双语阅读｜博世欲向技术平台转型
BOSCH is everywhere. It has 440 subsidiaries and employs 400,000 people in 60 countries. Its technology opens London’s Tower Bridge and closes packets of crisps and biscuits in factories from India to Mexico. Analysts call it a car-parts maker: it is the world’s largest, making everything from fuel-injection pumps to windscreen wipers. Consumers know it for white goods and power tools synonymous with “Made in Germany” solidity.
博世（BOSCH）遍布全球，在60个国家拥有440家子公司和40万名员工。它的技术应用于伦敦塔桥的升降，也用于印度到墨西哥的工厂打包薯片和饼干。市场分析人士称博世为汽车零部件制造商：它是世界上最大的汽车零件厂商，生产所有零件：从喷油泵到雨刷器。消费者知道它是因为它的白色家电和电动工具——是可靠的“德国制造”的代表。
The company itself prefers to be called a “supplier of technology and services”, or “the IoT [internet-of-things] company”. On a hill overlooking Stuttgart, robotic lawnmowers whizz around its headquarters and a window displays dishwashers and blenders. Inside are signs of a company in transition: posters call on staff to rip off ties, celebrate “error-culture” and “just do it” opposite a quote from Robert Bosch, the founder: “Whatever is made in my name must be both first-class and faultless.”
博世自己更希望人们称之为“技术和服务供应商”，或“物联网公司”。在斯图加特附近的一座山上，割草机器人在公司总部周围呼啸地割着草，一扇窗房展示着洗碗机和搅拌机。在内部则有众多公司转型的痕迹：海报呼吁员工扯掉领带，鼓励“错误文化”和“想做就做”精神——这与公司创始人罗伯特·博世的话相反：“不管在我名下制造什么产品，它都必须是一流的、完美无缺的。”
The 130-year-old giant’s attempts to become more like a tech company reflect a world where value comes increasingly from software, services and data, not things. When software and hardware meet, as they do in the field of autonomous cars or the IoT’s world of internet-connected objects, manufacturers risk becoming mere commodity suppliers. Part of Bosch’s answer is to position itself as a trusted custodian of data. “Orwell’s 1984 is kindergarten compared to the IoT-world. When it comes, and people re-evaluate privacy, Bosch will be prepared,” says Peter Schnaebele, its head of smart homes.
这个历经130年的巨头想要变得更像一家科技企业，体现这个世界的价值越来越多地创造自软件、服务和数据，而非看得见摸得着的东西。在软硬件都得到满足时，就像他们在自动驾驶汽车或物联网世界的网络物体领域里的行动，制造商承担着只能成为商品供应商的风险。博世的答案之一是把自己定位为可靠的数据托管者。博世智能住宅主管彼得·施纳贝勒（Peter Schnaebele）说道：“与物联网世界相比，奥威尔的《1984》仅仅是幼儿园级别。物联网来临时，人们会重新评估隐私，博世也将做好准备。”
Soft power as well as hard
软实力和硬实力
Bosch is 92%-owned by a foundation, freeing it to invest in long-term innovation. In 2016 it spent nearly a tenth of its revenue of €73bn ($85bn) on R&D. Recently it opened a glitzy research campus in Renningen. It also has a €420m venture fund and a startup incubator. In a converted warehouse in Ludwigsburg, north of Stuttgart, six teams of former employees work to turn more radical ideas into businesses.
博世92%的股份由一家基金会拥有，这让它能自主投资长远性的创新项目。2016年，它从730亿欧元收入里拨出近十分之一用于研发。最近，它在德国伦宁根建立了一所设备先进的研究院。另外，它还设立了一家拥有4.2亿欧元资本的风险投资基金以及一家创业孵化器。在斯图加特镇北部的路德维希堡县由一处改建仓库里，由前员工组成的六个创业小组在将更为大胆想法转变为创业项目。
Volkmar Denner, its CEO, says that he still sees Bosch’s future as a product company, but one that is heavily involved in software and “middleware” and that provides services on top. It has invested in software; built a platform (on which it runs IoT services and apps and allows other firms to do the same), called Bosch IoT suite; and last year launched its own cloud and data centre. That is unusual; two other industrial giants, General Electric and Siemens, use Amazon’s cloud to run their platforms. Bosch says it is seeking greater speed, flexibility and data security. It plans to open several more centres next year.
