Big companies should follow rather than innovate
Innovation is the sex of business publishing, guaranteed to grab the attention of frustrated managers. For all their talk of the need to develop radical new products, the efforts of most big companies are limp. Breakthroughs come almost always from virile young start-ups.
The main reasons for this are well understood. The skills required to establish new markets risk-taking, experimentation and a little hot-headed passion differ from those needed to run a mature business. Tom Burns and George Stalker, sociologists at Edinburgh University, explained all this 40 years ago in The Management of Innovation, first published in 1961.
What can be done to improve the innovation performance of established companies? There is no shortage of theories and therapies.
Clayton Christensen has argued that radical innovations should be nurtured within semi-autonomous business units, managed separately from the core. Gary Hamel has called for a cultural revolution in big companies and a concerted effort to “bring Silicon Valley inside”. Mike Tushman and Charles O'Reilly advise managers to create “ambidextrous organisations” which can handle both radical and incremental innovation.
None of these US writers underplay the challenge. But, fundamentally, their outlook is optimistic: with patience and a dose of managerial Viagra, mature companies can match the innovation prowess of their younger competitors.
Nonsense, say Costas Markides, a professor at the London Business School, and Paul Geroski, the former LBS economist who now chairs the UK's Competition Commission. In Fast Second they argue that executives at big companies should stop kidding themselves: “The innovation process that creates radically new products cannot be easily replicated inside the modern corporation . . . Trying to incorporate new skills and mindsets into the existing organisational DNA will end in failure.”
If this sounds defeatist, look at the record. The number of big companies with a knack for radical innovation is depressingly small. 3M, inventor of the Post-it Note, is one of the very few with a consistent record of coming up with completely new products and creating mass markets.
Most corporate titans with a reputation for innovation borrowed their best ideas. Contrary to popular myth, Amazon did not invent the online bookstore, Procter & Gamble's Pampers were not the first disposable nappy, and General Electric did not create the market for CAT scanners.
Markides and Geroski are careful not to overstate their case. They distinguish between “radical innovations” those with a disruptive impact on both consumers and producers and “sustaining innovations” that improve on an existing design. Large corporations are often very good at the latter.
The authors distinguish between product innovation and business model innovation, at which big companies seem more adept. But when it comes to breakthrough products, most mature companies do not perform.
The reason, according to Fast Second, is that most radical new products arise from the chaotic, unco-ordinated efforts oftechnologists working at hundreds of universities, research institutes and start-ups. Corporate bureaucracies cannot hope to combine and recombine ideas with such vigour.
Does this imply that large companies are always doomed to be unseated by disruptive innovators? Far from it. Instead of trying to develop their own breakthroughs, big companies should let start-ups, universities and venture capitalists do the job.
Only when a market starts to coalesce around a “dominant design” should corporate giants step in. It is at this stage that their strengths market penetration and financial muscle allow them to create mass markets much faster than any start-up. The trick is knowing when to enter.
The acknowledged master is Microsoft, which did not invent the computer operating system, the overlapping windows interface, the spreadsheet, word processing software nor the web browser. Yet it came to dominate each market. It is the “fast follower” par excellence, now attempting to overhaul Google's search engine, Palm's hand-held computer software and Sony's PlayStation console.
Markides and Geroski are also playing this game. A number of books published over the past two years (Hank Chesbrough's Open Innovation, Georges Haour's Resolving The Innovation Paradox, Andrew Hargadon's How Breakthroughs Happen) have proposed similar theories of innovation. Yet Fast Second scores by being scholarly yet accessible, thorough yet slim. It could turn out to be the Pampers of the genre.
