经济学人 | 嘘，牛逼公司的牛逼之道：Keeping it under your hat

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公司是大而全好？还是小而精好？

这可能是公司管理者亘古的难题。

公司的策略随着时代而变化，当今，社会分工愈加细化。但奇怪的是，反而是越大越全的公司活得越好？

这是为何？原因在一个词“垂直整合”。

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Keeping it under your hat

An old management idea gets a new lease of life

Apple and Tesla are two of the world's most talked-about companies. They are also two of the most vertically integrated. Apple not only writes much of its own software, but designs its own chips and runs its own shops. Tesla makes 80% of its electric cars and sells them directly to its customers. It is also constructing a network of service stations and building the world's biggest battery factory, in the Nevada desert.

Keeping it under your hat：保密，不要声张

An old management idea gets a new lease of life  lease：租期，a (new) lease of life是一个常用的表达，延年益寿；生活质量更好。这里指传统的管理理念正在重获生机。

vertically integrated company：垂直整合的公司。Vertical：垂直的，垂直一般是指专注某个行业。Integrated：整合的，词根来源于integrate，成为一体，另外还有一个常见的词就是integer，整数。

chip：芯片，薯条。

现在人们最常提起的公司莫过于苹果与特斯拉。为什么？因为他们是最垂直整合的公司。何谓垂直整合呢？苹果不仅会自己写软件，也自己设计芯片和经营商店。（其实也就是尽量内部处理公司经营业务。）特斯拉80%的电动汽车都是自产并直销给客户的，同时，特斯拉也建造了服务网络，在内华达沙漠建立着世界上最大的电池工厂。

A century ago this sort of vertical integration was the rule: companies integrated “backwards”, by buying sources for raw materials and suppliers, and “forwards”, by buying distributors. Standard Oil owned delivery wagons and refineries in addition to oil wells. Carnegie owned iron-ore deposits and rail carriages as well as blast furnaces. In his 1926 book “Today and Tomorrow” Henry Ford wrote that vertical integration was the key to his success: “If you want it done right, do it yourself.” He claimed he could extract ore in Minnesota from his own mines, ship it to his River Rouge facility in Detroit and have it sitting as a Model T in a Chicago driveway—in no more than 84 hours.

Backwards：向后,这里表示向后整合，即往自己的上游整合；同理，forwards是向前整合，即往下游整合，比如自己做分销商

Standard Oil：标准石油公司，大名鼎鼎的石油之王洛克菲勒的石油公司，曾经独霸美国，拥有石油行业90%占有率

Carnegie：卡内基，美国钢铁之王

Henry Ford：亨利·福特，福特公司的创始人

Extract：提取，大家注意这个词经常出现在日护用品中，比如某个护肤霜里含有什么提取物就会用extracted。

Ore：矿物

Driveway：汽车道

上个世纪这种垂直整合的经营策略曾经是经营管理圈的王道：要么向后整合，公司购买原材料和供应商，要么向前整合，购买分销商，其实读到这里大家应该就很清楚垂直整合到底是什么了？（其实就是一家公司，尽量将其生产线整合在一起，从核心技术到零件处理以及直销分销，都属于公司的业务范围。）标准石油公司，除了油井之外，还有自己的送货车以及炼油厂；卡内基的产业不仅包含铁矿床外还拥有火车运力和高炉。1926年，福特在他的书“今天和明天”中写到垂直整合就是他的成功秘诀：如果你想做什么，自己做吧。（不要依靠其他公司，自己公司包揽。）福特公司因为自己公司垂直整合业务管理，可以在84小时之内，从自己在明尼苏达的矿井中采集出矿石，送到在底特律胭脂河的处理厂，组装成T型车并开上芝加哥的车道。

Today this sort of bundling is rare: for the past 30 years firms have been focusing on their core business and contracting out everything else to specialists. Steelmakers sold their mining operations and carmakers spun off their parts suppliers. Controlling it all made sense, the argument went, when markets were rudimentary: when supplies of vital materials were limited or contractors could cheat you. As markets became more sophisticated these justifications fell away. Thanks to globalization, companies could always find new resources and better suppliers.

Bundle：捆绑，商业中表示捆绑销售，这里应当作“捆绑业务”。

Contract：签约，contract out签约把工程包出，即“外包”

Steelmakers：钢铁制造商

spin off：是一个很专业的商业用语，意为母公司收回子公司全部股本使之脱离的做法；做名词可表示“有用的副产品”。比如：This ice-cream is just a spin-off of KFC.这种冰淇淋是KFC的副产品。

Justification：理由

fall away：消失，远去

thanks to：多亏，既表达原因，又表现出偏向是褒义的。这个句型好用而简洁，请大家多多练习，如：Thanks to the her fearless, we finally survive the game. 或者，thanks to the high speed railway, we can visit each other in a far less time.

