In the 1980s, companies discovered time as a new source of competitive advantage. In the 1990s, they will learn that time is just one piece of a more far-reaching transformation in the logic of competition.
在 1980 年代，公司发现时间是竞争优势的新来源。在1990年代，他们将了解到，时间只是竞争逻辑中更深远的转变的一部分。
Companies that compete effectively on time—speeding new products to market, manufacturing just in time, or responding promptly to customer complaints—tend to be good at other things as well: for instance, the consistency of their product quality, the acuity of their insight into evolving customer needs, the ability to exploit emerging markets, enter new businesses, or generate new ideas and incorporate them in innovations. But all these qualities are mere reflections of a more fundamental characteristic: a new conception of corporate strategy that we call “capabilities-based competition.”
按时有效竞争的公司——加快新产品上市、及时制造或及时响应客户投诉——往往也擅长其他事情：例如，产品质量的一致性、对不断变化的客户需求的敏锐洞察力、开拓新兴市场、进入新业务的能力、 或者产生新的想法并将其纳入创新中。但所有这些特质都只是一个更基本特征的反映：一种新的企业战略概念，我们称之为“基于能力的竞争”。
For a glimpse of the new world of capabilities-based competition, consider the astonishing reversal of fortunes represented by Kmart and Wal-Mart.
要想一窥基于能力的竞争的新世界，请考虑一下以凯马特和沃尔玛为代表的命运的惊人逆转。
In 1979, Kmart was king of the discount retailing industry, an industry it had virtually created. With 1,891 stores and average revenues per store of $7.25 million, Kmart enjoyed enormous size advantages. This allowed economies of scale in purchasing, distribution, and marketing that, according to just about any management textbook, are crucial to competitive success in a mature and low-growth industry. By contrast, Wal-Mart was a small niche retailer in the South with only 229 stores and average revenues about half of those of Kmart stores—hardly a serious competitor.
1979 年，凯马特是折扣零售业的王者，它几乎创造了一个行业。凯马特拥有 1,891 家门店，每家门店的平均收入为 725 万美元，享有巨大的规模优势。这使得采购、分销和营销的规模经济成为可能，根据任何管理教科书，这对于在成熟和低增长的行业中取得竞争成功至关重要。相比之下，沃尔玛在南方是一家小型利基零售商，只有229家门店，平均收入约为凯马特门店的一半，几乎不是一个强大的竞争对手。
And yet, only ten years later, Wal-Mart had transformed itself and the discount retailing industry. Growing nearly 25% a year, the company achieved the highest sales per square foot, inventory turns, and operating profit of any discount retailer. Its 1989 pretax return on sales was 8%, nearly double that of Kmart.
然而，仅仅十年后，沃尔玛就改变了自己和折扣零售业。该公司以每年近 25% 的速度增长，实现了所有折扣零售商中最高的每平方英尺销售额、库存周转率和营业利润。其1989年的税前销售回报率为8%，几乎是凯马特的两倍。
Today Wal-Mart is the largest and highest profit retailer in the world—a performance that has translated into a 32% return on equity and a market valuation more than ten times book value. What’s more, Wal-Mart’s growth has been concentrated in half the United States, leaving ample room for further expansion. If Wal-Mart continues to gain market share at just one-half its historical rate, by 1995 the company will have eliminated all competitors from discount retailing with the exception of Kmart and Target.
如今，沃尔玛是全球规模最大、利润最高的零售商，其业绩已转化为32%的股本回报率和超过账面价值十倍的市场估值。更重要的是，沃尔玛的增长已经集中在美国的一半，为进一步扩张留下了充足的空间。如果沃尔玛继续以历史速度的一半获得市场份额，那么到1995年，沃尔玛将把除凯马特和塔吉特之外的所有竞争对手从折扣零售中剔除。
The Secret of Wal-Mart’s Success
沃尔玛成功的秘诀
What accounts for Wal-Mart’s remarkable success? Most explanations focus on a few familiar and highly visible factors: the genius of founder Sam Walton, who inspires his employees and has molded a culture of service excellence; the “greeters” who welcome customers at the door; the motivational power of allowing employees to own part of the business; the strategy of “everyday low prices” that offers the customer a better deal and saves on merchandising and advertising costs. Economists also point to Wal-Mart’s big stores, which offer economies of scale and a wider choice of merchandise.
是什么导致了沃尔玛的非凡成功？大多数解释都集中在几个熟悉且非常明显的因素上：创始人山姆·沃尔顿（Sam Walton）的天才，他激励了他的员工，并塑造了一种卓越的服务文化;在门口迎接顾客的“迎宾员”;允许员工拥有部分业务的激励力量;“每日低价”策略，为客户提供更好的交易并节省商品和广告成本。经济学家还指出，沃尔玛的大型商店提供了规模经济和更广泛的商品选择。
Capabilities Help Wal-Mart Outperform Its Industry Source: The Boston Consulting Group
能力帮助沃尔玛超越行业 资料来源：波士顿咨询集团
But such explanations only redefine the question. Why is Wal-Mart able to justify building bigger stores? Why does Wal-Mart alone have a cost structure low enough to accommodate everyday low prices and greeters? And what has enabled the company to continue to grow far beyond the direct reach of Sam Walton’s magnetic personality? The real secret of Wal-Mart’s success lies deeper, in a set of strategic business decisions that transformed the company into a capabilities-based competitor.
