硅谷跨行業搶飯碗 守成型企業如何應對

Ah, Silicon Valley—the beating heart of disruptive innovation, home of the so-called Unicorns, those startups worth a billion dollars or more. Famous for its networks, its traffic jams, and its acceptance of failure, Silicon Valley startups are beginning to attract attention in a whole new way, and for a whole new set of reasons.

硅谷是顛覆性創新的心臟地帶，是所謂的“獨角獸型企業”（即估值10億美元以上的創業公司）的天堂。提起硅谷，人們往往立即想起它遍地開花的網絡公司，頻繁的交通堵塞，還有硅谷企業對於犯錯的高容忍性。但現在，硅谷的創業公司卻開始以一種全新的方式和理由吸引了人們的注意。

Companies that once flocked to visit the region as a form of intellectual tourism are now taking those trips a lot more seriously. Digitization, increased connectivity, and the promise of the Internet of Things have well-established companies on the run, and Valley startups seem to be leading the charge.

以往，很多蜂涌到硅谷參觀學習的企業，都把它當成一次旅遊，不過現在他們的學習態度要比過去嚴肅得多了。近年來，數字化、連通性和物聯網的發展令很多守成型企業疲於追趕，而跑在潮流最前面的就是硅谷的創業公司。

Established companies now have to cope with the increasing pace of what I call the transient advantage economy, with startups barging into spaces they could never enter before. In this economy, the old rules of strategy have simply stopped working.

如今，隨着創業公司紛紛闖入他們以前從未進入的領域，守成型企業正面臨着一種日益嚴峻的挑戰——我將其稱爲“短暫優勢經濟”。在這種經濟中，以往的戰略規則已經不再管用。

We used to accept as given that the most significant competitors to worry about were the other firms doing the same things we did, who were also competing for the same customers. It was Caterpillar vs. Komatsu, Coke vs. Pepsi, Ford vs. General Motors.

我們過去理所當然地認爲，最強大的競爭對手，必然是同行業內的其他公司，他們和我們瞄準的是同一批客戶。比如卡特彼勒與日本小松、可口可樂與百事可樂、福特與通用汽車等等。

That logic no longer holds. Your company’s most significant competitors may very well come from other industries, and they can steal your customers very quickly. For example, startups such as Lending Club and Wealthfront are picking apart the traditional model for bank loans and investing, respectively.

但現在這個邏輯不再是鐵的定律了。你的公司最厲害的競爭對手很可能來自其他行業，而且他們可能很快就會偷走你的客戶。比如Lending Club和Wealthfront這兩家公司分別顛覆了銀行貸款和投資的傳統模式。

The belief that owning assets is essential to operating a business and provides barriers to entry for competitors is crumbling. Today, access to assets, rather than ownership, is the key.

過去很多人認爲，要想運作一家企業，並且爲競爭對手的進入設置壁壘，最關鍵的是要擁有資產。但現在，最重要的已經不再是擁有資產，而是獲得資產的渠道。

Amazon’s web services offerings, for instance, mean that companies that never could have dreamed of affording a data center can buy the functional equivalent of one on an as-needed basis. New companies such as Box, Dropbox, and Evernote are using cloud-based infrastructure to offer document storage and sharing capabilities, making an entirely new way of working and collaborating possible.

比如，亞馬遜的網絡服務意味着以前買不起數據中心的企業，現在也可以根據自身需求購買到相應的服務。Box、Dropbox和Evernote等公司正在利用雲架構提供文件存儲和分享功能，從而使全新的工作與協作方式成爲可能。

In academia, there is a well-worn distinction between activities that have to be coordinated by an organization and activities that can take place in an open market. An organization can offer a more effective way of getting work done when there is considerable uncertainty about what might happen; when transaction costs in the open market are high; when players have the temptation to behave opportunistically; and when there is information asymmetry between different trading partners.

學術界都知道，必須由企業協調的行爲和可以在公開市場發生的行爲，是存在區別的。當存在明顯的不確定因素，當公開市場的交易成本較高，當參與者存在投機傾向，或者當不同的交易方存在信息不對稱時，企業可以比公開市場更有效地完成工作。

Many of today’s best-known startups have used technology to eliminate the benefits of organizing activities under one corporate roof. By providing platforms that connect buyers and sellers, these firms have created markets for transactions that would have been too expensive or simply not feasible in an earlier era. A company such as ServiceNow, for instance, offers to replace many of the functions that would once have been performed for a company by in-house IT personnel with its “platform as a service.”