但是现在这种捆绑业务的商业运营方式已经很少了：在过去的30年中，公司都只关注最最核心的技术，其余的都外包给专业公司了。比如，钢铁制造商出售采矿业部门，汽车制造业独立出零部件生产部门。按照这种说法，当市场还处于早期时，掌控一切是十分必要的：要么因为关键材料的供给有限，要么因为承包商会骗你。但是随着市场越来越细分，这些理由都不存在了。全球化的出现，使得公司总是能够找到新的原料和更好的供应商。

Yet a growing number of companies are having second thoughts. This is most visible in information technology. The industry's leaders were at the heart of the contracting-out revolution. Vertically integrated companies such as IBM outsourced as much as possible in order to lower costs. Upstarts such as Microsoft prospered by focusing on a narrow—but exceptionally valuable—slice of the pie: the operating system of personal computers. Now many startups in Silicon Valley pride themselves for being “full stack”. But re-bundling can be found everywhere, from fashion to manufacturing.

Visible：可见的

Outsource=contract out，outsource将资源放出去，就是外包。

Upstart：创业公司

full slack：slack闲置部分，full slack全栈式，意即打造一套从完整的、端到端的产品或服务体系，类似我们的一条龙服务。

但是最近，越来越多的公司都在重新考虑这种新的管理业务方式。特别是信息科技产业。这一产业曾是外包业务的中坚力量。垂直整合公司比如IBM，为了降低成本，能外包出去的都外包出去了。很多新兴企业是通过专注于某一块相对窄小但价值巨大的蛋糕而发迹，如微软便是通过专注于个人电脑操作系统而发展壮大的。而现在硅谷的很多创业公司以自己是全栈式为豪。从这里我们就能够看出来，旧管理方式已经开始重获新生了。从时尚业，到制造业，业务重组比比皆是。

Reasons for the reversal abound, but five stand out. The most important is simplicity. Consumers are willing to pay a premium for well-integrated products that do not force them to deal with different suppliers or land them with components that do not talk to each other. They want to be able simply to press a button and let the machine do the rest. This is largely why Apple opted for integration, as did Nest, a maker of wireless thermostats.

reasons abound：原因很多，例：reasons for I love you abound, but one stand out. the most important is simplicity。

Reversal：倒转

Premium：额外费用，词根pre前面的

opt：选择，动词，加上ion就是大家更为熟知的名词option。

thermostat：恒温器

为什么会出现业务重组，原因有很多，但有五点最为突出。最重要的就是简便。如果一个良好集成的产品使他们不用跟不同的供应商打交道并且免去面对一堆互相不合适的组件的烦恼，用户是愿意付高价的。他们想要简单的按一下按钮，然后就让机器做剩下的。这是苹果选择整合的主要原因，无线恒温器制造商内斯特也是如此。

A second reason is that firms operating on the technological frontier often find it more efficient to do things in-house. Companies that are inventing the future frequently have no choice but to pour money into new ventures rather than buy components off the shelf. This explains Tesla’s “gigafactory” for batteries: their availability is the biggest constraint on the firm’s growth. Boeing tried to cut its production costs by outsourcing 70% of the production of its 787 Dreamliner to hundreds of different suppliers— more than any airliner before. The result was a disaster: parts came in late; bits didn’t fit together; deadlines were missed. The firm reversed course, bringing manufacturing back in house and buying a factory.

Frontier：前沿的，由front变体而来，等同于cutting-edge。

Ventures：合资企业，风险投资

Gigafactory：合成词，把gigantic和factory合成到一起，意为超大电池厂

Constraint：束缚，约束。

Reserved course：逆转，推翻，颠倒

第二个原因，就是业务处于科技前沿的公司发现事情在内部解决比较高效。这些公司的发明太过超前，常常别无选择，不能在外面买到零件，只能自己投入资金去研究。这也解释了特斯拉作为汽车公司有一家超大电池厂：对于该公司的发展，电池的持久是瓶颈。波音公司试图通过将其787客机70%的生产外包给上百家不同的供应商（远远大于以往任何班机），来削减生产成本。结果很糟糕：部件延迟交付，零件无法咬合，错过截止日期。为了挽救损失并避免下次出现该类错误，波音公司又将生产制造撤回内部自己解决，并买下了一家工厂。

A third reason is choice: the more the market has to offer, the more important it is to build a relationship with customers. Netflix and Amazon now create their own television shows in order to keep their viewers from buying more generic content elsewhere. Harry’s, an American company that sends its subscribers a regular supply of razors and shaving cream, spent $100m to buy a German razor-blade factory. Choice is reinforced by speed: fashion brands such as Spain’s Zara have resisted contracting out everything. Instead, they operate their own clothes factories, employ their own designers and run their own shops. This gives them a big advantage: they can turn the latest trend into new product, often in small batches, and have it in stores in a couple of weeks. Less vertically integrated brands such as Gap and American Apparel find they are stuck with yesterday’s creations because they cannot get supply chains to produce new wares quickly.