但这样的解释只是重新定义了这个问题。为什么沃尔玛能够证明建造更大的商店是合理的？为什么仅沃尔玛的成本结构就足够低，足以满足日常低价和迎宾员的需求？是什么让公司能够继续发展，远远超出山姆·沃尔顿的磁性个性的直接范围？沃尔玛成功的真正秘诀在于更深层次的，在于一系列战略性商业决策，这些决策将公司转变为基于能力的竞争对手。
The starting point was a relentless focus on satisfying customer needs. Wal-Mart’s goals were simple to define but hard to execute: to provide customers access to quality goods, to make these goods available when and where customers want them, to develop a cost structure that enables competitive pricing, and to build and maintain a reputation for absolute trustworthiness. The key to achieving these goals was to make the way the company replenished inventory the centerpiece of its competitive strategy.
出发点是坚持不懈地专注于满足客户需求。沃尔玛的目标定义简单，但执行起来却很难：为客户提供优质商品，在客户需要的时间和地点提供这些商品，开发具有竞争力的价格的成本结构，并建立和维护绝对可信赖的声誉。实现这些目标的关键是使公司补充库存的方式成为其竞争战略的核心。
This strategic vision reached its fullest expression in a largely invisible logistics technique known as “cross-docking.” In this system, goods are continuously delivered to Wal-Mart’s warehouses, where they are selected, repacked, and then dispatched to stores, often without ever sitting in inventory. Instead of spending valuable time in the warehouse, goods just cross from one loading dock to another in 48 hours or less.
这一战略愿景在一种几乎看不见的物流技术中得到了最充分的体现，这种技术被称为“越库配送”。在这个系统中，货物不断被运送到沃尔玛的仓库，在那里它们被选择、重新包装，然后被派送到商店，通常永远不会出现在库存中。无需在仓库中花费宝贵的时间，货物只需在 48 小时或更短的时间内从一个装卸码头运送到另一个装卸码头。
Cross-docking enables Wal-Mart to achieve the economies that come with purchasing full truck-loads of goods while avoiding the usual inventory and handling costs. Wal-Mart runs a full 85% of its goods through its warehouse system—as opposed to only 50% for Kmart. This reduces Wal-Mart’s costs of sales by 2% to 3% compared with the industry average. That cost difference makes possible the everyday low prices.
越库配送使沃尔玛能够实现购买整车货物所带来的经济效益，同时避免了通常的库存和处理成本。沃尔玛85%的商品通过其仓库系统运行，而凯马特只有50%。与行业平均水平相比，这将沃尔玛的销售成本降低了 2% 至 3%。这种成本差异使日常低价成为可能。
But that’s not all. Low prices in turn mean that Wal-Mart can save even more by eliminating the expense of frequent promotions. Stable prices also make sales more predictable, thus reducing stock-outs and excess inventory. Finally, everyday low prices bring in the customers, which translates into higher sales per retail square foot. These advantages in basic economics make the greeters and the profit sharing easy to afford.
但这还不是全部。低廉的价格反过来意味着沃尔玛可以通过消除频繁促销的费用来节省更多。稳定的价格也使销售更具可预测性，从而减少缺货和库存过剩。最后，每天的低价会带来客户，这意味着每平方英尺的销售额更高。这些基本经济学的优势使迎宾员和利润分享变得容易负担得起。
With such obvious benefits, why don’t all retailers use cross-docking? The reason: it is extremely difficult to manage. To make cross-docking work, Wal-Mart has had to make strategic investments in a variety of interlocking support systems far beyond what could be justified by conventional ROI criteria.
既然有如此明显的好处，为什么不是所有的零售商都使用越库配送呢？原因是：管理起来非常困难。为了使越库配送发挥作用，沃尔玛不得不对各种联锁支持系统进行战略投资，远远超出传统投资回报率标准的合理性。
For example, cross-docking requires continuous contact among Wal-Mart’s distribution centers, suppliers, and every point of sale in every store to ensure that orders can flow in and be consolidated and executed within a matter of hours. So Wal-Mart operates a private satellite-communication system that daily sends point-of-sale data directly to Wal-Mart’s 4,000 vendors.
例如，越库配送需要沃尔玛的配送中心、供应商和每家商店的每个销售点之间保持持续联系，以确保订单可以在几个小时内流入并合并和执行。因此，沃尔玛运营着一个私人卫星通信系统，每天将销售点数据直接发送给沃尔玛的4000家供应商。
Another key component of Wal-Mart’s logistics infrastructure is the company’s fast and responsive transportation system. The company’s 19 distribution centers are serviced by nearly 2,000 company owned trucks. This dedicated truck fleet permits Wal-Mart to ship goods from warehouse to store in less than 48 hours and to replenish its store shelves twice a week on average. By contrast, the industry norm is once every two weeks.
沃尔玛物流基础设施的另一个关键组成部分是该公司快速响应的运输系统。该公司的 19 个配送中心由近 2,000 辆公司自有卡车提供服务。这支专用的卡车车队使沃尔玛能够在不到 48 小时内将货物从仓库运送到商店，并平均每周补充两次商店货架。相比之下，行业标准是每两周一次。
To gain the full benefits of cross-docking, Wal-Mart has also had to make fundamental changes in its approach to managerial control. Traditionally in the retail industry, decisions about merchandising, pricing, and promotions have been highly centralized and made at the corporate level. Cross-docking, however, turns this command-and-control logic on its head. Instead of the retailer pushing products into the system, customers “pull” products when and where they need them. This approach places a premium on frequent, informal cooperation among stores, distribution centers, and suppliers—with far less centralized control.
