美国商业巨头的王之蔑视 | 经济学人商业
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思维导图作者：
May Li，男，我要去追逐心中的太阳，还要继续努力的亚古兽
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Business | Goliath’s triumph
商业｜王之蔑视
Business | Goliath’s triumph
商业｜王之蔑视
America’s corporate giants are getting harder to topple
美国商业巨头地位稳如泰山
Incumbents from Walmart to General Motors are fighting back against disrupters
从沃尔玛到通用汽车，龙头企业正奋起反击颠覆者
Attend any business conference or open any management book and an encounter with some variation of the same message is almost guaranteed: the pace of change in business is accelerating, and no one is safe from disruption. Recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI) have left many corporate Goliaths nervously anticipating David’s sling, and fearing the same fate as Kodak and Blockbuster, two giants felled by the digital revolution.
不论是参加商业会议还是阅读管理学书籍，你极大概率会碰到这种说法：商业变革正在加快，没有任何企业能够免受影响。人工智能领域的最新突破让许多企业巨头如临大敌，它们担心自己会像柯达与百视达一样，落得惨遭数字革命淘汰的结局。
注释：
Goliath哥利亚是圣经中被大卫用投石索（sling）击倒并杀死的巨人。
“The Innovator’s Dilemma”, a seminal book from 1997 by Clayton Christensen, a management guru, observed that incumbents hesitate to pursue radical innovations that would make their products or services cheaper or more convenient, for fear of denting the profitability of their existing businesses. In the midst of technological upheaval, that creates an opening for upstarts unencumbered by such considerations. Yet America Inc has experienced surprisingly little competitive disruption during the internet age. Incumbents appear to have become more secure, not less. And there is good reason to believe they will remain on their perches.
《创新者的窘境》（The Innovator’s Dilemma）是由管理学大师克莱顿·克里斯坦森（Clayton Christensen）于1997年出版的一本著作。他提出：现有企业常常犹豫不前，不愿大力创新，让其产品或服务售价更低或更加实用，因为它们担心这样做会影响现有业务的收益。技术变革时期，那些没有这种顾虑的新兴企业却迎来了机会。但出乎意料的是，在互联网时代，美国企业似乎很少遭遇竞争性颠覆。现有企业的地位似乎更加稳固，而且有充分理由相信它们将继续保持领先地位。
Consider the Fortune 500, America’s largest firms by revenue, ranging from Walmart to Wells Fargo and accounting for roughly a fifth of employment, half of sales and two-thirds of profits. The Economist has examined the age of each firm, taking into account mergers and spin-offs that make the group look artificially young.
来看看《财富》美国500强企业，即美国营业额最高的企业，包括沃尔玛和富国银行等，这些企业创造了全美大约五分之一的就业机会、一半的销售额和三分之二的利润。《经济学人》杂志调查了每家企业的“年龄”，合并和分拆这种使企业看起来比实际更年轻的操作也纳入了考量范围。
We found that only 52 of the 500 were born after 1990, our yardstick for the internet era. That includes Alphabet, Amazon and Meta, but misses Apple and Microsoft, the middle-aged tech titans. Only seven of the 500 were created after Apple unveiled the first iPhone in 2007, while 280 predate America’s entry into the second world war (see chart 1). In fact, the rate at which new corporate behemoths arise has been slowing. In 1990 there were 66 firms in the Fortune 500 that were 30 years old or younger. Since then the average age has crept up from 75 to 90.
如果将1990年视作互联网时代元年，在此之后，只有52家企业跻身美国500强。这些企业包括Alphabet、亚马逊和Meta，但不包括中年科技巨头苹果和微软。仅有7家500强企业是在苹果推出首款iPhone（2007年）之后创立的，而有280家企业的历史可以追溯到美国参与第二次世界大战之前（见表1）。事实上，新兴企业巨头涌现的速度一直在减缓。1990年，500强中有66家企业年龄不超过30岁。自那时以来，企业平均年龄已从75岁上升到90岁。
One explanation for this is that the digital revolution has not been all that revolutionary in some parts of the economy, notes Julian Birkinshaw of the London Business School. Communications, entertainment and shopping have been turned on their heads. But extracting oil from the ground and sending electricity down wires look much the same. High-profile flops like WeWork, a much-hyped office-sharing firm now at risk of collapse, and Katerra, which tried and failed to redefine the construction business by using prefabricated building components and fewer middlemen, have discouraged others from trying to disrupt their respective industries.