generic content：通用内容，未加商标的，或者未被定性的。

Subscriber：订购者，用户。词根，scrib=write，表示“写”。Subscription，捐献，订金，订阅

razor-blade：剃须刀片

choice is reinfored by speed：唯快不破。

第三个原因，就是选择。市场想要提供越多，和顾客建立好关系就越重要。亚马逊和Netflix（一家卖DVD的公司）现在推出了自己的电视栏目，使他们的顾客不再是在其他地方随便买些什么。哈利，一个美国公司给他的订阅者定期供应剃须刀和剃须膏，花了1亿美元买了一个德国剃须刀工厂。公司的响应速度可以巩固用户的选择：像西班牙时尚品牌Zara，一切都亲力亲为。他们自己有服装工厂，雇佣专属设计师，运营自己的店面。他们给自己创造了巨大的优势：可以将潮流投入新产品，通常是小批量，几周内就上市。不太采用垂直整合的公司，像是Gap和美国服装，常常陷入昨天的东西还在卖的窘境，因为无法获取供应链，不能及时生产新产品。

And then there is a combination of old worries about geopolitical uncertainty and new worries about the environment. In 2014 Ferrero, an Italian confectionary-maker, bought OltanGida, which produces one-third of Turkey’s hazelnuts, the vital ingredient in Nutella. In 2015 IKEA, a Swedish furniture company, bought nearly 100,000 acres of forests in Romania and the Baltic region. Earlier this year ChemChina, a state-owned company, purchased Syngenta, a Swiss seeds and pesticides group, for $43 billion, driven by the government’s quest for food security. Cruise companies such as Costa Cruises and Disney have bought islands in the Caribbean and the Bahamas so that they can guarantee that their passengers will have somewhere empty and unspoiled to visit when they sail past.

confectionary：糖果的，是confection（甜食、精工制作的物品）的变体

hazelnuts：榛子

ingredient：成分，因素

pesticide：杀虫剂，农药

quest：追求，探索

Unspoiled：未受到破坏的

接下里，第四个原因，地理这个老问题和环境这个新麻烦。2014年费列罗，一个意大利糖果商，买下了OltanGida，后者贡献了土耳其三分之一的榛子产量，而榛子正是Nutella巧克力酱的主要原料。2015年IKEA，一家瑞典的家具公司，在罗马尼亚与波罗的海地区买了将近10万英亩森林。16年年初，中国化工出于政府为食品安全的考虑，以430亿美金的价格买了瑞士种子与农药公司。歌诗达等邮轮公司买下加勒比海和巴哈马的岛屿，以便他们航行时，其游客有一处空旷未被破坏的桃花源可以游览。

Core complexities

The renewed fashion for vertical integration will not sweep all before it. For the most mundane products the logic of contracting out still reigns supreme. And today’s bundling is less ambitious than Henry Ford’s: Apple, for instance, contracts out a lot of production to contract manufacturers such as Foxconn (though it keeps them on a tight leash). Integration is also hard to pull off: Tesla lost some of its shine on April 11th when it recalled 2,700 of its sport-utility vehicles because of a glitch. That said, striking the right balance between doing things in-house and contracting things out is clearly much more complicated than it was in the days when Tom Peters and his fellow gurus told companies to focus on what they do best and outsource the rest.

Sweep：打扫，扫除，清理；sweep all before it，扫除一切（问题）。

Mundane：世俗的，平凡的，平常的

reign：支配，统治权。The monkey reigns in the mountains when the tiger is not there：山中无老虎，猴子称大王。

Leash：皮带

Guru：大师，专家，权威

然而逐渐复苏的垂直整合大潮并不能解决一切问题。对于很多技术含量要求不高的或者比较平常的产品来说，外包依然江山稳固。现在的捆绑业务多没有亨利·福特那么野心勃勃：像是苹果，会将许多生产外包给富士康这样的协议生产商（尽管这会让他们被严格束缚）。整合也不易完成，特斯拉就因为一个很小的问题，不得不召回2700辆SUV导致其品牌形象受损。也就是说，现在想要在自制与外包之间实现恰当的平衡要比以往复杂得多。汤姆皮特和他那些同僚大师们告诫人们“专注于最擅长的事，其余的全部外包”的时代已经过去了。

结语：垂直整合作为重获新生的经营策略，有其优势，可以更快的赶上潮流并解决地理环境等问题。

但也不是一味地采用垂直整合就一定好，不是所有的企业都能够承受垂直整合背后的风险与成本。

其前景如何，还要继续观察。

英文原文：

http://www.economist.com/news

讲解：霞姐 / Tiassa / Angel

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