为了获得越库配送的全部好处，沃尔玛还必须从根本上改变其管理控制方法。传统上，在零售业，有关商品销售、定价和促销的决策是高度集中的，并在公司层面做出。然而，越库配送颠覆了这种命令和控制逻辑。零售商不是将产品推入系统，而是客户在需要的时间和地点“拉”产品。这种方法非常重视商店、配送中心和供应商之间频繁、非正式的合作，而集中控制要少得多。
The job of senior management at Wal-Mart, then, is not to tell individual store managers what to do but to create an environment where they can learn from the market—and from each other. The company’s information systems, for example, provide store managers with detailed information about customer behavior, while a fleet of airplanes regularly ferries store managers to Bentonville, Arkansas head-quarters for meetings on market trends and merchandising.
因此，沃尔玛高级管理层的工作不是告诉个别商店经理该做什么，而是创造一个环境，让他们可以向市场学习，也可以相互学习。例如，该公司的信息系统为商店经理提供有关客户行为的详细信息，而一架飞机机队则定期将商店经理运送到阿肯色州本顿维尔总部，参加有关市场趋势和商品销售的会议。
As the company has grown and its stores have multiplied, even Wal-Mart’s own private air force hasn’t been enough to maintain the necessary contacts among store managers. So Wal-Mart has installed a video link connecting all its stores to corporate headquarters and to each other. Store managers frequently hold videoconferences to exchange information on what’s happening in the field, like which products are selling and which ones aren’t, which promotions work and which don’t.
随着公司的发展和门店的成倍增加，即使是沃尔玛自己的私人空军也不足以维持门店经理之间的必要联系。因此，沃尔玛安装了视频链接，将其所有商店与公司总部以及彼此连接起来。商店经理经常举行视频会议，就现场发生的事情交换信息，例如哪些产品畅销，哪些产品不畅销，哪些促销有效，哪些无效。
The final piece of this capabilities mosaic is Wal-Mart’s human resources system. The company realizes that its frontline employees play a significant role in satisfying customer needs. So it set out to enhance its organizational capability with programs like stock ownership and profit sharing geared toward making its personnel more responsive to customers. Even the way Wal-Mart stores are organized contributes to this goal. Where Kmart has 5 separate merchandise departments in each store, Wal-Mart has 36. This means that training can be more focused and more effective, and employees can be more attuned to customers.
这种能力马赛克的最后一部分是沃尔玛的人力资源系统。该公司意识到其一线员工在满足客户需求方面发挥着重要作用。因此，它着手通过股权和利润分享等计划来增强其组织能力，以使其人员对客户做出更快速的响应。甚至沃尔玛商店的组织方式也有助于实现这一目标。凯马特每家商店有 5 个独立的商品部门，而沃尔玛有 36 个。这意味着培训可以更有针对性、更有效，员工可以更适应客户。
Kmart did not see its business this way. While Wal-Mart was fine-tuning its business processes and organizational practices, Kmart was following the classic textbook approach that had accounted for its original success. Kmart managed its business by focusing on a few product-centered strategic business units, each a profit center under strong centralized line management. Each SBU made strategy—selecting merchandise, setting prices, and deciding which products to promote. Senior management spent most of its time and resources making line decisions rather than investing in a support infrastructure.
凯马特并不这么看自己的业务。当沃尔玛正在微调其业务流程和组织实践时，凯马特正在遵循经典的教科书方法，这是其最初成功的原因。凯马特通过专注于几个以产品为中心的战略业务部门来管理其业务，每个部门都是强大的集中式生产线管理下的利润中心。每个 SBU 都制定了策略——选择商品、设定价格并决定推广哪些产品。高级管理层将大部分时间和资源用于生产线决策，而不是投资于支持基础设施。
Similarly, Kmart evaluated its competitive advantage at each stage along a value chain and subcontracted activities that managers concluded others could do better. While Wal-Mart was building its ground transportation fleet, Kmart was moving out of trucking because a subcontracted fleet was cheaper. While Wal-Mart was building close relationships with its suppliers, Kmart was constantly switching suppliers in search of price improvements. While Wal-Mart was controlling all the departments in its stores, Kmart was leasing out many of its departments to other companies on the theory that it could make more per square foot in rent than through its own efforts.
同样，凯马特评估了其在价值链上每个阶段的竞争优势，并分包了经理们认为其他人可以做得更好的活动。当沃尔玛正在建立其地面运输车队时，凯马特正在退出卡车运输，因为分包车队更便宜。当沃尔玛与供应商建立密切关系时，凯马特不断更换供应商以寻求价格改进。当沃尔玛控制着其商店的所有部门时，凯马特将其许多部门出租给其他公司，其理论是每平方英尺的租金可以比通过自己的努力赚得更多。
This is not to say that Kmart managers do not care about their business processes. After all, they have quality programs too. Nor is it that Wal-Mart managers ignore the structural dimension of strategy: they focus on the same consumer segments as Kmart and still have to make traditional strategic decisions like where to open new stores. The difference is that Wal-Mart emphasizes behavior—the organizational practices and business processes in which capabilities are rooted—as the primary object of strategy and therefore focuses its managerial attention on the infrastructure that supports capabilities. This subtle distinction has made all the difference between exceptional and average performance.