博巨首席执行官福克玛·邓纳尔（Volkmar Denner）认为该公司未来仍将是一个以产品为主的企业，但也会一个主要涉及软件和“中间件”并提供顶级服务的企业。它投资了软件；建立名为博世物联网套件的平台（该平台经营物联网服务和应用程序，也允许其他公司做同样的事情），去年还推出了自己的云计算和数据中心。这个举措非同寻常，因为另外两个工业巨头通用电气和西门子用的是亚马逊的云计算来运行其平台。博世表示，它正寻求变得更高速、更灵活并且数据更安全。它计划明年再设立几个数据中心。
Bosch’s mantra is to increase the value of hardware with a “3S” strategy: sensors, software and services. Over half of its electrical-product classes are web-enabled; by 2020 all should be. Among its more telling bets is a €1bn investment in a semiconductor plant in Dresden for chips and sensors, to act as the “eyes and ears” of the IoT.
博世通过“3S”战略来增加硬件价值：传感器（sensors）、软件（software）和服务（services）。到2020年，超过一半的电气产品都连接网络。更值得一提的是，它在德累斯顿的一家半导体工厂投资10亿欧元，制造“物联网”的耳目的芯片和传感器。
The long-term prize will be to use the data to teach things to think—by, for example, training the lawnmowers to respond to unexpected objects. The company last year started an artificial-intelligence (AI) centre, with 100 employees in Bangalore, Palo Alto and Renningen.
这个长期投入会是利用数据让产品学会思考，例如，训练割草机能对意外出现的情况做出反应。去年，博世设立了一个人工智能（AI）中心，在班加罗尔、帕洛阿尔托和伦宁根雇佣了100名员工。
Because machines will be only as smart as the data they are fed, Bosch—which already “hosts” over 100,000 terabytes annually (1 terabyte fills 1,428 CD-Roms)—is gathering as much as it can. It crunches data from some British Gas customers to anticipate energy-maintenance needs, for example; data also pour in from factory floors and farmers’ fields filled with sensors. “Today we sell products and practically don’t have to care for them again because—being German-made—they’ll last,” says Christoph Peylo, Bosch’s head of AI. But in future products may need updating every two weeks, so “perhaps we’ll charge by volume of data, not hardware.”
因为机器的智能程度受限于所提供的数据，博世在尽可能收集更多数据，而且它每年已“存储”了10万TB的数据。它处理的数据来自英国天然气客户，用于如预测能源维修等需要；数据从遍布传感器的工厂地板和农田里蜂拥而至。博巨人工智能部门的负责人克里斯托夫·佩洛（Christoph Peylo）说：“现在我们卖的产品几乎不用担心再次维修，因为德国制造是经久耐用的。但在未来，产品可能需要每两个星期更新一次，也许我们将根据数据量而不是硬件进行收费。”
Coup, an electric-scooter sharing scheme in Berlin and Paris (pictured), has no Bosch hardware at all. The company just provides the platform and buys the scooters in from Taiwan. It is Bosch’s first direct-to-consumer business in “mobility”. This area—loosely, anything that involves getting people from point A to point B—is crucial to Bosch, generating over half its revenue. The firm invests €400m per year in “electro-mobility”, or developing parts for electric cars, bikes, charging stations and so on. Some 3,000 developers work on driver-assistance systems. It holds nearly 1,000 patents for automated driving and by 2019 expects to make €2bn from driver assistance (double what it earned in 2016).
