Corporate giants were on the defensive for decades

Corporate giants were on the defensive for decades. Now they have the advantage again 企业巨头几十年来处于守势。现在他们又有优势

Illustration by Jon Berkerly

插图的Jon Berkerly

IN 1996, in one of his most celebrated phrases, Bill Clinton declared that “the era of big government is over”. He might have added that the era of big companies was over, too. The organisation that defined capitalism for much of the 20th century was then in retreat, attacked by corporate raiders, harassed by shareholders and outfoxed by entrepreneurs.

1996年,在他最为著名的论断之一,比尔·克林顿宣布“大政府时代已经结束”。他可能会加上一句”大公司的时代已经结束,。定义的组织,资本主义在20世纪的大部分时间里是在撤退,由股东和公司掠夺者的攻击,骚扰企业家给甩了。

Great names such as Pan Am had disappeared. Others had survived only by dint of huge bloodletting: IBM sacked 122,000 people, a quarter of its workforce, between 1990 and 1995. Everyone agreed that the future lay with entrepreneurial start-ups such as Yahoo! —which in late 1998 had the same market capitalisation with 637 employees as Boeing with 230,000. The share of GDP produced by big industrial companies fell by half between 1974 and 1998, from 36% to 17%.

伟大的名字如泛美航空公司已经消失了。人凭借巨大的放血才生存下来:IBM解雇了122000人,四分之一的劳动力,在1990年和1995年之间。每个人都同意未来躺在那些企业如Yahoo !——1998年年底的时候有同样的市值与637年与波音公司的637名员工。大型工业企业生产的占GDP的比例在1974年到1998年之间下降了一半,从36%降至17%。

Today the balance of advantage may be shifting again. To a degree, the financial crisis is responsible. It has devastated the venture-capital market, the lifeblood of many young firms. Governments have been rescuing companies they consider too big to fail, such as Citigroup and General Motors. Recession is squeezing out smaller and less well-connected firms. But there are other reasons too, which are giving big companies a self-confidence they have not displayed for decades.

今天的优势会再次转变。在某种程度上,金融危机负责。它已经破坏了风险投资市场,许多年轻公司的命脉。政府拯救公司他们认为太大而不能倒闭,花旗集团和通用汽车(General Motors)等。经济衰退是挤出较小而且不太出名的公司。但也有其他原因,给大公司一个自信他们没有显示了几十年。

Big can be beautiful

大可以美丽

Of course, big companies never went away. There were still plenty of first-rate ones: Unilever and Toyota continued to innovate through thick and thin. And not all start-ups were models of success: Netscape and Enron promised to revolutionise their industries only to crash and burn. Nevertheless, the balance had shifted in favour of small organisations.

当然,大公司不走了。仍有许多一流的:联合利华和丰田继续创新同甘共苦。并不是所有的初创企业都成为成功的典范:网景和安然答应颠覆他们各自的领域,最后只落得一败涂地。然而,已朝着有利于平衡的小组织。

The entrepreneurial boom was supercharged by two developments. Deregulation opened protected markets. Some national champions, such as AT&T, were broken up. Others saw their markets eaten up by swift-footed newcomers. The arrival of the personal computer in the 1970s and the internet in the 1990s created an army of successful start-ups. Steve Jobs and Steve

Wozniak founded Apple Computer in 1976 in the Jobs family’s garage. Microsoft and Dell Computer were both founded by teenagers (in 1975 and 1984 respectively). Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google in Stanford dorm rooms.

由两个发展企业家的激增施压。撤销管制规定开放了受保护的市场。一些国家冠军企业,如美国电话电报公司、被打破。其他人看到他们的市场被捷足先登的新手吃掉。的到来在1970年代个人电脑和互联网在1990年代创造了一大批成功的初创企业。史蒂夫·乔布斯和史蒂夫·沃兹尼亚克创办了苹果电脑公司在1976年乔布斯家的车库。微软和戴尔电脑都是由青少年(分别于1975年和1984年)。拉里 佩奇和谢尔盖 布林(Sergey Brin)开始在斯坦福宿舍谷歌。

But deregulation had already begun to go out of fashion before the financial crisis. The Sarbanes-Oxley act, introduced after Enron collapsed in disgrace, increased the regulatory burden on companies of all sizes, but what could be borne by the big could cripple the small. Many of today’s most dynamic industries are much more friendly to big companies than the IT industry. Research in biotechnology is costly and often does not bear fruit for years. Natural-resource companies, whose importance grows as competition for resources intensifies, need to be big—hence the mining industry’s consolidation.