这并不是说凯马特的经理不关心他们的业务流程。毕竟，他们也有高质量的课程。沃尔玛的管理者也并非忽视了战略的结构性维度：他们专注于与凯马特相同的消费者群体，并且仍然必须做出传统的战略决策，例如在哪里开设新店。不同之处在于，沃尔玛强调行为（能力植根于其中的组织实践和业务流程）是战略的主要对象，因此将其管理注意力集中在支持能力的基础设施上。这种微妙的区别使卓越和平均性能之间有了很大的区别。
Four Principles of Capabilities-Based Competition
基于能力的竞争的四项原则
The story of Kmart and Wal-Mart illustrates the new paradigm of competition in the 1990s. In industry after industry, established competitors are being outmaneuvered and overtaken by more dynamic rivals.
凯马特和沃尔玛的故事说明了 1990 年代的新竞争范式。在一个又一个行业中，老牌竞争对手正在被更有活力的竞争对手超越和超越。
- In the years after World War II, Honda was a modest manufacturer of a 50 cc. engine designed to be attached to a bicycle. Today it is challenging General Motors and Ford for dominance of the global automobile industry.
在二战后的几年里，本田是一家规模不大的50cc发动机制造商，设计用于连接在自行车上。今天，它正在挑战通用汽车和福特在全球汽车行业的主导地位。
- Xerox invented xerography and the office copier market. But between 1976 and 1982, Canon introduced more than 90 new models, cutting Xerox’s share of the mid-range copier market in half. 1 Today Canon is a key competitor not only in mid-range copiers but also in high-end color copiers.
施乐发明了静电复印机和办公室复印机市场。但在 1976 年至 1982 年间，佳能推出了 90 多种新型号，将施乐在中档复印机市场的份额减少了一半。 1 如今，佳能不仅是中档复印机的主要竞争对手，也是高端彩色复印机的主要竞争对手。
- The greatest challenge to department store giants like Macy’s comes neither from other large department stores nor from small boutiques but from The Limited, a $5.25 billion design, procurement, delivery, and retailing machine that exploits dozens of consumer segments with the agility of many small boutiques.
梅西百货（Macy's）等百货巨头面临的最大挑战既不是来自其他大型百货公司，也不是来自小型精品店，而是来自The Limited，这是一台价值52.5亿美元的设计、采购、交付和零售机器，它利用了数十个消费群体，具有许多小型精品店的敏捷性。
- Citicorp may still be the largest U.S. bank in terms of assets, but Banc One has consistently enjoyed the highest return on assets in the U.S. banking industry and now enjoys a market capitalization greater than Citicorp’s.
就资产而言，花旗集团可能仍然是美国最大的银行，但第一银行一直享有美国银行业的最高资产回报率，现在的市值高于花旗集团。
These examples represent more than just the triumph of individual companies. They signal a fundamental shift in the logic of competition, a shift that is revolutionizing corporate strategy.
这些例子代表的不仅仅是个别公司的胜利。它们标志着竞争逻辑的根本转变，这种转变正在彻底改变企业战略。
When the economy was relatively static, strategy could afford to be static. In a world characterized by durable products, stable customer needs, well-defined national and regional markets, and clearly identified competitors, competition was a “war of position” in which companies occupied competitive space like squares on a chessboard, building and defending market share in clearly defined product or market segments. The key to competitive advantage was where a company chose to compete. How it chose to compete was also important but secondary, a matter of execution.
当经济相对静止时，战略可以承受静止。在一个以耐用产品、稳定的客户需求、明确的国家和区域市场以及明确确定的竞争对手为特征的世界中，竞争是一场“地位战”，在这种战争中，公司像棋盘上的方块一样占据竞争空间，在明确定义的产品或细分市场中建立和捍卫市场份额。竞争优势的关键在于公司选择在哪里竞争。它如何选择竞争也很重要，但次要的，是一个执行问题。
Few managers need reminding of the changes that have made this traditional approach obsolete. As markets fragment and proliferate, “owning” any particular market segment becomes simultaneously more difficult and less valuable. As product life cycles accelerate, dominating existing product segments becomes less important than being able to create new products and exploit them quickly. Meanwhile, as globalization breaks down barriers between national and regional markets, competitors are multiplying and reducing the value of national market share.
很少有管理者需要提醒这种传统方法已经过时的变化。随着市场的碎片化和扩散，“拥有”任何特定的细分市场都变得更加困难，价值也越来越低。随着产品生命周期的加速，主导现有产品细分市场变得不如能够创造新产品并快速开发它们重要。与此同时，随着全球化打破了国家和区域市场之间的壁垒，竞争对手正在成倍增加和减少国家市场份额的价值。
In this more dynamic business environment, strategy has to become correspondingly more dynamic. Competition is now a “war of movement” in which success depends on anticipation of market trends and quick response to changing customer needs. Successful competitors move quickly in and out of products, markets, and sometimes even entire businesses—a process more akin to an interactive video game than to chess. In such an environment, the essence of strategy is not the structure of a company’s products and markets but the dynamics of its behavior. And the goal is to identify and develop the hard-to-imitate organizational capabilities that distinguish a company from its competitors in the eyes of customers.
