【中英双语】从Netflix到SpaceX，出其不意的战略其实都有迹可循
Strategy Needs Creativity
我发现商学院学生在学习战略时往往感到沮丧。他们学到的和想学的有落差。包括我在内的战略教授通常向学生讲授严谨的分析工具，帮助他们评估战略问题，比如五力模型、绘制价值网、谋划竞争地位。学生们知道这些工具的重要性，认真学习如何使用它们。但他们也意识到，这些工具更适合理解而非重塑现有商业环境。他们知道，改变游戏规则的战略源于创造性思维——直觉的火花、不同思维方式之间的联系，以及放手一搏。
I’ve noticed that business school students often feel frustrated when they’re taught strategy. There’s a gap between what they learn and what they’d like to learn. Strategy professors (including me) typically teach students to think about strategy problems by introducing them to rigorous analytical tools—assessing the five forces, drawing a value net, plotting competitive positions. The students know that the tools are essential, and they dutifully learn how to use them. But they also realize that the tools are better suited to understanding an existing business context than to dreaming up ways to reshape it. Game-changing strategies, they know, are born of creative thinking: a spark of intuition, a connection between different ways of thinking, a leap into the unexpected.
在本文中，我将探讨构建突破性战略的四种方法：1. 对比。战略家应发现并质疑对公司或行业现状的假设。这是重塑企业最直接、最有效的方法。2. 组合。史蒂夫·乔布斯对创造力的著名说法是：“不过是连接的能力”；许多巧妙的商业举措来自连接看似彼此独立甚至冲突的产品或服务。3. 制约。优秀的战略家会研究组织的局限性，并考虑如何化局限为优势。4. 情境。如果你能够总结出在完全不同的情境下类似难题是如何解决的，令人惊叹的洞察就会浮出水面。
In this article I explore four approaches to building a breakthrough strategy: (1) Contrast. The strategist should identify—and challenge—the assumptions undergirding the company’s or the industry’s status quo. This is the most direct and often the most powerful way to reinvent a business. (2) Combination. Steve Jobs famously said that creativity is “just connecting things”; many smart business moves come from linking products or services that seem independent from or even in tension with one another. (3) Constraint. A good strategist looks at an organization’s limitations and considers how they might actually become strengths. (4) Context. If you reflect on how a problem similar to yours was solved in an entirely different context, surprising insights may emerge.
对比：
何种传统智慧适合对比？
Contrast
What pieces of conventional wisdom are ripe for contradiction?
伊隆·马斯克似乎深谙此道。他成立SpaceX，试图推翻有关太空旅行的几大假设：必须有固定时间表，必须由公众埋单，以及必须搭乘一次性火箭。他正在开发私人资助且重复利用火箭的需求导向业务。
Elon Musk seems to have a knack for this approach. With SpaceX he is attempting to overturn major assumptions about space travel: that it must occur on a fixed schedule, be paid for by the public, and use onetime rockets. He may be on track toward a privately funded, on-demand business that reuses rockets.
在表述此类假设时，最好尽量精准，甚至紧贴字面意思。试想2000年时的视频租赁行业，百视达（Blockbuster）是其中的龙头企业，其商业模式中的假设不言自明：人们喜欢在住宅附近的零售店领取DVD。DVD的库存应进行限制，因为新碟片很昂贵。由于供不应求，顾客如果逾期不还，需要支付滞纳金（基本上与公共图书馆营业模式相同）。但Netflix仔细审视了这些假设。物理位置是必要的吗？邮寄DVD更便宜、更方便。是否有解决新片产生的高额费用之道？如果影视工作室对收益分享协议持开放态度，双方都可从中受益。这两项变化使Netflix能提供更多电影、更长租期、取消滞纳金，乃至重塑行业。
It’s best to be precise—even literal—when naming such assumptions. Consider the video rental industry in 2000. Blockbuster ruled the industry, and the assumptions beneath its model seemed self-evident: People pick up videos at a retail location close to home. Inventory must be limited because new videos are expensive. Since the demand for them is high, customers must be charged for late returns. (It was basically a public-library model.) But Netflix put those assumptions under a microscope. Why is a physical location necessary? Mailing out videos would be cheaper and more convenient. Is there a way around the high fees for new releases? If the studios were open to a revenue-sharing agreement, both parties could benefit. Those two changes allowed Netflix to carry lots more movies, offer long rental periods, do away with late fees—and remake an industry.
