企業必須尋找獨特智慧 The path to enlightenment and profit starts inside the office
Competition used to be easy. That is in theory, if not always in practice. Until recently, most competent companies had a clear idea of who their rivals were, how to compete and on what field to fight.
競爭曾經很容易。從理論上來說如此，即便實際上並非總是如此。直到不久以前，多數勝任的公司都清楚自己的競爭對手是誰，如何競爭以及在哪個領域競爭。
One of the starkest — and scariest — declarations of competitive intent came from Komatsu, the Japanese construction equipment manufacturer, in the 1970s. As employees trooped into work they would walk over doormats exhorting: “Kill Caterpillar!”. Companies benchmarked their operations and market share against their competitors to see where they stood.
最露骨也最可怕的競爭意圖宣言來自上世紀70年代的日本工程機械製造商小松(Komatsu)。員工上班時踩過的腳墊有這樣的口號：“消滅卡特彼勒(Caterpillar)！”。企業會以競爭對手爲對照，衡量自己的業務和市場份額，看看自己處在什麼地位。
But that strategic clarity has blurred in so many industries today to the point of near-invisibility thanks to the digital revolution and globalisation. Flying blind, companies seem happier to cut costs and buy back their shares than to invest purposefully for the future. Take the European telecommunications sector. Not long ago most telecoms companies were national monopolies with little, or no, competition. Today, it is hard to predict where the next threat is going to erupt.
但由於數字革命和全球化，這種戰略能見度如今在很多行業變得模糊，幾乎到了看不見的地步。兩眼一抹黑的企業似乎更樂意削減成本和回購股票，而不是抱着明確目的爲未來投資。以歐洲電信行業爲例。不久前，多數電信企業都是國有壟斷企業，競爭很少，甚至毫無競爭。如今，很難預測下一個威脅將在何處爆發。
WhatsApp, the California-based messaging service, was founded in 2009 and only registered in most companies’ consciousness when it was acquired by Facebook for more than $19bn in 2014. Yet in its short life WhatsApp has taken huge bites out of the lucrative text messaging markets. Today, WhatsApp has close to 1bn users sending 30bn messages a day. The global SMS text messaging market is just 20bn a day.
總部位於加州的訊息服務WhatsApp創建於2009年，在2014年以逾190億美元被Facebook收購時才被多數企業注意到。然而，成立沒幾年的WhatsApp在有利可圖的文本信息市場佔據了巨大份額。如今，WhatsApp擁有近10億用戶，每天發送300億條信息。全球文本短信市場每天的信息量只有200億條。
Car manufacturers are rapidly wising up to the threat posed by new generation tech firms, such as Tesla, Google and Uber, all intent on developing “apps on wheels”. Chinese and Indian companies, little heard of a few years ago, are bouncing out of their own markets to emerge as bold global competitors.
汽車製造商正迅速意識到新一代科技公司構成的威脅，例如特斯拉(Tesla)、谷歌(Google)和優步(Uber)，它們都試圖開發“車載應用”。幾年前還不爲人知的中國和印度企業，正邁出國門，涌現爲大膽的全球競爭者。
As the driving force of capitalism, competition gives companies a purpose, a mission and a sense of direction. But how can companies compete in such a shape-shifting environment? There are perhaps two (partial) answers.
作爲資本主義的推動力，競爭賦予企業目標、使命和方向感。但企業在這種日新月異的環境下怎麼競爭？對此可能有兩個（不完全的）答案。
The first is to do everything to understand the technological changes that are transforming the world, to identify the threats and opportunities early.
首先是盡全力瞭解正在轉變世界的科技變革，及早識別威脅和機遇。
Gavin Patterson, chief executive of BT, the British telecoms group, says one of the functions of corporate leaders is to scan the horizon as never before. “As a CEO you have to be on the bridge looking outwards, looking for signs that something is happening, trying to anticipate it before it becomes a danger.”
