Corporate giants were on the defensive for decades

Corporate giants were on the defensive for decades. Now they have the advantage again 企业巨头几十年来处于守势。现在他们又有优势

Illustration by Jon Berkerly

插图的Jon Berkerly

IN 1996, in one of his most celebrated phrases, Bill Clinton declared that “the era of big government is over”. He might have added that the era of big companies was over, too. The organisation that defined capitalism for much of the 20th century was then in retreat, attacked by corporate raiders, harassed by shareholders and outfoxed by entrepreneurs.

1996年,在他最为著名的论断之一,比尔·克林顿宣布“大政府时代已经结束”。他可能会加上一句”大公司的时代已经结束,。定义的组织,资本主义在20世纪的大部分时间里是在撤退,由股东和公司掠夺者的攻击,骚扰企业家给甩了。

Great names such as Pan Am had disappeared. Others had survived only by dint of huge bloodletting: IBM sacked 122,000 people, a quarter of its workforce, between 1990 and 1995. Everyone agreed that the future lay with entrepreneurial start-ups such as Yahoo! —which in late 1998 had the same market capitalisation with 637 employees as Boeing with 230,000. The share of GDP produced by big industrial companies fell by half between 1974 and 1998, from 36% to 17%.

伟大的名字如泛美航空公司已经消失了。人凭借巨大的放血才生存下来:IBM解雇了122000人,四分之一的劳动力,在1990年和1995年之间。每个人都同意未来躺在那些企业如Yahoo !——1998年年底的时候有同样的市值与637年与波音公司的637名员工。大型工业企业生产的占GDP的比例在1974年到1998年之间下降了一半,从36%降至17%。

Today the balance of advantage may be shifting again. To a degree, the financial crisis is responsible. It has devastated the venture-capital market, the lifeblood of many young firms. Governments have been rescuing companies they consider too big to fail, such as Citigroup and General Motors. Recession is squeezing out smaller and less well-connected firms. But there are other reasons too, which are giving big companies a self-confidence they have not displayed for decades.

今天的优势会再次转变。在某种程度上,金融危机负责。它已经破坏了风险投资市场,许多年轻公司的命脉。政府拯救公司他们认为太大而不能倒闭,花旗集团和通用汽车(General Motors)等。经济衰退是挤出较小而且不太出名的公司。但也有其他原因,给大公司一个自信他们没有显示了几十年。

Big can be beautiful

大可以美丽

Of course, big companies never went away. There were still plenty of first-rate ones: Unilever and Toyota continued to innovate through thick and thin. And not all start-ups were models of success: Netscape and Enron promised to revolutionise their industries only to crash and burn. Nevertheless, the balance had shifted in favour of small organisations.

当然,大公司不走了。仍有许多一流的:联合利华和丰田继续创新同甘共苦。并不是所有的初创企业都成为成功的典范:网景和安然答应颠覆他们各自的领域,最后只落得一败涂地。然而,已朝着有利于平衡的小组织。

The entrepreneurial boom was supercharged by two developments. Deregulation opened protected markets. Some national champions, such as AT&T, were broken up. Others saw their markets eaten up by swift-footed newcomers. The arrival of the personal computer in the 1970s and the internet in the 1990s created an army of successful start-ups. Steve Jobs and Steve

Wozniak founded Apple Computer in 1976 in the Jobs family’s garage. Microsoft and Dell Computer were both founded by teenagers (in 1975 and 1984 respectively). Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google in Stanford dorm rooms.

由两个发展企业家的激增施压。撤销管制规定开放了受保护的市场。一些国家冠军企业,如美国电话电报公司、被打破。其他人看到他们的市场被捷足先登的新手吃掉。的到来在1970年代个人电脑和互联网在1990年代创造了一大批成功的初创企业。史蒂夫·乔布斯和史蒂夫·沃兹尼亚克创办了苹果电脑公司在1976年乔布斯家的车库。微软和戴尔电脑都是由青少年(分别于1975年和1984年)。拉里 佩奇和谢尔盖 布林(Sergey Brin)开始在斯坦福宿舍谷歌。

But deregulation had already begun to go out of fashion before the financial crisis. The Sarbanes-Oxley act, introduced after Enron collapsed in disgrace, increased the regulatory burden on companies of all sizes, but what could be borne by the big could cripple the small. Many of today’s most dynamic industries are much more friendly to big companies than the IT industry. Research in biotechnology is costly and often does not bear fruit for years. Natural-resource companies, whose importance grows as competition for resources intensifies, need to be big—hence the mining industry’s consolidation.

但放松管制已经开始走出时尚在金融危机之前。萨班斯-奥克斯利法案,介绍在安然不光彩的垮台之后,各种规模的公司的监管负担增加,但可以由大可能削弱小。今天,许多最具活力的行业更友好比IT行业的大公司。生物科技领域的研究,成本高昂,通常不会结出果实。自然资源公司,其重要性随着对资源的竞争加剧,需要大——矿业的整合。

Two further developments are shifting the balance of advantage in favour of size. One is a heightened awareness of the risks of subcontracting. Toy companies and pet-food firms alike have found that their brands can be tainted if their suppliers (notably, from China) turn out shoddy goods. Big industrial companies have learned that their production cycles can be disrupted if contra …… 此处隐藏：6048字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……