Most people have heard of Aristotle and Ptolemy.
Their status, influence, and contributions in world history are well known.
Not sure? Just Google them.
But here’s something surprising—both of them strongly believed in an idea that even elementary school students today would laugh at: the geocentric model (the Earth is the center of the universe).
What does that tell us?
Does it mean that kids today are smarter than Aristotle and Ptolemy?
Obviously not.
The real reason is simple: people today stand on the shoulders of those who came before.
Knowledge has been passed down, improved, and refined over time. That’s why we understand more today.
This is the core reason for social progress.
Great thinkers took complex ideas and turned them into knowledge. Later generations tested, improved, and applied that knowledge in real life. Step by step, people gained a clearer view of the truth.
That’s why each generation becomes stronger and sees further than the last.
Inheritance and development—these are critical.
What About Companies?
Shouldn’t a company work the same way?
At the beginning, a company usually lacks everything—money, experience, systems.
Sometimes, it doesn’t even fully understand its own products, let alone customer needs or the market.
At this stage, every step is difficult.
This is what most founders go through. They invest a lot, but success is never guaranteed.
Yet, many companies still survive.
There are many reasons. Luck may play a role—but no one succeeds by luck alone.
Even those who seem ordinary often have strengths, like sincerity, courage, or persistence.
Once a company survives the early stage, it enters the growth stage.
Most companies start building teams because no one wants to stay small forever.
And this is where problems begin.
Why Don’t New Employees Grow Faster?
In theory, a company that already has success, experience, and systems should give new employees a higher starting point.
After all, they are standing on the shoulders of those before them.
Even if those “shoulders” are not giants, they are still better than starting from zero.
But what actually happens?
- New employees still don’t know how to answer common questions—even though these questions have been asked and answered many times before.
- They don’t know how to learn the product. They go to the workshop and feel completely lost—even though senior staff know the product inside out.
- They struggle to write emails, reply to customers, and deal with specific markets—even though others have worked with those markets for years.
So what’s the problem?
There is no real inheritance of knowledge.
Without inheritance, there can be no real improvement.
A Bigger Reflection
This is not just a company problem. You can see it in society too.
Over 1,900 years ago, Zhang Heng invented a seismograph.
Historical records say it was very accurate.
But what happened? It was lost.
Even today, textbooks label its image as “imagined,” because the real design was never passed down.
There was no clear record, no proper inheritance.
Imagine if that knowledge had been preserved and improved for 2,000 years—
China might be able to detect earthquakes across the ocean today.
Another example:
When the Terracotta Warriors were discovered, a sword buried for over 2,000 years was found.
After removing the weight on it, the sword returned to its original shape—no rust, still flexible.
Tests showed it used advanced oxidation technology.
But this same technology was only “officially” developed in the U.S. in the 1990s.
Why?
Because the original knowledge was not passed down.
The Cost of Losing Knowledge
Take traditional Chinese medicine.
Did it suddenly become ineffective?
Not really.
For thousands of years, people relied on it.
But too much of it depends on personal experience, and too little is standardized.
That makes it hard to pass down.
Without inheritance, knowledge gets lost over time.
And without continuity, there is no way for each generation to improve.
This is why many things disappear—
traditional crafts, folk arts, even certain types of cuisine.
What Others Did Right
Chinese people are very good at counting money by hand.
We often laugh at foreigners for doing it differently.
But they standardized the process, built machines, tested them repeatedly, and kept improving.
Today, money-counting machines are extremely accurate.
The same logic applies to machines, systems, and business models in the West:
inheritance + improvement = fast development.
So What Should We Do?
We may not be able to change society as a whole.
But as individuals, we can:
- summarize what we’ve learned
- standardize it
- train through repetition
- apply it in real work
- keep improving
This turns experience into a stepping stone for faster growth.
For companies, this is even more important.
A company should turn this process into its internal system:
summarize → standardize → train → improve → refine
Only then can new employees truly stand on the shoulders of others, grow faster, and create value.
The Final Point
Only companies that do this can grow bigger, stronger, and last longer.
And when you reach this level, something interesting happens:
You don’t need to hire “perfect” people anymore.
Because your system is strong enough to train them.
As long as they are willing to work hard and have the right attitude—that’s enough.