科技高潮来袭，大公司求稳不求新

对于那些努力追赶创新步伐的大企业来说，最大的挑战不是竞争本身，而是如何让僵化的业务适应日新月异的形势。

这是通用电气新近发布的全球创新晴雨表中透露的。这项年度报道的调查对象是通用电气认为属于“具备一定知识水平”的企业管理人员和其他人士，调查的问题是，面对互联网和联网设备产生的海量数字信息，企业最大的挑战是什么。

通用电气将这种新形势称为“第四次工业革命”，还有人称之为“物联网”。《财富》杂志则将之命名为“21世纪企业”。

叫什么并不重要，关键在于，如此迅速获取信息的途径，改变了企业制造产品和提供服务的方式，也影响了客户使用所购物品和服务的方式。过去，这种变化仅限于传统的科技企业。如今，各行各业的企业都面临这种形势，因为科技在企业中的作用越来越大。

分析数据越深入，这种趋势就越明显。企业已经意识到需要创新。为了便于描述企业的这一心态，通用电气套用了一个有点过时的说法“害怕错过”——英文首字母组合为FOMO，并稍作修改为首字母合称FOBO的“害怕被淘汰”。此次受访的每五位高管之中就有至少四人（占比81%）担心，因为无法适应科技的飞速进步而跟不上时代，从而产生了“害怕被淘汰”的心理。

有人也许觉得，企业高管受到刺激后就会采取行动。可通用电气调查的结果显示，许多大企业还是在迎合现有的业务和客户，尽量在不影响已有业务的前提下发展新业务。通用电气称这种做法为“稳妥式”创新。调查显示，57%的受访高管更喜欢“稳妥”方式，追求渐进式创新，保护现有的核心业务。

通用电气的首席数字官比尔•鲁哈表示，这种担忧和策略往往在较大的公司和发达经济体的企业最为常见。在新兴市场国家和初创公司，企业高管、甚至当地政府对颠覆、风险和创新的态度都更开放。鲁哈认为，新兴市场的企业患得患失的情绪会少一点。

但没有哪家公司能承受裹足不前的损失。作为通用电气推行数字技术的负责人，鲁哈建议大企业破旧立新，摒弃沿袭老一套方式和旧生产线的“1.0模式”，而进入根据数字技术调整后的新经营方式——“2.0模式”。

鲁哈称，大多数企业犯的头号错误是，在原有业务之外成立独立的新业务部门，然后围绕数字技术的2.0模式开展创新活动。“这很可能反倒让形势恶化，因为会受到官僚作风妨碍，很可能在还没推进的时候就失败了。”鲁哈评价，“这么做还不如成立一家初创公司。”

企业迎接挑战的另一种方式是，抽调擅长1.0模式的精兵强将直接转入2.0模式，可那些干将未必是应对新挑战的适合人选。

鲁哈主张采用通用电气的做法，虽然很复杂，但起码目前已经让通用电气看到了成效。通用电气的做法是，命令从事1.0模式和2.0模式两种类型工作的员工合作，这样可以充分利用公司庞大的客户关系网，以及1.0模式下的员工数十年积累的经验心得。

这意味着，每种传统业务都配备相应的数字技术业务团队，数字业务团队同时要向首席数字官鲁哈汇报工作和相关业务部门的负责人汇报。也就是说，他们有两个领导。“有人向杰夫（通用电气首席执行官杰夫•伊梅尔特）抱怨的时候，他就会回答：‘确实很复杂，今后还会更复杂，努力挺过去吧。’”鲁哈如是说。

但鲁哈没有掩饰挑战的存在。他说：“有时会发生冲突，不得不强制解决纠纷，然后找出解决方案继续推进。万里长征才过半，现实就是我们在边干边创新。”

这么做也意味着承受更高的风险。不过，转型就不能回避冲突或者风险。“多数大企业都基于六西格玛管理方法管理组织，流程精准严密，一成不变，”鲁哈说，“大企业的做事方式和硅谷截然相反，硅谷中需要缔造创新的企业文化。”

鲁哈希望团队很快经历失败，但不想让团队一再重复同样的失误。因为在通用电气，任何失败与经验都会被追溯。这便是将大企业文化与“初创公司气质”相结合的具体做法，调查中81%的受访者都表示，倘若这种做法成为鼓励创新的常规方式，就可以真正证明自身的价值。假如企业能找到鼓励创新、追踪创新的具体过程，既轻松复制创意，又避免让员工停滞不前，那么，大企业就可能打造出孕育创新的企业文化。

在鲁哈领导下，通用电气正努力介入物联网相关的软件和服务，希望能创造价值数十亿美元收入的业务。四年前，该公司就制定了这项雄心勃勃的计划，现在其中一些已经看到成果。艾默生电气公司、运动装及配件供应商UnderArmour、电信运营商AT&T和IBM等大公司也开始大踏步走进数字业务领域。和犯错相比，他们更害怕被淘汰。（财富中文网）

译者：Pessy

校对：夏林

For large companies trying to keep up with the pace of innovation, the biggest challenge isn’t the competition. It’s adapting their sclerotic businesses to rapid change.