大多数情况下，对比战略可能看起来不如Netflix（通过流媒体重塑自我，并成为内容创建者）或SpaceX（如果成功）那么具有革命性。例如，任何组织都可以自问，能否可以有效反转活动流程顺序。零售业的传统模式是从一家旗舰店（通常位于市中心）开始，并添加卫星店（在郊区的位置）。再来看快闪店（Pop-up store）：在某些情况下，它们符合旧扩张模式，类似小型卫星店；但在其他情况下，快闪店首先成立，如果成功才会扩张。
Most of the time, strategy from contrast may look less revolutionary than Netflix (which remade itself again by streaming videos and becoming a content creator) or SpaceX (should it succeed). Any organization can ask whether it might usefully flip the order in which it performs activities, for example. The traditional model in retail is to start with a flagship store (usually in a city center) and add satellites (in suburban locations). Now consider pop-up stores: In some cases they conform to the old model—they are like mini-satellites; but in others the pop-up comes first, and if that’s successful, a larger footprint is added.
另一种方法是考虑撼动价值链，在任何行业中，价值链的侧重方向都是固定的，一些参与者是供应商，其他则是顾客。反转价值链可能催生新商业模式。
Another approach is to consider shaking up the value chain, which in any industry is conventionally oriented in a particular way, with some players acting as suppliers and others as customers. Inverting the value chain may yield new business models.
在某些行业中，现状已经决定了产品或服务高度捆绑且十分昂贵，分拆它们是构建对比战略的另一种方法。不同的市场细分可能更愿意以更合理的价格获得捆绑中不同的子集。互联网在一个又一个行业中推动了挑战者的此类分拆：音乐、电视和教育是个中翘楚。在位企业必须从内部进行重大改革才能与分拆者竞争，这使得这种方法特别有效。
In some industries the status quo has dictated highly bundled, expensive products or services. Unbundling them is another way to build a contrast strategy. Various segments of the market may prefer to get differing subsets of the bundle at better prices. Challengers’ unbundling of the status quo has been facilitated by the internet in one industry after another: Music, TV, and education are leading examples. Incumbents have to make major internal changes to compete with unbundlers, rendering this approach especially effective.
如何开始
1. 准确识别你所在公司或行业传统思维上的假设。
2. 考虑通过证明其中一个或多个假设错误可能会带来的收获。
3. 故意扰乱正常工作模式其中的某一方面，以打破根深蒂固的假设。
How to Begin
Precisely identify the assumptions that underlie conventional thinking in your company or industry.
Think about what might be gained by proving one or more of them false.
Deliberately disturb an aspect of your normal work pattern to break up ingrained assumptions.
需要注意什么
因为业务模式所依据的假设已经嵌入所有流程中，并且稳定的业务需要可预测性——所以改变方向并不容易。组织非常善于抵制变革。
What to Watch Out For
Because the assumptions underlying your business model are embedded in all your processes—and because stable businesses need predictability—it won’t be easy to change course. Organizations are very good at resisting change.
组合：
如何让传统上独立的产品或服务建立联系？
Combination
How can you connect products or services that have traditionally been separate?
组合是艺术和科学中典型的创意方法。正如安东尼·布朗特（Anthony Brandt）和大卫·伊戈尔曼（David Eagleman）在《失控的物种》（The Runaway Species）中所说的那样，通过组合两种截然不同的想法 ——乘坐电梯和太空之旅——阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦摸索出了广义相对论。在商业中，富有创意和成功的举措也可以通过组合独立事物而产生。这些机会往往伴随着互补的产品和服务。例如，产品和支付系统传统上是价值链中的独立节点。但中国社交媒体平台微信（属于腾讯）现在包含名为微信支付的集成移动支付平台，使用户能够在其社交网络中购买和销售产品。腾讯和阿里巴巴正在扩展中国之外的生态系统，正在与海外支付公司协调，使其他国家的零售商能够接受其移动支付服务。
Combination is a canonical creative approach in both the arts and the sciences. As Anthony Brandt and David Eagleman note in The Runaway Species, it was by combining two very different ideas—a ride in an elevator and a journey into space—that Albert Einstein found his way to the theory of general relativity. In business, too, creative and successful moves can result from combining things that have been separate. Often these opportunities arise with complementary products and services. Products and payment systems, for example, have traditionally been separate nodes in value chains. But the Chinese social media platform WeChat (owned by Tencent) now includes an integrated mobile payment platform called WeChat Pay that enables users to buy and sell products within their social networks. Expanding beyond the Chinese ecosystem, Tencent and Alibaba are coordinating with overseas payment firms to enable retailers in other countries to accept their mobile payment services.
