大公司的创新困境 - 手机财富中文网

大公司的创新困境

Dan Mitchell | 2012-10-10 17:40

大公司当然具有创新能力，能够拿出创新成果。但是大公司往往面临着股东的压力，需要格外关注盈利和投资回报。而创新往往意味着血本无归的风险。正是因为这个矛盾，大公司的创新容易陷入困境。

研究员麦斯维尔•维塞尔在《哈佛商业评论》（Harvard Business Review）的博客上发表了一篇大作，文中提出了一个大公司应该如何创新的框架。该文深入详实、见解深刻，但行文到最后也同样让人颇感沮丧。

作为“增长与创新论坛”（Forum for Growth & Innovation）的资深会员，维塞尔在这篇共有三部分的大作中描述了一个特有的商业世界。这个世界中充斥着平庸不堪、只知道削减成本的经理人。他们对流程极度关注，总是对即将发布的财务季报忧心忡忡，还对公司的股东怕得要命。作者其实并没有挑明这一点，实际上他对这类经理人、乃至这类对创新毫无兴趣的公司深感同情。文中写道：“经验老到的经理人总能让自己的员工乖乖地离开创新探索的艺术之道，转而埋头追求如何实现交付的科学之路。他们会教员工如何提高效率，充分利用好现有资产和分销渠道，同时对公司最优质的客户言听计从（同时百般取悦）。”

或许，更切中要害的观点是：“这种做法和政策确保了公司高管能向华尔街交出有意义的收入报表，同时安抚股东。”

比利，你长大了想干什么？“噢，天哪，我想摆平股东！”

维塞尔深知，很多这类经理人（不过显然他们不都是这样）此生宁可选择别的事业。而且在大多数情况下，他们选择的余地很小。他还说，就算是最稳定的行业中、最古板的公司，其大多数也必须谋求增长，同时适应不断变化的市场。

不过即便在这种情况下，要正确地创新也需要眼光和勇气。为此维塞尔引用了一个嘉宝公司（Gerber）当年曾试图离开婴儿食品市场向外拓展，最终无果而终、声誉受损的案例。1974年，嘉宝公司推出了Gerber Singles。它其实还是一款婴儿食品，只不过在瓶身上换了个标签，在杂货店换个摆放位置而已。这个尝试最后惨淡收场，公司颜面扫地。

维塞尔写道，因为就其体制而言，嘉宝公司【现在已属于雀巢公司（Nestle）】就必须尽可能高效地推广其现有产品，所以“嘉宝的管理层针对成年人推出那款看起来和尝起来都像儿童食品的产品就再自然不过了。这是他们最大的体制障碍导致的，而不是因为缺乏眼光。”但这当然是因为缺乏眼光，问题只在于弄清到底是什么导致了这种缺失。维塞尔是这么认为的：“…嘉宝面临组织内部压力，也就是需要高效运营，每年实现数十亿美元的增长，满足现有客户——而且要在完成所有这些任务的同时，不能危及现有的净收入水平。问题不在于创意，问题来自这种成熟机构对不断增长的利润的不懈追求。”【事实上恰恰相反，这个创意本身也够糟糕的；维塞尔表示，如果嘉宝只是为这款产品换个包装，它或许就能成为下一个奥德瓦拉公司（Odwalla，美国著名新鲜果汁公司——译注）或坚宝果汁公司（Jamba Juice）。但是冰沙毕竟不是婴儿食品。】

On the Harvard Business Review's blog network, researcher Maxwell Wessel offers a framework for how big companies should go about innovating. It's informative and insightful, but also, ultimately, depressing.

In his three-part essay, Wessel, a fellow at the Forum for Growth & Innovation, describes a business world filled with stodgy, cost-cutting managers who are hyperfocused on processes, always worried about the coming quarterly report, and scared of their own stockholders. He doesn't say this outright, and in fact he's empathetic to those managers and even to companies that have no interest in innovating. "Seasoned managers," he writes, "steer their employees from pursuing the art of discovery and [toward] engaging in the science of delivery. Employees are taught to seek efficiencies, leverage existing assets and distribution channels, and listen to (and appease) their best customers."

And, perhaps more to the point: "Such practices and policies ensure that executives can deliver meaningful earnings to the street and placate shareholders."

What do you want to do when you grow up, Billy? "Why, jeepers, I want to placate shareholders!"

Wessel knows that many such managers (though clearly not all of them) would rather be doing something else with their lives. And in most cases, they have little choice. Even the most staid companies in the most stable industries must seek growth and adjust to changing markets, he notes.

But even in those cases, it takes vision and courage to do innovation right. Wessel cites the example of Gerber's infamous attempt to expand beyond the baby-food market. In 1974, it came up with Gerber Singles, which was just baby food with a different label slapped on the jar, and placed in a different part of the grocery store. It was a miserable, humiliating failure.

Wessel writes that because Gerber (now a subsidiary of Nestle) was institutionally geared toward focusing on marketing its existing products as efficiently as possible, it was "only natural that Gerber executives created a product for adults that looked and felt just like its product for children. This was their biggest barrier, not a lack of vision."