伦敦商学院的朱利安·伯金肖（Julian Birkinshaw）指出，出现这种现象的原因是数字革命对经济的某些领域并没有产生革命性的影响。通信、娱乐和购物已经发生了翻天覆地的变化，但是采油和输电基本不受影响。备受关注的失败案例比比皆是，比如曾经热火朝天的共享办公公司WeWork目前存在破产风险。Katerra试图通过使用预制建筑组件和减少中间商来重新定义建筑行业，却惨遭滑铁卢。这些案例使其他公司望而却步，不愿尝试颠覆各自的行业。
Another reason is that inertia has slowed the pace of competitive upheaval in many industries, buying time for incumbents to adapt to digital technologies. Although 65% of Americans now bank online, nearly all the banks they use are ancient—the average age of those in the Fortune 500, including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, is 138. Fewer than 10% of Americans switched banks last year, according to Kearney, a consultancy. That stickiness has made it difficult for would-be disrupters to build scale before incumbents imitate their innovations. A labyrinthine regulatory system that favours big institutions with well-staffed compliance departments helps. The insurance industry, also dominated by geriatric giants like AIG and MetLife, is much the same.
另一个原因是，“惯性”导致各行各业竞争剧变的速度减缓，这为现有企业适应数字技术争取了时间。尽管如今65%的美国人在网上办理银行业务，但他们使用的银行几乎都是摩根大通与美国银行这样的老字号，这些名列《财富》美国500强的银行平均年龄为138年。据咨询公司Kearney称，去年仅有不到10%的美国人选择变更银行。由此可见，在老牌企业模仿潜在颠覆者的创新之举前，由于用户粘性高，后来者很难扩大规模。同时，复杂的监管体系也更偏向拥有精锐合规部门的大型公司。这对由美国国际集团（AIG）与大都会人寿（MetLife）等老年保险巨头主导的保险业亦是如此。
The pattern is not unique to financial services. Walmart, America’s mightiest retailer, almost missed the rise of e-commerce. David Glass, its boss in the 1990s, predicted that online sales would never exceed those of its single largest retail warehouse, according to a recently published book, “Winner Sells All”, by Jason Del Rey, a journalist. Nonetheless, Walmart’s financial heft and enormous customer base gave it the chance to change course later. Only Amazon now sells more online in America. The recent growth of electric vehicles from Ford and General Motors, America’s two largest carmakers, offers another example. Their bulky balance-sheets have allowed them to spend heavily on reinventing their businesses at a time when raising capital is becoming more difficult for newcomers.
除金融服务业外，其他行业也面临相似情况。美国最强零售商沃尔玛几乎与电商的崛起失之交臂。记者杰森·德雷（Jason Del Rey）在其近期出版的《赢家通卖》（Winner Sells All）一书中写道，上世纪90年代，沃尔玛的时任CEO戴维·格拉斯（David Glass）预测，沃尔玛的网络销售额永远无法超过其最大的零售门店。然而，沃尔玛的经济实力与庞大的客户群体使得它有机会在之后改变赛道。目前在美国，线上销售额超过线下的只有亚马逊。福特与通用汽车是美国最大的两家汽车制造公司，它们近期在电动汽车领域的增长是另一大力证。这两家公司雄厚的资产让它们得以在商业模式变革上进行大笔投资，反观当下，新兴公司筹资愈发困难。
A third explanation for the endurance of America’s incumbents is that their scale creates a momentum of its own around innovation. Joseph Schumpeter, the economist who coined the phrase “creative destruction”, first argued that economic progress was propelled mostly by new entrants, noting in “The Theory of Economic Development” in 1911 that “in general it is not the owner of stage coaches who builds railways”. By the time he published “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy”, his magnum opus of 1942, he had changed his mind. It was, in fact, big firms—monopolies, even—that drove innovation, thanks to an ability to splash cash on research and development (R&D) and quickly monetise breakthroughs using existing customers and operations, spurred on by a constant fear of being toppled.
