertisements and sponsorships, enterprise consulting services, online customer service, retail, and other services, Global Internet of People assists its member enterprises with development, technical applications, financing incubation and more. According to publicly disclosed financial information, Global Internet of People recorded an operating revenue of $17.9 million in 2019, an increase of 32.4% over the previous year, and a net income of $9.75 million, an increase of 30.4% over the previous year. In the first half of 2020, the operating revenue increased by 12.2% to $6.51 million. The operating margins in the first half of 2020 and 2019, respectively, were 36% and 42.1%. Net earnings per share for those same periods were 14 cents and 13 cents, respectively. Still, however, its valuation only reached $100 million.

This makes Global Internet of People a undervalued enterprise.

Differences between the Knowledge Economy and Wisdom Economy

Knowledge economies and wisdom economies have very different business models.

In a knowledge economy, knowledge is transformed into bit knowledge products, which greatly reduces the marginal cost of these products and allows users to access knowledge at a lower cost. On Zhihu and Quora, teachers, professors, and other knowledge producers are the service providers. This allows the platforms to make knowledge and education more universally accessible.

The wisdom economy, however, focuses not on reducing marginal costs, but instead on solving problems accurately. On the Global Internet of People platform, the service providers are entrepreneurs, scientists, investors, and experts from various fields. These service providers build trust through the smart services they provide, which in turn creates more complex services like enterprise and scientific research cooperation as well as other investment, financing, and business services. What makes Global Internet of People’s services unique is that they emphasize knowledge sharing and cooperation to solve problems.

When compared with the knowledge economy, it is readily evident that the wisdom economy provides a more practical business model and can expect more abundant returns.

Under the knowledge economy model, when a person asks a question or buys a set of online courses the profit is slim, ranging from a few cents to a couple dozen dollars.

Under the wisdom economy model, however, after a project plan is created and the cooperation underway, which requires scientific research support as well as investment and financing docking, the expected profits will be in in the tens of thousands, sometimes even reaching as high as the hundreds of millions, of dollars.

Confident in their business model, Global Internet of People aims to build an enterprise with a scale of at least $100 billion.

The “Internet of Wisdom” and “Smart Nodes”

Global Internet of People calls their platform the “Internet of Wisdom”.

The Internet of Wisdom is composed of numerous “nodes”. Every person that Global Internet of People employs, whether they are an entrepreneur, scientist, investor, or expert in their field, can become a “smart node” by choosing to be a mentor or an expert.

Everyone on the Wisdom Network can ask for help from the “smart nodes” by using the wisdom sharing service which establishes a link to the “smart node”. The value of this service is realized through the practical sharing between the asker and the node.

As of now, the Internet of Wisdom already has over 2,000 mentors and experts and 5 million registered users.

The network is quickly growing.

Global Internet of People is ambitious. The platform predicts it will have 1 million high-quality “smart nodes” to provide wisdom sharing and practical services to 1 billion people. By empowering wisdom and actualizing the design, the Internet of Wisdom will help achieve dreams.

Earth and Wings

China has over 40 million small and medium-sized businesses and even more entrepreneurs who are pursuing their careers and dreams. In their own words, Global Internet of People is helping these entrepreneurs grow by building an ecological chain for enterprise growth. This chain provides assistance across a variety of fields, including enterprise consulting, business resource matching, investment and financing services, business incubator services, and other business services. Global Internet of People will help these entrepreneurs grow together through small investment, resource investment, and capital investment. Global Internet of People has its roots in an influential country and the growth of their business will help simultaneously grow other enterprises in China.

In the future, people will be able to buy a myriad of wisdom services from the Wisdom Network, including product innovation, strategic guidance, specialized research and development, project analysis, etc. Some of these services will provide comprehensive assistance in areas such as industrial cooperation and investment incubation.

The buying of wisdom and the comprehensive services that support it has the great potential to become the most important business of the next generation.

Today’s $100 million Global Internet of People may even grow a wisdom economy that overtakes that of the Google empire.

A Salute to the Future of Wisdom

In the future, digital technology will make entrepreneurship increasingly simple.

In the future, the wisdom tucked away in everyone’s minds will no longer be isolated islands of information, but transformed into products that can be widely shared. This wisdom will become the light in the lighthouse.

Wisdom is humanity’s most precious wealth.

Wisdom sharing is the bridge created by digital technology that facilitates the sharing of wisdom.

The wisdom economy will be amazing business.