在这种更加动态的商业环境中，战略必须相应地变得更加动态。竞争现在是一场“运动之战”，成功取决于对市场趋势的预测和对不断变化的客户需求的快速响应。成功的竞争对手会迅速进入和退出产品、市场，有时甚至是整个业务——这个过程更像是互动视频游戏，而不是国际象棋。在这样的环境中，战略的本质不是公司产品和市场的结构，而是其行为的动态。目标是识别和发展难以模仿的组织能力，使公司在客户眼中与竞争对手区分开来。
Companies like Wal-Mart, Honda, Canon, The Limited, or Banc One have learned this lesson. Their experience and that of other successful companies suggest four basic principles of capabilities-based competition:
沃尔玛、本田、佳能、The Limited 或 Banc One 等公司已经吸取了这一教训。他们和其他成功公司的经验提出了基于能力的竞争的四个基本原则：
1. The building blocks of corporate strategy are not products and markets but business processes.
1. 企业战略的基石不是产品和市场，而是业务流程。
2. Competitive success depends on transforming a company’s key processes into strategic capabilities that consistently provide superior value to the customer.
2. 竞争成功取决于将公司的关键流程转化为战略能力，从而始终如一地为客户提供卓越的价值。
3. Companies create these capabilities by making strategic investments in a support infrastructure that links together and transcends traditional SBUs and functions.
3. 公司通过对连接在一起并超越传统 SBU 和功能的支持基础设施进行战略投资来创造这些能力。
4. Because capabilities necessarily cross functions, the champion of a capabilities-based strategy is the CEO.
4. 由于能力必然是跨职能的，因此基于能力的战略的拥护者是首席执行官。
A capability is a set of business processes strategically understood. Every company has business processes that deliver value to the customer. But few think of them as the primary object of strategy. Capabilities-based competitors identify their key business processes, manage them centrally, and invest in them heavily, looking for a long-term payback.
能力是一组从战略上理解的业务流程。每家公司都有为客户提供价值的业务流程。但很少有人认为它们是战略的主要对象。基于能力的竞争对手确定其关键业务流程，集中管理它们，并对其进行大量投资，以寻求长期回报。
Take the example of cross-docking at Wal-Mart. Cross-docking is not the cheapest or the easiest way to run a warehouse. But seen in the broader context of Wal-Mart’s inventory-replenishment capability, it is an essential part of the overall process of keeping retail shelves filled while also minimizing inventory and purchasing in truckload quantities.
以沃尔玛的交叉配送为例。越库配送并不是运营仓库最便宜或最简单的方法。但从沃尔玛库存补货能力的更广泛背景下来看，它是保持零售货架满满的整个过程的重要组成部分，同时也最大限度地减少了库存和整车采购。
Mapping Capabilities: Inventory Replenishment at Wal-Mart *At Wal-Mart, building capabilities begins with strategic investments: good payment terms to suppliers, a dedicated trucking fleet, satellite communications, company-owned aircraft, and videoconferencing. These investments enable suppliers to respond quickly to sales data beamed directly from stores, distribution centers to deliver new orders in less than 48 hours, and store managers to share best practice. The result: linked business processes that give Wal-Mart its competitive edge.
映射能力：沃尔玛的库存补货 *在沃尔玛，建立能力始于战略投资：向供应商提供良好的付款条件、专用卡车车队、卫星通信、公司拥有的飞机和视频会议。这些投资使供应商能够快速响应直接来自商店的销售数据，配送中心可以在 48 小时内交付新订单，并使商店经理能够分享最佳实践。其结果是：相互关联的业务流程，使沃尔玛具有竞争优势。
What transforms a set of indvidual business processes like cross-docking into a strategic capability? The key is to connect them to real customer needs. A capability is strategic only when it begins and ends with the customer.
是什么将一系列独立业务流程（如越库配送）转变为战略能力？关键是将它们与真正的客户需求联系起来。只有当能力以客户为起点和终点时，它才具有战略意义。
Of course, just about every company these days claims to be “close to the customer.” But there is a qualitative difference in the customer focus of capabilities-driven competitors. These companies conceive of the organization as a giant feedback loop that begins with identifying the needs of the customer and ends with satisfying them.
当然，如今几乎每家公司都声称“贴近客户”。但是，以能力为导向的竞争对手在以客户为中心方面存在质的差异。这些公司将组织视为一个巨大的反馈循环，从确定客户的需求开始，到满足客户的需求结束。
As managers have grasped the importance of time-based competition, for example, they have increasingly focused on the speed of new product development. But as a unit of analysis, new product development is too narrow. It is only part of what is necessary to satisfy a customer and, therefore, to build an organizational capability. Better to think in terms of new product realization, a capability that includes the way a product is not only developed but also marketed and serviced. The longer and more complex the string of business processes, the harder it is to transform them into a capability—but the greater the value of that capability once built because competitors have more difficulty imitating it.