有时竞争对手可以从联合力量中获益，将蛋糕做大。例如，宝马和戴姆勒宣布计划结合他们的移动服务——共享汽车、乘车服务、停车位、电动汽车充电服务和公共交通服务。据推测，两大汽车制造商希望通过此举有效反击优步和其他蚕食传统汽车产业的参与者。
Sometimes competitors can benefit from joining forces to grow the pie. For example, BMW and Daimler have announced plans to combine their mobility services—car sharing, ride hailing, car parking, electric vehicle charging, and tickets for public transport. Presumably, the two automakers hope that this move will be an effective counterattack against Uber and other players that are encroaching on the traditional car industry.
在其他情况下，来自完全独立行业的公司通过组合产品为客户创造了新价值。Apple和Nike已经开始行动，早在2006年就推出了Nike + iPod运动套件，使Nike鞋子能够与iPod联通来计步。最近，几个版本的Apple Watch与Nike + Run Club应用程序完全集成。Nest Labs和亚马逊也相互补充：通过亚马逊的虚拟助手Alexa部署语音控制，Nest的智能家用恒温器变得更有价值。
In other instances, companies from wholly separate industries have created new value for customers by combining offerings. Apple and Nike have done so since the 2006 introduction of the Nike+ iPod Sport Kit, which enabled Nike shoes to communicate with an iPod for tracking steps. More recently, versions of the Apple Watch have come with the Nike+ Run Club app fully integrated. Nest Labs and Amazon also complement each other: Nest’s intelligent home thermostat becomes even more valuable when it can deploy voice control via Amazon’s virtual assistant, Alexa.
新技术是组合不同可能性的源泉。人工智能和区块链自然结合在一起，以保护医疗和其他敏感领域中训练算法所需的大量个人隐私数据。区块链和物联网以传感器和安全数据的形式聚集在去中心化应用中，如食品供应链、运输系统和智能家居，其智能合约中包含自动化保险。
New technologies are a rich source of combinatorial possibilities. AI and blockchain come together naturally to protect the privacy of the large amounts of personal data needed to train algorithms in health care and other sensitive areas. Blockchain and the internet of things come together in the form of sensors and secure data in decentralized applications such as food supply chains, transportation systems, and smart homes, with automated insurance included in smart contracts.
无论是通过连接产品和服务、两种技术、上下游，还是其他成分，组合产生的战略关乎寻找跨越传统边界的联系。富有创意的战略家必须质疑现状，这次不仅要跳出“一个盒子”的思维定式，甚至还要考虑“两个或更多盒子”。
Strategy from combination involves looking for connections across traditional boundaries, whether by linking a product and a service, two technologies, the upstream and the downstream, or other ingredients. Here, too, the creative strategist must challenge the status quo—this time by thinking not just outside the box but across two or more boxes.
如何开始
1. 成立具有不同专业知识和经验的小组，头脑风暴产品和服务的新组合。
2. 寻找与互补产品供应商（甚至可能是竞争对手）协作之道。
How to Begin
Form groups with diverse expertise and experience; brainstorm new combinations of products and services.
Look for ways to coordinate with providers of complementary products (who may even be competitors).
需要注意什么
企业通常在单一产品或活动层面管理和衡量利润。但组合需要在系统层面进行思考和估量。
What to Watch Out For
Businesses often manage for and measure profits at the individual product or activity level. But combinations require system-level thinking and measurements.
制约：
如何化限制或负累为机遇？
Constraint
How can you turn limitations or liabilities into opportunities?
世界上第一部科幻小说《弗兰肯斯坦》是玛丽·雪莱（Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley）在一个异常寒冷和狂风骤雨的夏日，被困在日内瓦湖时创作出来的。当时她在室内无所事事，只能锻炼自己的想象力。艺术家对限制有很多了解——深刻的，如生活中的严重挫折；结构性的，如写出具有特定押韵格式的十四行诗。在商业中，创造性思维也能将限制化为机遇。
The world’s first science fiction story, Frankenstein, was written when its author, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, was staying near Lake Geneva during an unusually cold and stormy summer and found herself trapped indoors with nothing to do but exercise her imagination. Artists know a lot about constraints—from profound ones, such as serious setbacks in their lives, to structural ones, such as writing a 14-line poem with a specified rhyming structure. In business, too, creative thinking turns limitations into opportunities.
