专题：史上50大商业对手（2013年）

    曾经，托马斯•爱迪生对一头大象施以电刑，只是为了展示竞争对手所采用技术的危险性。曾经，耐克（Nike）挖空心思要打压势头生猛的锐步（Reebok），签下了一名叫做迈克尔•乔丹的大学篮球运动员。曾经，中央太平洋铁路公司（Central Pacific Railroad）在24小时内不可思议地铺设了10英里（16.09公里）铁轨，只是为了避免政府的付款旁落到老对头联合太平洋铁路（Union Pacific）手中。

    角逐能催生伟大的故事，最伟大的角逐则催生最伟大的传奇——这样的理由足以说明下面的文字值得一读——它们描写的是聪慧、欺诈、高贵、谎言、胜利和失败。如果你是那种进取型读者，希望获得更多实际效用，你也一定会有所收获。毕竟，不朽的商业战役改变了世界。我们无法想象没有手机或互联网的生活，但如果微不足道的MCI没有去挑战庞大的美国电话电报公司（AT&T）（二者的争夺在我们的榜单中名列第四），通讯革命的进程就会截然不同。史蒂夫•乔布斯和比尔•盖茨（名列第六）只是在寥寥数个产品上存在冲突，却为了在计算机领域实现大相径庭的愿景比拼了35年。全球经济无法离开航空运输，而正是空客（Airbus）与波音（Boeing ）40年来无休止的竞争，才使得空中旅行更快更好。

    但是，强大的对手也可能使人迷失，而忽视了战场之外发生的事情。可口可乐（Coke）和百事可乐（Pepsi）（名列第一）忙于向对方饱以老拳，却错过了一个全新的概念。今天，令他们尴尬的是，美国便利店中销量最高的能量饮料并不是他们中间任何一家的产品（而是红牛。）通用汽车（General Motors）和福特（Ford）的注意力全都在对方身上，直到某一天发现他们的利润大多都流向了丰田（Toyota）。

    这些故事中，最难以抹去的是每场冲突中浓重的人文色彩。只有最大胆的小说家才能想象出阿迪达斯（Adidas）与彪马（Puma）（名列第20）之间兄弟相争的传奇。威尼斯与热那亚（名列第七）看起来似乎是两个宿怨城邦的故事，却定下了欧洲几百年来的竞争基调。而铁路公司之间的角逐则是一副关于经济和种族的画卷。它波澜起伏，充斥着破坏、欺骗与死亡。

    谁需要这些经验教训呢？没错，就是你。想想这些戏剧般的冲突，把它作为一种无须自责的乐趣。然后，为你的任务做好准备，把你的对手打得一败涂地。（财富中文网）

    There was the time Thomas Edison electrocuted an elephant to demonstrate the danger of a competitor's technology. The day that Nike (NKE, Fortune 500), desperate for an advantage over a surging Reebok, signed a college hoops player named Michael Jordan. And the time the Central Pacific Railroad laid an astounding 10 miles of track in 24 hours to grab government payments that the hated Union Pacific would otherwise claim.

    Rivalries make great stories, and the greatest rivalries make the greatest tales -- reason enough to read the following portraits of brilliance, skullduggery, nobility, mendacity, victory, and failure. But if you're the driven type who demands more practical benefits, you'll find those here too. After all, monumental business battles have changed the world. We cannot imagine life without cellphones or the Internet, but if tiny MCI hadn't challenged the titanic AT&T (T, Fortune 500)(the No. 4 rivalry in our ranking), the communications revolution would have played out much differently. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (No. 6) ended up selling few competing products yet contended for 35 years to impose radically different visions of computing. And a global economy that couldn't function without air travel is far faster and better because Airbus and Boeing (BA,Fortune 500) (No. 9) have had to fight each other every day for 40 years.

    But powerful rivalries can be blinding, obscuring events beyond the combatants' battlefield. Coke(KO, Fortune 500) and Pepsi (PEP, Fortune 500) (No. 1) were so busy pounding the daylights out of each other that they missed an entirely new notion, and today, inconceivably, the bestselling energy drink in U.S. convenience stores isn't made by either company. (It's Red Bull.)General Motors (GM, Fortune 500) and Ford (F, Fortune 500) obsessed over each other until one day Toyota (TM) had stolen the bulk of their profits.

    What comes through most strongly in these stories is each conflict's sheer human intensity. Only a brave novelist would have imagined the brother vs. brother saga of Adidas vs. Puma (No. 20). Venice vs. Genoa (No. 7) may look like a dusty tale of feuding city-states, but it set the tone for hundreds of years of European competition. The rivalry between the railroads was economic, ethnic, and spectacular, involving sabotage, deception, and death.

    Who needs such lessons? Oh, right, you do. So think of these dramas as guilt-free pleasures. Then, well prepared for the task, go forth and pulverize your rivals.