美国老牌巨头之所以能经久不衰的第三大原因是，它们的规模之大，足以涌动创新浪潮。经济学家约瑟夫·熊彼特（“破坏性创造”概念提出者）在1991年的《经济发展理论》一书中率先提出，经济进步主要由行业新秀推动，“修建铁路的往往不是那些拥有邮递马车的人”。不过在他的巨作《资本主义、社会主义与民主》于1942年问世之时，熊彼特已经改变了看法。实际上，推动行业创新的是那些大型公司，甚至是垄断企业，因为它们有能力对研发“豪掷千金”，并且能利用现有客户群体与运营模式迅速让创新成果变现。一种被颠覆的担忧萦绕不绝，促使它们不断砥砺前行。
America’s tech titans offer the quintessential illustration. Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft invested a combined $200bn in R&D last year, equivalent to 80% of their combined profits and 30% of all R&D spending by listed American firms. Less obvious examples abound, too. John Deere, America’s largest agricultural-equipment firm, founded in 1837, leads the way in innovations like driverless tractors and clever sprayers that use machine learning to spot and target weeds. Its ambition is to make farming fully autonomous by 2030. After snatching laid-off techies from Silicon Valley it now employs more software engineers than mechanical ones.
美国的科技巨头就是典型例证。去年，Alphabet、亚马逊、苹果、Meta与微软在研发方面共计投资2000亿美元，相当于它们利润之和的80%，也相当于美国上市公司所有研发投入的30%。还有许多鲜为人知的例子。全美最大的农业设备公司约翰迪尔（John Deere）成立于1837年，它在引领创新的道路上一骑绝尘，推动了无人驾驶拖拉机与智能喷雾器（通过机器学习来准确定位杂草）等技术。约翰迪尔满腔雄心，想在2030年前实现农业全自动化。它从硅谷裁员潮中吸纳了不少人才，如今公司软件工程师比机械工程师还要多。
Incumbents and newcomers also often play complementary roles in innovation. William Baumol, an economist, wrote in 2002 of a “David-Goliath symbiosis” in which radical breakthroughs generated by independent innovators are then enhanced by established firms. A paper in 2020 by Annette Becker of the Technical University of Munich and co-authors split R&D spending by a sample of firms into more exploratory “research” and more commercially oriented “development”, and found that the relative weight of research fell with firm size. Likewise, a paper in 2018 by Ufuk Akcigit of the University of Chicago and William Kerr of Harvard Business School found that patents generated by big firms were less radical and more focused on incremental improvements to existing products and processes.
在创新方面，老牌企业与新兴企业也经常会相互学习。经济学家威廉·鲍莫尔（William Baumol）在2002年发表文章，描述这种“大卫与歌利亚的共生关系”，他认为，独立创新者所取得的重大突破会被已有的大型企业不断改进。在慕尼黑工业大学的安妮特·贝克尔（Annette Becker）与共同作者在2020年发表的一篇论文中，作者抽选一些公司作为研究样本，将它们的研发支出细分为用于探索型“研究”与用于商业化“开发”，并发现“研究”的相对影响力与公司规模成反比。无独有偶，芝加哥大学的乌富克·阿克彻厄尔（Ufuk Akcigit）与哈佛商学院的威廉·科尔（William Kerr）在2018年发表的论文中表明，大型公司取得的专利并不那么具有突破性，而是更注重于对现有产品与流程进行逐步改善。
11-That division of labour may help explain why many startups are bought by established firms. John Deere’s acquisition in 2017 of Blue River, for example, gave it the technology behind its clever weed sprayer, which it was then able to sell through its vast network of distributors. Over the past decade 74% of venture-capital “exits” in America were via such acquisitions, according to PitchBook, a data provider (see chart 2). That is up from next to none in the 1980s, leading to warnings of a plague of “killer acquisitions”, with big firms eating their potential future rivals.
