巨头尝试数字化？放手干吧

    不进则退。失败要趁早。抛开老教条。

    这些话听起来像是陈词滥调，但恰恰是那些想要尝试数字化的公司新的行事准则，在本周一晚举行的《财富》 “最具影响力女性”（Fortune's Most Powerful Women）伦敦会议上，一群高管在发言时如是说。

    她们的看法是：公司必须快速行动，而管理人员必须愿意承担风险，因为其客户正越来越多地去网上作出购买决策，获取信息，并抱怨或赞美自己最喜爱的品牌。“我们过去会讨论创意，或许来尝试一下。”《财富》杂志的母公司——时代集团（Time Inc）首席执行官劳拉•朗表示。而如今的企业可没有这么多时间。

    这些高管一致认为，社交媒体以及其他在线资源的兴起对社会而言是好事，但企业现在面临新的世界秩序。“数字化世界使一切都非常透明，” 挪威Telnor电信公司数字业务主管克里斯汀•斯克根•隆德表示。

    “你不再能控制消息了，”可口可乐（Coca-Cola）高级副总裁温迪•克拉克补充道。克拉克在可口可乐负责整合营销，她表示，消费者能快速传播或真或伪的信息，这使公司有责任积极主动地与他们沟通。

    员工的沟通方式也有所不同，这正改变着完成工作的方式，以及谁获得晋升。最聪明的人不一定能获得成功。克拉克认为，“时时在线”的员工在不断的分享信息——他们不会把知识藏着掖着以提高自己在组织中的身价。克拉克说：“这不是积极进取者的风格。”。

    大型企业必须挑选灵活且具有创业精神的合作伙伴——克拉克表示，可口可乐甚至在自己的一些合作公司中持有认股权证或股权。劳拉•郎则强调，需要确保巧妙地打造并管理这种联盟和合资企业，以免将规模较小的合作公司的创始人或负责人都赶走。

    但所有高管一致认为，只要大公司操作得当，将能产生很大影响。克拉克援引自己老板——可口可乐公司首席执行官穆泰康的话称，后者赞成“试验、失败、学习、提升”这一战略。

    译者：项航

    Eat or be eaten. Fail fast. Throw out the old playbook.

    Those may sound like clichés, but they also happen to be the new rules of the road for companies trying to inject their companies with digital DNA, according to a panel of executives who spoke at Fortune's Most Powerful Women London conference Monday evening.

    Their message: Companies must move quickly and executives must be willing to take risks as their customers increasingly go online to make buying decisions, consume media, and complain about –or celebrate—their favorite brands. "We used to be able to talk about ideas, maybe put a toe in the water," remarked Laura Lang, CEO of Time Inc. (TWX), Fortune's parent. Corporations today don't have the luxury of time.

    The panelists generally agreed that the rise of social media and other online resources has been good for society—but companies now are facing a new world order. "The digital reality makes everything very transparent," Kristin Skogen Lund, head of digital services for Norwegian telecom company Telnor.

    "You don't control the message anymore," added Wendy Clark, senior vice president for Coca-Cola (KO). Clark, who oversees integrated marketing efforts for the beverage company, said customers' ability to quickly disseminate information, true or false, puts an additional onus on corporations to proactively communicate with consumers.

    Employees, too, are communicating differently, and that's changing the way work gets done—and who gets promoted. The smartest guy in the room isn't necessarily the one who will get ahead. Clark suggested that "always on" employees are constantly sharing information—they don't squirrel away knowledge as a way of making themselves more valuable to their organizations. "It's not the orientation of the up-and-coming population," she said.

    Large companies will surely have to seek out nimble, entrepreneurial partners—Clark said Coke even takes warrants or equity stakes in some of its partner companies. Lang stressed the need to make sure such alliances and ventures are structured and managed in smart ways so not as to drive away all the founders or principals of the smaller company.

    But all the executives agreed that when big companies get it right, they have the ability to make a big impact. Clark invoked her boss, Coke CEO Muhtar Kent, who espouses a strategy of "test, fail, learn and scale."