That’s the message from General Electric’s Global Innovation Barometer released recently. The annual survey asks business executives and members of what GE dubs “the informed public” about the biggest challenges facing companies amid a huge influx of digital information from the Internet and connected devices.

GE calls this new reality the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Others call it the Internet of things.Fortune has dubbed it the 21st Century Corporation.

It doesn’t matter what you call it, the fact of the matter is that rapid access to information changes how businesses make products and provide services. It also impacts how customers use what they buy. This used to be true only for traditional tech companies, but now it is true for all companies as technology becomes a bigger part more and more businesses.

A clearer picture emerges by digging further in the data. Companies are aware that they need to innovate. GE has taken the slightly dated phrase“fear of missing out,” or FOMO, and reapplied it to the corporate world as FOBO, or fear of becoming obsolete. More than four in five executives (81%) worry about being left behind as technology evolves faster than they can adapt, creating this “fear of becoming obsolete.”

One might think this would spur executives to action. Yet the survey’s results indicate that many big companies are trying to walk the line of catering to their existing businesses and customers while nurturing new lines of business for as long as they can without cannibalizing their existing ones. GEcalls this “safer” innovation. The study reports that 57% of executives favor this “safer” approach, pursuing incremental innovation and protecting their core business.

Bill Ruh, the chief digital officer at GE, says this fear and practice is seen most often in larger companies and those in established economies. In startups and emerging countries, executives and even governments are more open to disruption, risk, and innovation. Ruh says, they have less to lose.

But no company can afford to stand still. And as the head of GE’s efforts, he has advice for large organizations seeking to move from what he called Mode 1, the old way and old product lines, to Mode 2, which is a new way of doing business that is influenced by the digital world.

Ruh says the first mistake most companies make is that they build a new separate business line dedicated to the digital-focused Mode 2, and let that create new innovations. “But that’s no better off than a startup,” Ruh says. “It’s probably worse off because it’s hindered by bureaucracy and then it fails when it can’t get momentum.”

The other way companies tend to handle the innovation challenges is to take the best and brightest working in Mode 1 and put them on Mode 2 challenges. But they may not be the right people to handle the new set of challenges.

Instead, Ruh suggests what GE has done, which is complicated, but has so far been paying off for the industrial conglomerate. GE forced Mode 1 and Mode 2 to work together, and took advantage of the massive customer relationships and knowledge that the folks on the Mode 1 side had built up in their decades of experience.

This meant that each traditional business line had a digital counterpart, and the digital team reported to Ruh as the chief digital officer and also to whomever was in charge of the individual business unit. That meant people had two bosses. “When people complained to Jeff [Immelt, CEO of GE] he would say, ‘It’s complicated and it’s gonna be complicated. Just get over it,'” Ruh says.

And he doesn’t sugarcoat the challenges. “Sometimes, there is conflict and you have to force the resolution of that conflict so you can come to a resolution and build on that,” he says. “We’re only on step 17 of what is a 36-step process, and we accept that we’re inventing it as we go along.”

Part of that also means accepting more risk. This shift isn’t for the conflict or risk averse. “Most big organizations are built on Six Sigma where you take all of the variation out of a process and never change it,” Ruh says. “That world is the opposite of Silicon Valley and what you need to create a culture of innovation.”

Ruh wants his team to fail fast, but he doesn’t want them to make the same mistakes over and over again. And because it’s GE, those failures and learnings are tracked. That’s where this marriage of big corporate culture and the “startup ethos” that 81% of the survey’s respondents say is becoming the norm for encouraging innovation can really prove it’s worth. If companies can find ways to encourage ideas and then track them so they can be replicated without bogging people down, big-names businesses could better create cultures that foster innovation.

Ruh and GE are trying to build a multi-billion dollar business around software and services associated with the Internet of things. It’s a bold plan laid out four years ago, but already some of its efforts are bearing fruit. Emerson, UnderArmour UA 0.34% , AT&T T -1.77% , and IBM IBM -4.88% are among the companies that have taken big steps to become digital players by emphasizing the fear of become obsolete over their fear of making mistakes.