例如，随着管理者们认识到基于时间的竞争的重要性，他们越来越关注新产品开发的速度。但作为一个分析单位，新产品开发过于狭隘。它只是满足客户并因此建立组织能力所必需的一部分。最好从新产品实现的角度来考虑，这种能力不仅包括产品的开发方式，还包括营销和服务方式。业务流程链越长、越复杂，就越难将它们转化为能力，但这种能力一旦建立起来，价值就越大，因为竞争对手更难模仿它。
Weaving business processes together into organizational capabilities in this way also mandates a new logic of vertical integration. At a time when cost pressures are pushing many companies to outsource more and more activities, capabilities-based competitors are integrating vertically to ensure that they, not a supplier or distributor, control the performance of key business processes. Remember Wal-Mart’s decision to own its transportation fleet in contrast to Kmart’s decision to subcontract.
以这种方式将业务流程编织到组织能力中，也要求垂直整合的新逻辑。在成本压力促使许多公司将越来越多的活动外包的时候，基于能力的竞争对手正在垂直整合，以确保他们（而不是供应商或分销商）控制关键业务流程的绩效。请记住，沃尔玛决定拥有其运输车队，而凯马特则决定分包。
Even when a company doesn’t actually own every link of the capability chain, the capabilities-based competitor works to tie these parts into its own business systems. Consider Wal-Mart’s relationships with its suppliers. In order for Wal-Mart’s inventory-replenishment capability to work, vendors have to change their own business processes to be more responsive to the Wal-Mart system. In exchange, they get far better payment terms from Wal-Mart than they do from other discount retailers. At Wal-Mart, the average “days payable,” the time between the receipt of an invoice from a supplier and its payment, is 29 days. At Kmart, it is 45.
即使一家公司实际上并不拥有能力链的每个环节，基于能力的竞争对手也会努力将这些部分绑定到自己的业务系统中。考虑一下沃尔玛与其供应商的关系。为了使沃尔玛的库存补货能力发挥作用，供应商必须改变自己的业务流程，以便更好地响应沃尔玛系统。作为交换，他们从沃尔玛获得的付款条件比其他折扣零售商要好得多。在沃尔玛，平均“应付天数”，即从收到供应商发票到付款之间的时间，为 29 天。在凯马特，它是 45。
Another attribute of capabilities is that they are collective and cross-functional—a small part of many people’s jobs, not a large part of a few. This helps explain why most companies underexploit capabilities-based competition. Because a capability is “everywhere and nowhere,” no one executive controls it entirely. Moreover, leveraging capabilities requires a panoply of strategic investments across SBUs and functions far beyond what traditional cost-benefit metrics can justify. Traditional internal accounting and control systems often miss the strategic nature of such investments. For these reasons, building strategic capabilities cannot be treated as an operating matter and left to operating managers, to corporate staff, or still less to SBU heads. It is the primary agenda of the CEO.
能力的另一个属性是它们是集体的和跨职能的——只是许多人工作的一小部分，而不是少数人工作的很大一部分。这有助于解释为什么大多数公司没有充分利用基于能力的竞争。因为能力是“无处不在的，无处不在”，所以没有一个高管可以完全控制它。此外，利用功能需要跨 SBU 和功能进行一系列战略投资，远远超出传统成本效益指标的合理性。传统的内部会计和控制系统往往忽略了此类投资的战略性质。由于这些原因，建设战略能力不能被视为运营问题，而留给运营经理、公司员工，更不能留给 SBU 负责人。这是首席执行官的首要议程。
Only the CEO can focus the entire company’s attention on creating capabilities that serve customers. Only the CEO can identify and authorize the infrastructure investments on which strategic capabilities depend. Only the CEO can insulate individual managers from any short-term penalties to the P&Ls of their operating units that such investments might bring about.
只有CEO才能将整个公司的注意力集中在创造为客户服务的能力上。只有首席执行官才能识别和授权战略能力所依赖的基础设施投资。只有首席执行官才能使个别经理免受此类投资可能对其运营部门损益造成的任何短期惩罚。
Indeed, a CEO’s success in building and managing capabilities will be the chief test of management skill in the 1990s. The prize will be companies that combine scale and flexibility to outperform the competition along five dimensions:
事实上，在1990年代，CEO在建立和管理能力方面的成功将是对管理技能的主要考验。该奖项将授予那些将规模和灵活性相结合，在五个方面超越竞争对手的公司：
- Speed. The ability to respond quickly to customer or market demands and to incorporate new ideas and technologies quickly into products.
速度。能够快速响应客户或市场需求，并快速将新想法和技术融入产品中。
- Consistency. The ability to produce a product that unfailingly satisfies customers’ expectations.
一致性。能够生产出始终满足客户期望的产品。
- Acuity. The ability to see the competitive environment clearly and thus to anticipate and respond to customers’ evolving needs and wants.
敏锐。能够清楚地看到竞争环境，从而预测和响应客户不断变化的需求和愿望。
- Agility. The ability to adapt simultaneously to many different business environments.
敏捷。能够同时适应许多不同的业务环境。
- Innovativeness. The ability to generate new ideas and to combine existing elements to create new sources of value.
创新。产生新想法和组合现有元素以创造新价值来源的能力。
Becoming a Capabilities-Based Competitor
成为基于能力的竞争对手
Few companies are fortunate enough to begin as capabilities-based competitors. For most, the challenge is to become one.