这种分工或能解释为何一众初创企业会被老牌企业收购。例如，约翰迪尔公司于2017年收购蓝河公司（Blue River），为其生产的智能除草喷雾器提供技术支持。后来通过约翰迪尔公司庞大的分销商网络，这款喷雾器才得以畅销。数据提供商PitchBook称，美国过去十年间，通过此类收购完成风险投资退出的占比达到74%（见图2）。而在20世纪80年代，这一比例近乎为零。大公司不断吞并未来的潜在竞争对手，人们纷纷针对一波波“杀手级收购”发出警告。
Such cases do occur, but are rare. A study in 2021 by Colleen Cunningham, then at the London Business School, and co-authors found that 5-7% of acquisitions by drug companies, which rely heavily on startups to top up pipelines, looked suspect. Most of the time, folding into an established giant is simply the most efficient way for an innovative new firm to bring its breakthroughs to the world.
“杀手级收购”的情况确实存在，但并不多见。2021 年，伦敦商学院的科琳·坎宁安（Colleen Cunningham）与共同作者研究发现，看似可疑的制药公司收购案只占5%-7%，这些公司主要依靠初创企业筹资。大多情况下，纳入老牌巨头企业麾下只不过是创新型新秀公司向世界推出其创新产品的最有效方式。
A final explanation for the lack of competitive disruption relates to demographics. “Young firms are generally built by young people,” notes John Van Reenen of the London School of Economics. Between 1980 and 2020 the share of America’s population aged between 20 and 35 fell from 26% to 20%. The rate of new business formation dipped from 12% to 8% in the same period (see chart 3). In a study of 2019 comparing variations in population growth and new business formation across states in America, Fatih Karahan of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and co-authors concluded that falling population growth accounted for 60% of the decline in the business-entry rate over the past 40 years.
缺乏竞争性颠覆的最后一大原因涉及人口因素。伦敦经济学院的约翰·范·雷南（John Van Reenen）称：“年轻企业多由年轻人创立。”1980年到2020年间，美国20岁至35岁的人口占比从26%降至20%。同期，新创立企业占比从12%降至8%（见图 3）。纽约联邦储备银行（Federal Reserve Bank of New York）的法提赫·卡拉汉（Fatih Karahan）与共同作者在2019 年的一项研究中，比较了美国各州人口增长的情况和新企业创立数量的变化，他们得出结论：过去40年间，新创企业率降低，其中六成归因于人口增长率下降。
Application rates to start new businesses in America surged in late 2020 after plunging in the early months of the pandemic, and have since remained well above pre-pandemic levels. That entrepreneurial burst has mostly focused on hospitality and retailing, which were hammered by covid, and over time may peak, especially as pandemic-swollen household savings dwindle. Optimists will hope that the recent flurry of investment in AI startups can sustain the momentum. Even if it does, the corporate giants of the past may well remain on top.
新冠疫情爆发后的头几个月，美国创业申请率骤降。但在2020年年末，该数据飞升，并持续高于疫情前水平。掀起这一创业热潮的主力军是酒店业和零售业，这两个行业均在疫情期间遭受冲击。随着时间推移，这一创业热潮可能会达到顶峰，尤其随着家庭“疫情储蓄”逐渐耗尽。乐观主义者希望，近期AI初创企业的投资热潮能稳住创业势头。但是即便如此，老牌企业巨头仍将继续占据主导地位。
翻译组：
Devin，荣枯有数，得失难量
Charlie，往者不谏，来者可追
Octavia，键盘手和古风爵士，逃离舒适圈，有只英短叫八爷
校对组：
Alison，“贪玩又自由的风筝”
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观点|评论|思考
Neil，男，外贸民工，经济学人铁粉
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