下一波科技革命瞄準官僚主義

????第二波：新的商業模式

????1998年，我與別人合寫了《財富》雜志（Fortune）關于互聯網的第一篇封面報道。當時，亞馬遜（Amazon）和eBay還只是小角色，谷歌（Google）還在襁褓之中，Facebook還遠沒有誕生。但是當時已經能看出真正革命性的東西就要問世了。我們寫道：

????互聯網將以大家意想不到的方式改變消費者和生產者的關系?；ヂ摼W不僅僅是一個新的營銷渠道，也不僅僅是一個新的廣告媒介。它是一個新的行業秩序的基礎。

????當年的預測已經變成了現實?；ヂ摼W顯著降低了企業的入門成本，將更大的權力賦予了消費者，擠走了中間人，壓縮了利潤空間，模糊了行業界限，而且從根本上挑戰了廣域市場的基本理念。

????在第二波IT革命中，不僅企業的運營模式發生了變化，已經傳承百年的商業模式也不可避免地被裹挾進革命大潮中。在出版、旅游、娛樂、零售、金融服務、電信、教育等許多行業，傳統商業模式越來越非中介化、非物質化和大眾化，而且經常發生知名企業“八十老娘倒繃孩兒”，被顛覆性的小公司搶占了先機。比如沃爾瑪（Wal-Mart）直到2000年才開設了網上商城，比亞馬遜在網上賣書晚了六年。雖然沃爾瑪有著強大的資源，但它也只能跟在亞馬遜身后追趕，說不定永遠也趕不上。2012年，沃爾瑪的網絡銷售額達到了77億美元，只是亞馬遜610億美元的零頭。

????互聯網泡沫破裂后，很多人覺得互聯網對商業世界的影響衰退了。但是Facebook、Twitter、LinkedIn、Yelp、TripAdvisor等社交網絡的崛起卻激發了另一輪商業模式的創新。對于那些久負盛名的大企業來說，他們不僅僅要在互聯網上占有一席之地，現在還得變成一家社交型企業——也就是要以全新的方式與顧客進行交流，而且通常是通過移動平臺。但是和以往一樣，行業老前輩們往往對新潮流反應遲緩。雖然像博柏利（Burberry）這樣的公司已經從“社交”角度重新設計了商業模式，但也有更多的公司僅僅只是把“社交”當成另一種營銷手段。

????第一波IT革命中的弄潮兒是給軍備競賽提供武器的人，比如思科（Cisco）、戴爾（Dell）、EMC、惠普（HP）、IBM、印孚瑟斯（Infosys）、微軟（Microsoft）、VMWare，以及那些IT咨詢公司。如今這些主營企業IT業務的公司的總市值已經超過了1萬億美元。他們雖然已經賺得盆滿缽平，但他們的客戶還在苦苦追趕潮流。

????第二波革命的成功者是那些開發出以網絡為中心的全新商業模式的企業家和投資人。比如在美國，光是谷歌、Facebook和亞馬遜三家公司的市值加起來就超過了7400億美元。中國三大網絡公司的市值加起來也超過了2259億美元。但是我覺得，我們很難找到任何一家老牌企業的網絡商業部門能夠貢獻哪怕只是這個市場價值的一個零頭。

????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.