为什么说公司并非越大越好

    长久以来，在经济和商业领域，发展壮大都是第一要务。在世界人口突破70亿大关，并且很快将会超过80亿甚至90亿的大背景下，一个越来越清晰的趋势是，最优秀的公司和国家将不再以绝对规模取胜，而是以清晰的目标、战略眼光和果断行动所带来的速度与敏捷性著称。随着人类组织的规模达到前所未有的程度，未来的人、公司和国家要想成为赢家，必须要做到：专注于对其核心利益相关者最为重要的事情；快速处理新信息，并从中学习，然后在错综复杂的形势中采取周全、慎重的行动。

    就以房屋租赁社区Airbnb为例。这家公司经历了爆炸式增长——而且并非通过收购或建设更多物业这类传统方式。该公司之所以能够实现快速增长，是因为他们清楚对预定酒店房间的人来说真正重要的是什么，还因为他们认真研究了“分享经济”的崛起。虽然没有大量有形资产，但他们果断地创建了一种新模式来满足传统需求——这种模式也是通过规模化来实现竞争优势，但并非传统意义上的实际控制物业。事实上，Airbnb不仅创建了一种新模式，也创造了一个新市场。

    在如今这样一个全天候运转的全球化市场上，传统的准入壁垒正在消失，传统的增长观念，即扩大规模和控制范围，正在失去其效能。市场进入和客户接触变得越来越简单；产品与创意的生命周期正在缩短，因为各种理念、数据和知识可以通过互联网迅速而公开地传播。通过昂贵的产品创新获得的竞争优势无法持久。数据、理念和情感触发器(emotional trigger)正在激烈争夺人类的关注、忠诚度和支出，其结果是，品牌正在丧失客户黏性。

    鉴于这些变化，《财富》500强公司（Fortune 500）纷纷采取新方法来推动增长，这并不意外。例如，一些传统的强势公司最近纷纷选择瘦身，其中包括摩托罗拉（Motorola）、卡夫食品（Kraft）和雅培（Abbott）。这些公司的CEO之所以选择将公司规模（与控制范围）缩小一半，就是为了提高专注度，加快增长。出于同样的理由，产品组合合理化也变得非常普遍，这样做的公司包括宝洁（Procter & Gamble）、ITW集团和联合利华（Unilever）。就在最近，包括伊顿（Eaton）和艾伯维（Abbvie）在内的一些公司甚至开始频频采用昂贵的税收倒置策略。

    实际上，这些巨无霸公司的CEO们正在将分割和彻底变革各自的组织，以推动这些公司的发展。他们不得不这么做，因为Airbnb和租车公司Uber的成功证明，规模更小、基础设施更简单、更灵活的公司，可以取得成功——看看这些资产几乎可忽略不计的公司的市值，你就会恍然大悟。当然，这并不意味着扩大规模和并购不再是推动增长的重要因素。随着“更大总是更好”这种理念不再是主流意识，公司必须更加慎重地考虑规模化和并购这些传统策略。

    那么，谁将领导未来的公司？我们需要的领导人，必须对公司的市场、客户和能力有深刻见解；能够创建和利用更加灵活的架构，进行联合和合作；能够基于自省、创新和建立意料之外的合作关系的能力，培养公司文化；能够抓住新的市场机遇，跟上更激进的投资者的步伐；能够启发新的增长模式。

    本文作者萨利•勃朗特为西北大学凯洛格商学院院长。（财富中文网）

    译者：刘进龙/汪皓

    Growth has long been the imperative in economics and business. As the world’s population tops 7 billion, and soon 8 and 9, it’s becoming clear that the best performing organizations, and perhaps countries, will be less defined by absolute size and more defined by the speed and agility that comes from clarity of purpose, strategic insight and decisive action. As the scale of human organizing expands to unprecedented levels, the winners will be those people, organizations, and countries that can: focus on what matters most to their core stakeholders; rapidly process new information, learn from it, and then thoughtfully and deliberately act amid the complexity.

    Think Airbnb. They’ve experienced explosive growth – and not by the traditional means of buying or building more properties. They did it by understanding what really mattered to those booking hotel rooms. They did it by studying the emergence of the “sharing economy.” And, absent a vast footprint of physical assets, they did it by acting decisively to create a whole new model for meeting this traditional need – a model that delivers competitive advantage through scale but not in a traditional sense of physically controlled properties. Indeed, Airbnb not only created a new model, it created a new market.

    In today’s global marketplace that operates 24/7, the traditional barriers to entry are falling, and traditional conceptualizations of growth as increasing in size and span of control are losing their potency. Market and customer access have become easier; product and idea life cycles are shrinking as ideas, data, and knowledge travel fast and openly across the Internet. Competitive advantage gained from expensive product innovations is shorter-lived. And brands are losing their stickiness amid an onslaught of data, ideas and emotional triggers that compete for human attention, loyalty and spending.

    In light of these changes, it’s not surprising that we’re seeing new approaches to driving growth throughout the Fortune 500. One example is the recent spate of mammoth splits at traditional powerhouse firms including Motorola , Kraft and Abbott. In each case, powerful CEOs chose to divide the size of their companies (and spans of control) in half in order to increase focus and speed growth. For the same reasons, portfolio rationalizations are now commonplace; e.g., Procter & Gamble, ITW and Unilever . And even more recently, expensive inversions have become in vogue, including firms like Eaton and Abbvie.

    CEOs of traditional mega-conglomerates are literally slicing up and uprooting their organizations in order to fuel growth. And they have to because the successes of companies like Airbnb and Uber have shown that smaller firms with simpler and more nimble infrastructures can win – just look at the market caps being attached to these asset-lite firms. This is not to suggest that building scale and pursuing acquisitions are no longer important drivers of growth. It does mean however that these strategies will be held to greater scrutiny as the idea that “bigger is always better” becomes quaint.

    And who is going to lead these firms of the future? We’ll need leaders with deep insight into their organizations’ markets, customers and capabilities; leaders who create and leverage more flexible architectures for connecting and collaborating; leaders who foster cultures based on constant self-scrutiny, innovation and an ability to forge unexpected partnerships; leaders who can keep pace with new market opportunities and ever-more-aggressive investor herds; leaders who can inspire new kinds of growth.

    Sally Blount is dean of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.