英國電信(BT)首席執行官加文•帕特森(Gavin Patterson)表示，企業領導人的職能之一是以前所未有的警覺審視地平線。“作爲CEO ，你不得不站在船舶駕駛室向遠處眺望，尋找情況正在發生的蛛絲馬跡，努力在它成爲危險之前做好防範。”
To that end, BT has opened innovation “scouting teams” in Silicon Valley and Israel, and tech partnerships with universities in China, the US, Abu Dhabi, India and the UK.
爲此，英國電信在硅谷和以色列設立了創新“偵察隊”，並與中國、美國、阿布扎比、印度和英國的大學展開了科技合作。
But even if you foresee the danger, it does not mean you can deal with it. After all, Kodak invented the first digital camera but failed to exploit the technology. The incentive structures of many companies are to minimise risk rather than maximise opportunity. Innovation is often a young company’s game.
即便你預見到危險，也並不意味着你能夠對付它。畢竟，柯達(Kodak)發明了第一臺數碼相機，但未能利用這種技術。很多企業的激勵結構是爲了將風險降至最低，而不是將機遇最大化。創新往往是年輕公司的遊戲。
The second answer is that companies must look as intensively inwards as they do outwards. Well-managed companies enjoy many advantages: strong brands, masses of consumer data, valuable historic data sets, networks of smart people and easy access to capital. But what is often lacking is the ambition that marks out the new tech companies, their ability to innovate rapidly and their extraordinary connection with consumers. In that sense, the main competition of so many established companies lies within their own organisations.
第二個答案是企業必須既專注地向外看，還要向內看。管理有方的企業具備很多優勢：強大品牌、海量消費者數據、寶貴的歷史數據系列、聰明人網絡以及資金獲取容易。但他們往往缺乏的是新興科技公司特有的那種雄心、快速創新的能力以及打動消費者的悟性。就此而言，很多老牌企業的主要競爭存在於企業內部。
Larry Page, co-founder of Google, constantly urges his employees to keep being radical. In his Founders’ Letter of 2013, he warned that companies tend to grow comfortable doing what they have always done and only ever make incremental change. “This . . . leads to irrelevance over time,” he wrote.
谷歌聯合創始人拉里•佩奇(Larry Page)不斷敦促他的員工保持敢想敢幹。在他2013年的創始人信函(Founders’ Letter)中，他警告稱，企業往往變得滿足於他們一直做的事情，只會做出增量變革。他寫道：“隨着時間推移，這……會導致變得無足輕重。”
Google operates a 70/20/10 rule where employees are encouraged to spend 70 per cent of their time on their core business, 20 per cent on working with another team and 10 per cent on moonshots. How many traditional companies focus so much on radical ventures?
谷歌實行70/20/10規則，員工被鼓勵將他們70%的時間用於核心業務，20%用於與另一個團隊合作，10%投入試驗性的激進項目。有多少傳統企業會把這麼多注意力放在激進項目上？
Vishal Sikka, chief executive of the Indian IT group Infosys, says that internal constraints can often be far more damaging than external threats. “The traditional definition of competition is irrelevant. We are increasingly competing against ourselves,” he says.
印度IT集團Infosys首席執行官史維學(Vishal Sikka)表示，內部侷限的破壞性往往要比外部威脅嚴重得多。他表示：“競爭的傳統定義已不重要了。我們正越來越多地與自己競爭。”
Quoting Siddhartha by the German writer Hermann Hesse, Mr Sikka argues that companies remain the masters of their own salvation whatever the market pressures: “Knowledge can be communicated. Wisdom cannot.” He adds: “Every company has to find its own unique wisdom.”
史維學援引德國作家赫爾曼·黑塞(Hermann Hesse)的著作《悉達多》(Siddhartha)中的話辯稱，不管市場壓力如何，企業仍然是他們自己救贖的主人：“知識可以溝通。智慧不能。”他補充稱：“每家公司都必須找到自己獨特的智慧。”