限制可能会激发创造性战略，这看似是个悖论。解除限制，以及可行的操作，现在依旧可行。而且很有可能，解除限制后，选项变多了。但这忽略了人们在特定情况下想出多种方法的可能性，制约可能引发全新的思路。当然，金发女孩原则（源自童话《金发姑娘和三只熊》的故事，寓意凡事都必须有度，而不能超越极限。——译者注）适用于此：太多的制约会阻碍所有可能性，但完全没有制约也会带来问题。
That constraints can spark creative strategies may seem paradoxical. Lift a constraint, and any action that was previously possible is surely still possible; most likely, more is now possible. But that misses the point that one can think multiple ways in a given situation—and a constraint may prompt a whole new line of thinking. Of course, the Goldilocks principle applies: Too many constraints will choke off all possibilities, and a complete absence of constraints is a problem too.
特斯拉在进入汽车行业时并不缺财力，缺少的是传统经销商网络（被认为是汽车制造商商业模式的关键部分）。特斯拉选择在网上销售汽车，并建立类似苹果的商店，以薪资制聘用销售人员，而没有建立经销商网络。这样做实际使特斯拉相对竞争对手处于有利位置，竞争对手的经销商可能因需要花工夫推销电动汽车而非内燃机车，感到左右为难。此外，特斯拉直接控制定价，而从传统经销商处购买电动汽车的消费者可能会面临高额差价。
Tesla hasn’t lacked financial resources in entering the car industry, but it doesn’t have a traditional dealership network (considered a key part of automakers’ business models) through which to sell. Rather than get into the business of building one, Tesla has chosen to sell cars online and to build Apple-like stores staffed with salespeople on salary. This actually positions the company well relative to competitors, whose dealers may be conflicted about promoting electric vehicles over internal-combustion ones. In addition, Tesla controls its pricing directly, whereas consumers who buy electric vehicles from traditional dealers may encounter significant variations in price.
如何开始
1. 列出组织的“缺陷”（而非能力），并测试是否可以化劣势为优势。
2. 考虑刻意施加一些限制，鼓励人们找到新的思维和行动方式。
How to Begin
List the “incompetencies” (rather than the competencies) of your organization—and test whether they can in fact be turned into strengths.
Consider deliberately imposing some constraints to encourage people to find new ways of thinking and acting.
需要注意什么
成功企业面临的制约并不多；人们或许认为没有必要研究新可能如何创造新机遇。
What to Watch Out For
Successful businesses face few obvious constraints; people may feel no need to explore how new ones might create new opportunities.
情境：
相距甚远的行业、想法或学科
如何能够解决你最紧迫的问题？
Context
How can far-flung industries, ideas, or disciplines shed light on your most pressing problems?
仿生学整门学科致力于从大自然中寻找工程学、材料科学、医学和其他领域问题的解决方案。例如，牛蒡带有毛刺的种子能通过小钩子附着在动物毛皮上蔓延播种。乔治·梅斯特拉尔（George de Mestral）受其启发，在20世纪40年代设计出了一种不会卡顿的（拉链很容易卡顿）搭扣，即威扣（Velcro）魔术贴。这是一种经典的解决方案。从某一情境的问题开始，找到另一个情境中已经解决了的类似问题，并移植解决方案。
An entire field, biomimetics, is devoted to finding solutions in nature to problems that arise in engineering, materials science, medicine, and elsewhere. For example, the burrs from the burdock plant, which propagate by attaching to the fur of animals via tiny hooks, inspired George de Mestral in the 1940s to create a clothing fastener that does not jam (as zippers are prone to do). Thus the invention of Velcro. This is a classic problem-solving technique. Start with a problem in one context, find another context in which an analogous problem has already been solved, and import the solution.
