下一波科技革命瞄准官僚主义

    第二波：新的商业模式

    1998年，我与别人合写了《财富》杂志（Fortune）关于互联网的第一篇封面报道。当时，亚马逊（Amazon）和eBay还只是小角色，谷歌（Google）还在襁褓之中，Facebook还远没有诞生。但是当时已经能看出真正革命性的东西就要问世了。我们写道：

    互联网将以大家意想不到的方式改变消费者和生产者的关系。互联网不仅仅是一个新的营销渠道，也不仅仅是一个新的广告媒介。它是一个新的行业秩序的基础。

    当年的预测已经变成了现实。互联网显著降低了企业的入门成本，将更大的权力赋予了消费者，挤走了中间人，压缩了利润空间，模糊了行业界限，而且从根本上挑战了广域市场的基本理念。

    在第二波IT革命中，不仅企业的运营模式发生了变化，已经传承百年的商业模式也不可避免地被裹挟进革命大潮中。在出版、旅游、娱乐、零售、金融服务、电信、教育等许多行业，传统商业模式越来越非中介化、非物质化和大众化，而且经常发生知名企业“八十老娘倒绷孩儿”，被颠覆性的小公司抢占了先机。比如沃尔玛（Wal-Mart）直到2000年才开设了网上商城，比亚马逊在网上卖书晚了六年。虽然沃尔玛有着强大的资源，但它也只能跟在亚马逊身后追赶，说不定永远也赶不上。2012年，沃尔玛的网络销售额达到了77亿美元，只是亚马逊610亿美元的零头。

    互联网泡沫破裂后，很多人觉得互联网对商业世界的影响衰退了。但是Facebook、Twitter、LinkedIn、Yelp、TripAdvisor等社交网络的崛起却激发了另一轮商业模式的创新。对于那些久负盛名的大企业来说，他们不仅仅要在互联网上占有一席之地，现在还得变成一家社交型企业——也就是要以全新的方式与顾客进行交流，而且通常是通过移动平台。但是和以往一样，行业老前辈们往往对新潮流反应迟缓。虽然像博柏利（Burberry）这样的公司已经从“社交”角度重新设计了商业模式，但也有更多的公司仅仅只是把“社交”当成另一种营销手段。

    第一波IT革命中的弄潮儿是给军备竞赛提供武器的人，比如思科（Cisco）、戴尔（Dell）、EMC、惠普（HP）、IBM、印孚瑟斯（Infosys）、微软（Microsoft）、VMWare，以及那些IT咨询公司。如今这些主营企业IT业务的公司的总市值已经超过了1万亿美元。他们虽然已经赚得盆满钵平，但他们的客户还在苦苦追赶潮流。

    第二波革命的成功者是那些开发出以网络为中心的全新商业模式的企业家和投资人。比如在美国，光是谷歌、Facebook和亚马逊三家公司的市值加起来就超过了7400亿美元。中国三大网络公司的市值加起来也超过了2259亿美元。但是我觉得，我们很难找到任何一家老牌企业的网络商业部门能够贡献哪怕只是这个市场价值的一个零头。

    Wave 2: New Business Models

    In 1998, I co-authored Fortune's first cover story on the Internet. At the time, Amazon and eBay (EBAY) were toddlers, Google (GOOG) was still crawling, and Facebook (FB) had yet to be born. Nevertheless, it seemed that something truly revolutionary was afoot. We wrote:

    The Internet will change the relationship between consumers and producers in ways more profound than you can yet imagine. The Internet is not just another marketing channel; it's not just another advertising medium. The Internet is the foundation for a new industrial order.

    And so it turned out to be. The Internet dramatically lowered the cost of entry for companies, empowered customers, squeezed out middle men, compressed margins, blurred industry boundaries, and challenged the very idea of the mass market.

    In this second wave of IT-powered change, it wasn't operating models that were reworked, but hundred-year old business models. In publishing, travel, entertainment, retailing, financial services, telecommunications, and education, legacy business models were, disintermediated, dematerialized, and democratized. And more often than not, it was the insurgents, not the incumbents, who took the lead. For example, Wal-Mart didn't open its online store until 2000, six years after Amazon (AMZN) sold its first book online. Despite Wal-Mart's (WMT) formidable resources, it has yet to catch up, and probably never will. In 2012, Wal-Mart sold $7.7 billion of goods online, a fraction of Amazon's $61 billion.

    After the dotcom bust, many thought the Internet's impact on business would wane. But the emergence of the "social web" triggered another avalanche of business model innovation, exemplified by companies like Facebook, Twitter (TWTR), LinkedIn (LNKD), Yelp (YELP), and TripAdvisor (TRIP). For incumbents, it was no longer enough to be an e-business, now you had to be a social-business -- engaging with customers in entirely new ways, often on mobile platforms. As before, industry veterans were often slow to catch the scent. For every company like Burberry, that reconceived its business model from a "social" point of view, there were dozens of others that treated "social" as little more than a marketing initiative.

    In IT's first wave, the winners were the arms makers -- companies like Cisco (CSCO), Dell (DELL), EMC (EMC), HP (HPQ), IBM (IBM), Infosys (INFY), Microsoft (MSFT), and VMWare (VMW), and the army of IT consultants who marched along in their wake. Today, the companies that form the vanguard of the enterprise-focused IT industry have a market value of well over $1 trillion. They bulked up while their clients were struggling to keep up.

    The big winners in Wave 2 were the entrepreneurs and investors who developed entirely new web-centric businesses. In the U.S., Google, Facebook, and Amazon alone have a combined market value of more than $740 billion. China's top three Internet companies have an estimated market value that tops $225 billion. It would be hard, I think, to find a single incumbent whose Internet-focused initiatives have generated even a fraction of this sort of market value.