但放松管制已经开始走出时尚在金融危机之前。萨班斯-奥克斯利法案,介绍在安然不光彩的垮台之后,各种规模的公司的监管负担增加,但可以由大可能削弱小。今天,许多最具活力的行业更友好比IT行业的大公司。生物科技领域的研究,成本高昂,通常不会结出果实。自然资源公司,其重要性随着对资源的竞争加剧,需要大——矿业的整合。

Two further developments are shifting the balance of advantage in favour of size. One is a heightened awareness of the risks of subcontracting. Toy companies and pet-food firms alike have found that their brands can be tainted if their suppliers (notably, from China) turn out shoddy goods. Big industrial companies have learned that their production cycles can be disrupted if contractors are not up to the mark. Boeing, once a champion of outsourcing, has been forced to take over faltering suppliers.

两个进一步发展的平衡转移优势的大小。一个是提高转包的风险意识。玩具公司和宠物食品公司都发现,自己的品牌可以污染如果他们的供应商(从中国)值得注意的是,假冒伪劣产品。大型工业企业已经学会了,就会扰乱他们的生产周期如果承包商不及格。波音公司一次冠军的外包,已被迫接管摇摇欲坠的供应商。

A second is the emergence of companies that have discovered how to be entrepreneurial as well as big. These giants are getting better at minimising the costs of size (such as longer, more complex chains of managerial command) while exploiting its advantages (such as presence in several markets and access to a large talent pool). Cisco Systems is pioneering the use of its own video technology to improve communications between its employees. IBM has carried out several company-wide brainstorming exercises, recently involving more than 150,000 people, that have encouraged it to put more emphasis, for example, on green computing. Disney has successfully ingested Pixar’s creative magic.

第二个公司的出现,已经发现了如何创业以及大。这些巨头变得更好在最小化的成本大小(如更长、更复杂的链管理命令),同时利用其优势(如在几个市场和访问大型人才库)。思科系统是开创性的使用自己的视频技术来提高员工之间的通信。IBM进行了全公司的头脑风暴活动,最近涉及150000多人,这鼓励了更多的关注,例如,在绿色计算。迪斯尼成功地吸收了皮克斯的创作魔术。

You might suppose that the return of the mighty, now better equipped to crush the

competition, is something to worry about. Not necessarily. Big is not always ugly just as small is not always beautiful. Most entrepreneurs dream of turning their start-ups into giants (or at least of selling them to giants for a fortune). There is a symbiosis between large and small. “Cloud computing” would not provide young firms with access to huge amounts of computer power if big companies had not created giant servers. Biotech start-ups would go bust were they not given work by giants with deep pockets.

你可能认为勇士的回归,现在能更好地粉碎竞争,是担心的东西。不一定。大并不总是丑陋的就像小并不总是美丽的。大多数企业家的梦想将自己的创业公司做成巨头(或者至少卖给巨头的财富)。有一个大型和小型之间的共生关系。“云计算”不会为年轻公司提供访问大量的计算机能力如果大公司没有创造巨大的服务器。生物科技初创企业破产他们不会给财大气粗的巨人。

The most successful economic ecosystems contain a variety of big and small companies: Silicon Valley boasts long-established names as well as an ever-changing array of start-ups. America’s economy has been more dynamic than Europe’s in recent decades not just because it is better at giving birth to companies but also because it is better at letting them grow. Only 5% of European Union companies born since 1980 have made it into the list of the 1,000 biggest in the EU by market capitalisation. In America, the figure is 22%.

最成功的经济生态系统包含各种大、小公司:硅谷拥有历史悠久的名字以及大量不断变幻的企业。美国经济近几十年来一直比欧洲更具活力的不仅仅是因为最好生公司,还因为它是更好的让他们成长。只有5%的欧盟企业诞生1980年以来进入1000年欧盟最大的市值。在美国,这个数字是22%。

The return of the giants could well be a boon for the world economy—but only if business people and policymakers avoid certain pitfalls. Businesses should not make a fetish of size, particularly if this means diversifying into a lot of unrelated areas. The conglomerate model may be tempting when cash is hard to find. But the moment will not last. By and large, the most successful big firms focus on their core businesses.

巨人的回归对世界来说很可能是一个好事,但前提是如果商人和决策者避免某些陷阱。企业不应该迷恋的大小,特别是如果这意味着分散到许多不相关的领域。集团模型可能是诱人的现金时很难找到。但不会持续。总的来说,最成功的大公司专注于自己的核心业务。

Policymakers should both resist an instinctive suspicion of big companies (see article) and avoid the old error of embracing national champions. It is bad enough that governments have diverted resources into propping up failing companies such as General Motors. It would be even more regrettable if they were to return to picking winners. The best use of their energies is to remove the burdens and barriers which prevent entrepreneurs from starting businesses and turning small companies into big ones.

大企业的决策者们不仅应该抗拒本能的猜疑(见文章),避免旧的错误接受国家冠军企业。它是够糟糕的,各国政府转移资源去扶持失败的公司,例如通用汽车(General Motors)。,那将会更加令人遗憾如果他们回到挑选赢家。充分利用他们的能量是删除的负担和障碍阻碍企业家创业和小公司变成大公司。