跨行业进行情境切换，甚至跨时间都是可行的。计算机图形用户界面（GUI）的开发在某种意义上是“退步”的产物：开发人员从陷于对基于文本的编程思考，转向高度可视化，甚至连儿童都可以操作的手/眼环境。同样，一些人工智能研究者目前正在探索儿童如何学习，从而进一步了解机器学习的过程。
Context switching can be done across industries, or even across time. The development of the graphical user interface (GUI) for computers was in a sense the result of a step backward: The developers moved from immersion in the text-based context in which programming had grown up to thinking about the highly visual hand-eye environment in which young children operate. Similarly, some AI researchers are currently looking at how children learn in order to inform processes for machine learning.
当公司将研发职能设置在远离总部的地方时，就会认识到进入他人情境的重要性。这不仅仅像科技行业将人才转移到硅谷，或生物技术将人才转移到波士顿那样简单。初创企业也应该把自己置于学习和成长的最佳环境中。位于深圳的硬件加速器HAX拥有来自众多国家的硬件启动团队，使其能进入“世界硬件资本”的高速生态系统，在原型迭代过程中速度翻了两番。
When companies locate R&D functions far from headquarters, they’re acknowledging the importance of jumping into someone else’s context. This is not just a strategy for large companies that move people to Silicon Valley for tech or the Boston area for biotech. Start-ups, too, should put themselves in the best context for learning and growth. The hardware accelerator HAX, located in Shenzhen, hosts hardware start-up teams from numerous countries and enables them to tap into the high-speed ecosystem of the “hardware capital of the world,” quadrupling the rate at which they cycle through iterations of their prototypes.
专注于情境的战略可能涉及将解决方案从一种设置转移到或多或少与之类似的另一种设定。这可能意味着，通过寻找具有远见的先驱者来揭示对问题（或机遇）的全新思考。归根结底，关键是不能被困在同一语境中。
Strategy focused on context may involve transferring a solution from one setting to another more or less as is. It may mean uncovering entirely new thinking about problems (or opportunities) by finding pioneers who are ahead of the game. At bottom, it’s about not being trapped in a single narrative.
如何开始
1. 向另一个行业的局外人解释你的业务。来自不同背景的新视角有助发现新的答案和机会。
2. 与主要用户和极端用户互动，参与创新热点。
How to Begin
Explain your business to an outsider in another industry. Fresh eyes from a different context can help uncover new answers and opportunities.
Engage with lead users, extreme users, and innovation hotspots.
需要注意什么
企业需要关注内部流程以实现其当前的价值主张，但企业迫于压力关注自身，可能会阻碍向其他不同情境中的行外人取经。
What to Watch Out For
Businesses need to focus on internal processes to deliver on their current value propositions—but the pressure to focus internally can get in the way of learning from the different contexts in which other players operate.
在管理咨询领域，“战略”和“创新”的各个方面已开始融合。例如，以设计和创新著称的公司IDEO已转向战略咨询，而麦肯锡则在其战略咨询中增加了设计思维方法。这种融合带来了显而易见的问题：如果战略和创新之间的区别不像以前那么明确，我们是否真的需要仔细考虑创造力在战略制定过程中的作用？
In the world of management consulting, aspects of “strategy” and “innovation” have started to converge. IDEO, the design and innovation powerhouse, has moved into strategy consulting, for example—while McKinsey has added design-thinking methods to its strategy consulting. This convergence raises an obvious question: If the distinction between strategy and innovation is less clear than it once was, do we really need to think carefully about the role of creativity in the strategy-making process?
我坚信答案是肯定的。战略的核心仍然是通过差异化寻找创造和提出价值的方法。这是一项复杂而艰巨的工作。可以肯定的是，它需要能识别传统思维中令人惊讶、富有创意的部分。但它还需要用于分析竞争格局的工具，对所处环境形成威胁的动态以及公司的资源和能力。我们需要教会商学院学生和高管如何同时兼具创意和严谨。
I believe strongly that the answer is yes. At its core, strategy is still about finding ways to create and claim value through differentiation. That’s a complicated, difficult job. To be sure, it requires tools that can help identify surprising, creative breaks from conventional thinking. But it also requires tools for analyzing the competitive landscape, the dynamics threatening that landscape, and a company’s resources and competencies. We need to teach business school students—and executives—how to be creative and rigorous at the same time.
亚当·布兰登伯格是纽约大学斯特恩商学院J.P.Valles教席教授，坦登工学院杰出教授，以及纽约大学上海创意创新项目教学主任。
刘铮筝 | 译 刘筱薇 | 校 钮键军 | 编辑
本文有删节，原文参见《哈佛商业评论》中文版2019年4月刊。