很少有公司有幸从基于能力的竞争对手开始。对于大多数人来说，挑战是成为其中的一员。
The starting point is for senior managers to undergo the fundamental shift in perception that allows them to see their business in terms of strategic capabilities. Then they can begin to identify and link together essential business processes to serve customer needs. Finally, they can reshape the organization—including managerial roles and responsiblities—to encourage the new kind of behavior necessary to make capabilities-based competition work.
首先是让高级管理人员在观念上发生根本性转变，使他们能够从战略能力的角度看待自己的业务。然后，他们可以开始识别和链接基本业务流程，以满足客户需求。最后，他们可以重塑组织，包括管理角色和责任，以鼓励新的行为，使基于能力的竞争发挥作用。
The experience of a medical-equipment company we’ll call Medequip illustrates this change process. An established competitor, Medequip recently found itself struggling to regain market share it had lost to a new competitor. The rival had introduced a lower priced, lower performance version of the company’s most popular product. Medequip had developed a similar product in response, but senior managers were hesitant to launch it.
我们称之为Medequip的一家医疗设备公司的经验说明了这一变化过程。作为一个老牌竞争对手，Medequip最近发现自己正在努力重新夺回被新竞争对手失去的市场份额。竞争对手推出了该公司最受欢迎的产品的低价、低性能版本。作为回应，Medequip开发了类似的产品，但高级管理人员对推出它犹豫不决。
Their reasoning made perfect sense according to the traditional competitive logic. As managers saw it, the company faced a classic no-win situation. The new product was lower priced but also lower profit. If the company promoted it aggressively to regain market share, overall profitability would suffer.
根据传统的竞争逻辑，他们的推理是完全有道理的。在经理们看来，公司面临着一个典型的双赢局面。新产品价格较低，但利润也较低。如果该公司积极推广以重新获得市场份额，整体盈利能力将受到影响。
But when Medequip managers began to investigate their competitive situation more carefully, they stopped defining the problem in terms of static products and markets. Increasingly, they saw it in terms of the organization’s business processes.
但是，当Medequip的经理们开始更仔细地调查他们的竞争状况时，他们不再用静态的产品和市场来定义问题。他们越来越多地从组织的业务流程的角度来看待它。
Traditionally, the company’s functions had operated autonomously. Manufacturing was separate from sales, which was separate from field service. What’s more, the company managed field service the way most companies do—as a classic profit center whose resources were deployed to reduce costs and maximize profitability. For instance, Medequip assigned full-time service personnel only to those customers who bought enough equipment to justify the additional cost.
传统上，公司的职能部门是自主运作的。制造与销售是分开的，而销售与现场服务是分开的。更重要的是，该公司以大多数公司的方式管理现场服务，将其作为经典的利润中心，其资源被用于降低成本并最大限度地提高盈利能力。例如，Medequip 只为那些购买了足够设备以证明额外成本合理的客户分配了全职服务人员。
However, a closer look at the company’s experience with these steady customers led to a fresh insight: at accounts where Medequip had placed one or more full-time service representatives on-site, the company renewed its highly profitable service contracts at three times the rate of its other accounts. When these accounts needed new equipment, they chose Medequip twice as often as other accounts did and tended to buy the broadest mix of Medequip products as well.
然而，仔细研究该公司与这些稳定客户打交道的经验后，我们得出了新的见解：在Medequip在现场安排了一名或多名全职服务代表的客户中，该公司以其他客户的三倍的价格续签了高利润的服务合同。当这些客户需要新设备时，他们选择 Medequip 的频率是其他客户的两倍，并且倾向于购买最广泛的 Medequip 产品组合。
The reason was simple. Medequip’s on-site service representatives had become expert in the operations of their customers. They knew what equipment mix best suited the customer and what additional equipment the customer needed. So they had teamed up informally with Medequip’s salespeople to become part of the selling process. Because the service reps were on-site full-time, they were also able to respond quickly to equipment problems. And of course, whenever a competitor’s equipment broke down, the Medequip reps were on hand to point out the product’s shortcomings.
原因很简单。Medequip 的现场服务代表已成为客户运营方面的专家。他们知道哪种设备组合最适合客户，以及客户需要哪些额外的设备。因此，他们与 Medequip 的销售人员非正式合作，成为销售过程的一部分。由于服务代表是全职的，他们也能够快速响应设备问题。当然，每当竞争对手的设备发生故障时，Medequip 代表都会在现场指出产品的缺点。
This new knowledge about the dynamics of service delivery inspired top managers to rethink how their company should compete. Specifically, they redefined field service from a stand-alone function to one part of an integrated sales and service capability. They crystallized this new approach in three key business decisions.
这种关于服务交付动态的新知识激发了高层管理人员重新思考他们的公司应该如何竞争。具体而言，他们将现场服务从独立功能重新定义为集成销售和服务能力的一部分。他们将这种新方法具体化为三个关键的业务决策。
First, Medequip decided to use its service personnel not to keep costs low but to maximize the life-cycle profitability of a set of targeted accounts. This decision took the form of a dramatic commitment to place at least one service rep on-site with selected customers—no matter how little business each account currently represented.