大公司创新不如借鉴
创新是商业出版领域的生意眼，准能引起受挫经理人的注意。尽管多数大公司成天谈论开发革命性新产品的必要性，但它们往往行动无力。突破几乎总是来自充满活力的年轻初创企业。
这里的主要原因很好理解。建立新市场所需的技巧是冒险、试验和有点卤莽的热情，这与运作成熟企业所需的技巧不同。40年前，在1961年首次出版的《创新管理学》(The Management of Innovation)一书中，爱丁堡大学的社会学家汤姆?伯恩斯(Tom Burns)与乔治?斯托克(George Stalker)对此做了完整的解释。
要改善成熟企业在创新上的表现，可以做些什么？这方面并不缺少理论和应对办法。
克莱顿?克里斯滕森(Clayton Christensen)声称，革命性创新应该在半自主性业务部门内开展，这些部门应在核心业务以外独立进行管理。盖瑞?哈米尔(Gary Hamel)呼吁在大公司中进行文化革命，并共同努力“将硅谷带到内部”。迈克?托什玛(Mike Tushman)和查尔斯?奥莱利(Charles O’Reilly)建议，企业管理者创造“非常灵巧的组织”，能够同时处理革命性和渐进性创新。
这些美国作者中，没人淡化面临的挑战。但从根本上说，他们的展望都很乐观：只要有耐心和一剂管理伟哥(Viagra)，成熟公司的创新威力就能媲美它们的年轻对手。
这是胡说八道，伦敦商学院教授科斯塔斯?马基德斯(Costas Markides)和前伦敦商学院经济学家保罗?杰罗斯基(Paul Geroski)说，后者目前是英国竞争委员会(Competition Commission)主席。他们在《创新跟随者》(Fast Second，又译《快老二》)一书中声称，大公司的高层应当停止开自己的玩笑：“创造革命性新产品的创新过程，无法轻易在现代公司中复制……试图将新技能与观念融入现存的机构DNA中，将以失败告终。”
如果这听上去像是失败主义者的论调，那就来看看历史记录吧。拥有革命性创新诀窍的大公司如凤毛麟角。能够不断推出全新产品，并创建大规模市场的大公司极少，记事贴(Post-it Note)的发明者3M公司是其中之一。
多数拥有创新声誉的企业巨擘，它们最好的点子是借鉴而来的。与流行的说法相反，亚马逊(Amazon)并未发明网上书店，宝洁(Procter Gamble)的帮宝适(pampers)不是第一种一次性尿布，而通用电气(General Electric)也没有创建CAT扫描仪市场。
马基德斯和杰罗斯基非常小心，不过分夸大自己的说法。他们对“革命性创新”和“持续性创新”加以区别。革命性创新对消费者和生产者都会产生破坏性冲击，而持续性创新是对现有设计的改进。大公司往往非常擅长后者。
两位作者对产品创新和业务模式创新加以区别。在业务模式创新上，大公司似乎更拿手。但就推出突破性产品而言，大多数成熟公司无所作为。
据《创新跟随者》称，这里的原因是，多数最具革命性的新产品，来自众多科技人员混乱而不协调的努力，这些科技人员在数以百计的大学、研究所和初创企业中工作。成熟企业的官僚制度不可能以这种力度汇聚或再度汇聚创意。
这是否意味着，大公司总是注定要被破坏性的创新者拉下马？远不是那样。大企业不用自己进行突破，而是该让初创企业、大学和风险资本家来做这件事。
只有当市场开始向“主导性设计”靠拢时，大公司才应当介入。正是在这一阶段，它们的强项（市场渗透和资金实力）令它们能比任何初创企业都更快地创造大众市场。诀窍在于知道何时介入。
微软(Microsoft)是公认的大师。它没有发明电脑操作系统、重叠的视窗界面、电子表格、文字处理软件，也没有发明网络浏览器。然而，微软最终主导了所有这些市场。微软是卓越的“快速跟进者”，现在正尝试瞄准Google的搜索引擎、Palm的掌上电脑软件和索尼(Sony)的PlayStation游戏机进行全面改进。
马基德斯和杰罗斯基也在玩这个游戏。过去两年间出版的大量书籍已提出了类似的创新理论。这些书包括汉克?切斯布洛(Hank Chesbrough)的《开放创新》(Open Innovation)、乔治?阿乌尔(Georges Haour)的《解决创新难题》(Resolving The Innovation Paradox)和安德鲁?哈格顿(Andrew Hargadon)的《突破如何产生》(How Breakthroughs Happen)。但《创新跟随者》被评价为既有学术性又通俗易懂，既全面又简洁。它最终可能成为创新理论类书籍中的“帮宝适”。