今天的許多知名創業公司已經用科技削弱了一些守成企業的有組織行爲帶來的優勢。比如通過提供連接買家和賣家的平臺，這些企業爲一些過去因成本問題或可行性問題而沒法達成的交易創造了市場。比如，ServiceNow公司的“平臺即服務”功能，以前必須通過一名內部IT人員才能完成。

Alongside the rise of this transient advantage economy, we have seen a massive unbundling of business models, with customers becoming increasingly unwilling to pay for attributes they don’t want once a startup has shown them that they can avoid having to do so. The dilemma is that many traditional business models were based on offering value to a customer via one set of activities while capturing it for the company via another (think TV and commercials, or newspapers and advertising). Give a customer a choice, and they’ll often opt to consume only the experience they value.

除了短暫優勢經濟的興起之外，我們還看到許多商業模式出現了“鬆綁”的趨勢，一旦企業看到某家創業公司能夠提供某項出色的功能，又不會夾帶一些他們用不上的功能進行“捆綁銷售”，企業就會越來越不願爲那些他們用不上的功能掏錢。不過很多傳統的業務模式卻面臨着這樣的困境：他們的業務模式旨在通過一系列行爲，爲部分客戶提供某些價值；同時通過另一系列行爲，爲另一部分顧客提供其它價值（想想電視和廣告或報紙和廣告的關係）。但如果你給了客戶選擇的權利，他們往往只會選擇對自己有價值的體驗。

Showrooming, the practice of visiting stores to see an actual product but buying it more cheaply online, is one example of this challenge. From a store’s point of view, providing display space and the chance to physically see products is an attribute they invest in to reap the reward of purchases. When that went away, Best Buy, for instance, shifted their customer base and began to charge manufacturers to stock their shelves. Not as good as the profit margins on purchases, but better than nothing.

如今有很多人到實體店裏看產品，然後在網上以更便宜的價錢購買，也是這種挑戰的一個例子。從商店的觀點來看，提供商品展示空間，讓客戶有機會親眼目睹產品，是一種旨在激發購買行爲而進行的投資。面對這種局面，百思買選擇了調整他們的目標顧客羣，開始向製造商收取產品上架費用。雖然利潤有所降低，但總比什麼也不做好。

So, what is an incumbent to do in the face of so much change? First, don’t panic. If you’re a big, established firm, you have all kinds of assets that would make a startup drool. You’ve got people, networks, intellectual property, cash, and revenue streams. The big question is, how do you use those assets to discover the future rather than trying to defend the past? It means learning to be innovative, not just now and again, but routinely, with the goal of finding not just incremental tweaks on your existing business but substantial new sources of growth.

那麼，守成企業面對如此之大的變革，又應該做些什麼？首先不要慌。如果你是一家大型的守成企業，那麼你擁有的各種資產足以讓創業公司流口水。你既有人才，又有網絡、知識產權、現金和收益流。問題是，你怎樣利用這些資產去探索未來，而不是捍衛過去？答案是要學會創新，不是偶爾，而是要持續不斷地創新；不是僅僅實現現有業務的漸進式增長，而是要開闢顯著增長的新機會。

Innovation-driven growth needs to be taken seriously. That means developing a new way of working. Companies must use external resources to develop new products and services, maintain their existing control-oriented rules and procedures in parallel with those suitable for innovation, and they must learn lessons from subsequent successes and failures, quickly, as they venture into brave new areas.

企業必須要高度重視創新驅動型增長。這意味着開發一種全新的工作方式。企業必須學會利用外部資產開發新的產品和服務，在適合創新的領域，要堅持既有的控制導向型規定和流程。另外，在守成企業勇敢探索新領域的過程中，無論邁出的第一步是成功還是失敗了，都必須從中學習經驗和教訓。

The good news is that we know what needs to be in a company’s toolkit to accomplish these goals: design thinking, a keen understanding of customer needs, the willingness to prototype and experiment, full-time focused teams, and leadership that can distinguish between the practices suitable for today’s core business and those that make sense for tomorrow.

幸運的是，我們知道企業需要具備什麼條件才能實現這些目標。它們是：設計思維，敏銳理解客戶需求，願意開發和試驗原型產品，有一支專注的全職團隊，領導層能夠分辨出哪種做法適合今天的核心業務、哪種做法有益於企業明天的成功。