But of course it was a lack of vision, it's just a matter of determining what caused the lack. Wessel says as much: "...Gerber faced the internal pressure of its organization, the need to operate efficiently, to deliver billion-dollar growth businesses every year, to satisfy existing customers — and to do all this without threatening existing net income levels. The problem wasn't the idea; the problem emerged from the relentless pursuit of incremental profit within mature organizations." (On the contrary, the idea was terrible; Wessel says that if Gerber had simply presented the product differently, it could have become the next Odwalla or Jamba Juice. But smoothies ain't baby food.)

维塞尔引用的另一个例子是施乐公司（Xerox）的帕洛阿尔托研究所（PARC），也就是这家知名复印机公司的研发部门。正是它在20世纪70年代开发了个人电脑、图形用户界面、鼠标和以太网，后来却无一继续开发，均告流产。将该部门的总部放在美国大陆的另一侧——加州的帕罗阿托实属明智之举，因为这样就能免得公司总部那些斤斤计较的管理人员对它过度关注。而且施乐非常富有远见地预见到了即将到来的信息革命。维塞尔借此表达了一个主要观点：“如果贵公司内部已经有了那些准备摧毁任何新尝试的抗体，你就需要走出公司去克服它们的消极影响。”

但是到了需要为自己的个人电脑阿尔托（Alto）开展营销时，施乐却只是简单地把产品往已有的销售渠道里一塞了事。它没有向公司高管和私营企业主（或是家庭市场）去推销，而是试着把阿尔托卖给那些购买施乐复印机的中层管理者。结果导致一败涂地。

但是，像施乐这么专注、创新和聪明的公司，怎么会在推销自己的新技术时三次都宣告失败呢？正是因为有抗体作祟。就在个人电脑行将推向市场之际，施乐在复印机市场上正面临来自佳能公司（Canon）和其他公司的激烈竞争，使公司的盈利预期压力倍增。面对那些高声叫嚷着要攫取利润的投资者，施乐只得将阿尔托匆匆推向市场以取悦他们。维塞尔称，如果施乐采取了“谨慎的试验性方法”，（这段话出现在该文最让人沮丧的段落）“避开投资者的注意的话”，结果很可能会截然不同。

但是“谨慎的方法”能催生出同样的创新成果吗？维塞尔并未就此给出案例。而且很明显，避开自己的投资者去做生意总不能算是理想的做法。

而至少在某些情况下，更好的方法似乎是对投资者直言相告：我们关注的是长期收益，如果你们只对短期利润感兴趣，也许应该去选择利率互换产品或其他类似的金融产品。

对那些取得过重大创新成果的大公司来说，它们至少有一次对自己那些投资者的短期获利欲望是不予理睬的：苹果公司（Apple），联邦快递（FedEx），美国电话电报公司（AT&T）（通过贝尔实验室），丰田汽车（Toyota），通用电气（General Electric），索尼公司（Sony）。还有很多，不胜枚举。这并不是说，投资开展创新毫无风险，或者应该对其一味放任，对投资者也不管不顾。但是，当考虑股东的感受成了头等大事时，创新基本上无从谈起。

译者：清远

Another example he cites is Xerox PARC, the copier-maker's famous research division, which in the '70s developed a personal computer, the graphical user interface, the mouse, and Ethernet, and proceeded to capitalize on none of them. It was a great idea to situate the division's headquarters a continent away in Palo Alto, Calif., to prevent the bean-counters at corporate HQ from paying too much attention. And Xerox (XRX) was truly visionary in anticipating the coming information revolution. This is one of Wessel's main points: "If antibodies already exist within your organization to destroy new endeavors, you need to go outside of the organization to overcome them."

But when it came time to market its PC, the Alto, Xerox simply jammed the thing into its existing sales channels. Rather than marketing to corporate executives and self-employed entrepreneurs (or possibly the home market), Xerox tried to sell the Alto to the same mid-level decision-makers who bought the company's copiers. Massive fail.

But why, given how committed, innovative and smart Xerox clearly was, did it fail on all three counts when it came time to sell its new technology? The antibodies. Just as the PC was being readied for market, Xerox was facing all kinds of competition in the copier market from Canon (CAJ) and others, putting pressure on margins. Xerox rushed the Alto to market to appease investors who were clamoring for profits.

Wessel says Xerox would have done better to employ a "lean approach to experimentation" that would (in the essay's most depressing phrase) "fly under the radar of investors."

But would a "lean approach" have yielded the same innovations? Wessel doesn't make a case that it would have. And clearly, hiding from your own investors isn't an ideal way to do business.

A better approach, in at least some cases, seems to be to tell investors that you're in it for the long haul, and if they're interested only in short-term profits, maybe they should check out interest-rate swaps, or something.

One need only look at the list of big companies that have, at least at one time or another, implemented major innovations, often despite the short-term wishes of their own investors: Apple (AAPL), FedEx (FDX), AT&T (T) (via Bell Labs), Toyota (TM), General Electric (GE), Sony (SNE). Many more. Which is not to say that investing in innovation is risk-free or should be undertaken with wild abandon and zero thought for investors. But innovation rarely arises when shareholder sentiment is the primary consideration.

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