如今，商品可以直接送货上门，这令所有人都兴奋不已。其实这种想法有点可笑，因为我记得在我小时候，我母亲经常从Marshall Field’s订购各种商品。这家超市曾经遍布芝加哥城区和郊区，但如今已经没落。送货上门并不是最近才发明的新创意，而是重新发现和改善了旧的创意。

在市中心骑自行车出行也是一种非常传统的理念。智能手机的普及和大量资本的涌入，正在使这种有益于环境的出行方式迸发出新的生机。房地产巨头Related Cos的子公司Motivate，在旧金山等多个美国城市经营有桩共享单车。作为它的客户，我对其服务非常满意。（Motivate的收入部分来自广告；福特（Ford）是其湾区业务的赞助商；在纽约的共享单车上印有花旗集团（Citi）的名称。）

一家新的竞争对手正在填补北美市场的空白，它就是由阿里巴巴投资的中国共享单车公司Ofo。在中国国内，Ofo与腾讯投资的摩拜单车（Mobike）竞争激烈。在这场代理人战争中，资本是武器，而数据则是战利品。在美国，Ofo的扩张速度更快。据Uber元老、Ofo美国业务负责人克里斯·泰勒表示，Ofo目前已经进入超过12个美国城市，到新年之前将进军100多个城市。在其进军北美的第一个城市达拉斯，截至新年前夜，Ofo投放的共享单车数量将达到10,000辆。

周一，我在旧金山的Ofo美国总部与泰勒进行了会面。由于Motivate与旧金山市签署了排他性合同，目前，Ofo尚未在该市开展业务。我使用“总部”这个词经过了认真考虑： Ofo的办公地目前位于一间WeWork办公室内。WeWork本身也代表了对共享办公空间这个传统理念的再创新。我之前对WeWork有所了解，但实地到访却让我有了一种新的感悟。一层巨大的办公楼里精心规划出了大小不一的工作空间。（这栋大楼有整整一层曾经都是时代公司（Time Inc.）使用多年的办公室，如今时代公司即将搬离此处。）租户付费使用会议室，账单与租金一同结算。我们很难想象没有达到一定规模的公司，未来还会不嫌麻烦地租赁商业地产。

最好的新创意是改进那些经受住考验的传统理念。这种创新才能带来真正的商机。（财富中文网）

译者：刘进龙/汪皓

Everyone is agog at the things that can be delivered directly to their home these days. That’s kind of funny, seeing as I remember when I was very small my mother regularly ordered numerous items from Marshall Field’s, the long-departed and wonderful department store in Chicago and its suburbs. Home delivery didn’t so much get invented recently as rediscovered—and improved.

Riding bikes around urban centers is an exceedingly old idea too. Smartphones and oodles of capital are reinventing that environmentally positive idea. Motivate, an offshoot of the real estate giant Related Cos., runs docking-station-based share bikes in a handful of U.S. cities, including San Francisco, where I’m a satisfied customer. (Motivate makes part of its money from advertising; Ford is the Bay Area sponsor; Citi slaps its name on bikes in New York.)

A new competitor is blanketing North America, Ofo, the Alibaba-backed (BABA, -1.25%)Chinese bike sharing company. Ofo is locked in a battle with Tencent-backed Mobike in China, a proxy war with capital as the weapon and data as the prize. In the U.S., Ofo is expanding far more rapidly. According to Uber veteran Chris Taylor, head of Ofo’s U.S. business, the company already is in more than 12 U.S. cities and will be in more than 100 by next year. Its first city, Dallas, will have 10,000 bikes by New Year’s Eve.

I met Taylor Monday in Ofo’s U.S. headquarters in San Francisco, where Ofo doesn’t operate yet, the result of an exclusive contract Motivate signed with the city. I use “headquarters” advisedly: Ofo currently is housed in a WeWork office, itself a reinvention of an old concept, shared office space. I’ve known about WeWork, but visiting one of its locations was an epiphany. Various-sized workspaces are carved elegantly out of a giant floor. (Time Inc., which will go away soon, had an entire floor in the very same building for many years.) Tenants pay for conference-room time with chits that come with their rent. It’s hard to imagine any company below a certain size going to the trouble of leasing commercial real estate again.

The best new ideas improve on tried and true old ideas. That’s a form of innovation with real commercial opportunity.