柏林和巴黎的一项电动摩托车共享计划Coup（如图），完全不使用任何博世的硬件。该公司只提供平台，并从台湾购买摩托车。这是博世首个在“机动性”领域直接面向消费者的业务。这个领域——大致说来，任何涉及一个地方到另一个地方的交通工具——对博世万分重要，产生的收益超过总收入的一半。该公司每年投资4亿欧元于“电动出行”，或用于发展电动汽车、自行车和充电站的零部件等。大约有3000名开发人员投入到司机辅助系统开发之中。有近千个自动驾驶专利，预计于2019年从辅助驾驶盈利20亿欧元（是2016年收入的两倍）。
Sharing economy
共享经济
Whether it is cars or the IoT, partnerships have become an efficient way to innovate. It was not always in the company’s culture to share with outsiders, says Lothar Baum, a data scientist at the firm. Indeed, Bosch is still seen by many as too conservative, cautious and cost-sensitive. But it is making connections with all sorts of other companies; from a map-building partnership with Apollo, a Chinese platform owned by Baidu, to working with Tesla on autonomous cars, to a deal with Amazon to use Alexa—its voice-controlled computer—to steer Bosch smart-home systems. “Especially in the pre-competitive stage, sharing makes sense,” says Mr Baum.
无论是汽车还是物联网，合作伙伴关系成为创新的一种有效途径。博世的数据科学家洛塔尔 ·鲍姆（Lothar Baum）称，该公司的企业文化里并不包含与外界分享。事实上，许多人仍然认为博世过于保守、谨慎，易受成本影响。不过，它正与各种企业建立联系，与百度旗下的阿波罗平台建立地图合作关系，与特斯拉合作开发自动驾驶汽车，与亚马逊达成协议，使用它的语音控制计算机Alexa来控制博世智能家居系统。鲍姆说：“分享是有意义的，特别是在竞争开始之前。”
The big unknown is what will happen in the competitive stage. The race among leading IoT platforms is wide open. Eric Lamarre of McKinsey, a consultancy, divides the field into the horizontal tech platforms, such as Amazon; the more vertical manufacturers, such as Bosch and GE; and startup platforms. This is when questions around data become critical. Bosch thinks that customers will soon value data more than they do today. At the launch of the “Bosch IoT Cloud” Mr Denner noted that many companies and consumers say data-security concerns stop them using cloud technologies and connectivity products, offering its own cloud as an answer.
一个未知数是在竞争阶段会发生什么。在顶级的物联网平台之间，竞争是开放的。麦肯锡咨询公司的埃里克·拉马尔（Eric Lamarre）将该领域分为三种：一种是综合性的技术平台，如亚马逊；一种是更垂直的制造商，如博世和通用电气；其余则是一些创业平台。现在关于数据的问题变得至关重要。博世认为很快，客户将会比现在更加重视数据。在博世的云计算平台“Bosch IoT Cloud”推出时，登纳曾指出，许多企业和消费者表示对数据安全问题的担忧阻止了他们使用云技术和相关产品，所以博世推出自己的云端服务作为答案。
The firm hopes that manufacturing nous will still count for something, too. Even in a super-connected world “you don’t want to be surrounded by shoddy devices which are cheaply built,” says Mr Peylo. Last month Bosch’s smart security camera won the German Design Award; its white goods are selling like hot cakes in Asia. The company will continue to make non-shoddy products and to put its sensors into factories, homes and cars. It will almost certainly remain a big part of the “T” in IoT. The question is whether it can become far more than that.
博世希望制造业共识也仍能有其价值。即使是在重试互连的世界里，“你不会希望身边都是粗制滥造、以次充好的设备，”佩洛解释道。在前一个月，博世的智能安全相机赢得了德国设计奖；其白色家电在亚洲热销。该公司将继续生产优质产品，并将传感器放入工厂、家庭和汽车中。毋庸置疑，博世仍将是物联网的重要部分，问题在于它能否比这做的更多。
编译：张楚燕
审校：张冕
编辑：翻吧君
来源：经济学人