首先，Medequip 决定使用其服务人员不是为了降低成本，而是为了最大限度地提高一组目标客户的生命周期盈利能力。这一决定采取了戏剧性的承诺，即至少为选定的客户安排一名服务代表，无论每个客户目前代表的业务有多少。
The decision to guarantee on-site service was expensive, so choosing which customers to target was crucial; there had to be potential for considerable additional business. The company divided its accounts into three categories: those it dominated, those where a single competitor dominated, and those where several competitors were present. Medequip protected the accounts it dominated by maintaining the already high level of service and by offering attractive terms for renewing service contracts. The company ignored those customers dominated by a single competitor—unless the competitor was having serious problems. All the remaining resources were focused on those accounts where no single competitor had the upper hand.
保证现场服务的决定成本高昂，因此选择目标客户至关重要;必须有相当大的额外业务潜力。该公司将其账户分为三类：它主导的账户、单一竞争对手占主导地位的账户以及存在多个竞争对手的账户。Medequip 通过保持已经很高的服务水平和提供有吸引力的续签服务合同条款来保护其主导的帐户。该公司忽略了那些由单一竞争对手主导的客户，除非竞争对手遇到了严重的问题。所有剩余的资源都集中在那些没有单一竞争对手占上风的账户上。
Next Medequip combined its sales, service, and order-entry organizations into cross-functional teams that concentrated almost exclusively on the needs of the targeted accounts. The company trained service reps in sales techniques so they could take full responsibility for generating new sales leads. This freed up the sales staff to focus on the more strategic role of understanding the long-term needs of the customer’s business. Finally, to emphasize Medequip’s new commitment to total service, the company even taught its service reps how to fix competitors’ equipment.
Next Medequip 将其销售、服务和订单输入组织合并为跨职能团队，几乎完全专注于目标客户的需求。该公司对服务代表进行了销售技巧培训，以便他们能够全权负责产生新的销售线索。这使销售人员能够专注于了解客户业务的长期需求这一更具战略性的角色。最后，为了强调 Medequip 对全面服务的新承诺，该公司甚至教其服务代表如何修理竞争对手的设备。
Once this new organizational structure was in place, Medequip finally introduced its new low-price product. The result: the company has not only stopped its decline in market share but also increased share by almost 50%. The addition of the lower priced product has reduced profit margins, but the overall mix still includes many higher priced products. And absolute profits are much higher than before.
一旦这种新的组织结构到位，Medequip终于推出了新的低价产品。其结果是：该公司不仅阻止了市场份额的下降，而且将份额增加了近50%。低价产品的增加降低了利润率，但整体组合仍然包括许多高价产品。而且绝对利润比以前高得多。
This story suggests four steps by which any company can transform itself into a capabilities-based competitor:
这个故事提出了四个步骤，任何公司都可以通过这些步骤将自己转变为基于能力的竞争对手：
Shift the strategic framework to achieve aggressive goals. At Medequip, managers transformed what looked like a no-win situation—either lose share or lose profits—into an opportunity for a major competitive victory. They did so by abandoning the company’s traditional function, cost, and profit-center orientation and by identifying and managing the capabilities that link customer need to customer satisfaction. The chief expression of this new capabilities-based strategy was the decision to provide on-site service reps to targeted accounts and to create cross-functional sales and service teams.
改变战略框架以实现雄心勃勃的目标。在Medequip，经理们将看似没有赢家的局面（要么失去份额，要么失去利润）转变为取得重大竞争胜利的机会。他们放弃了公司传统的职能、成本和利润中心导向，并识别和管理将客户需求与客户满意度联系起来的能力。这种基于能力的新战略的主要表现是决定为目标客户提供现场服务代表，并创建跨职能的销售和服务团队。
Organize around the chosen capability and make sure employees have the necessary skills and resources to achieve it. Having set this ambitious competitive goal, Medequip managers next set about reshaping the company in terms of it. Rather than retaining the existing functional structure and trying to encourage coordination through some kind of matrix, they created a brand new organization—Customer Sales and Service—and divided it into “cells” with overall responsibility for specific customers. The company also provided the necessary training so that employees could understand how their new roles would help achieve new business goals. Finally, Medequip created systems to support employees in their new roles. For example, one information system uses CD-ROMs to give field-service personnel quick access to information about Medequip’s product line as well as those of competitors.
围绕所选的能力进行组织，并确保员工拥有实现该能力所需的技能和资源。设定了这个雄心勃勃的竞争目标后，Medequip 经理接下来着手重塑公司。他们没有保留现有的职能结构，也没有试图通过某种矩阵来鼓励协调，而是创建了一个全新的组织——客户销售和服务——并将其划分为“单元”，全面负责特定客户。该公司还提供了必要的培训，以便员工能够了解他们的新角色将如何帮助实现新的业务目标。最后，Medequip 创建了支持员工担任新角色的系统。例如，一个信息系统使用 CD-ROM 使现场服务人员能够快速访问有关 Medequip 产品线以及竞争对手产品线的信息。
Make progress visible and bring measurements and reward into alignment. Medequip also made sure that the company’s measurement and reward systems reflected the new competitive strategy. Like most companies, the company had never known the profitability of individual customers. Traditionally, field-service employees were measured on overall service profitability. With the shift to the new approach, however, the company had to develop a whole new set of measures—for example, Medequip’s “share-by-customer-by-product,” the amount of money the company invested in servicing a particular customer, and the customer’s current and estimated lifetime profitability. Team members’ compensation was calculated according to these new measures.
让进步可见，并使衡量和奖励保持一致。Medequip 还确保公司的衡量和奖励系统反映了新的竞争战略。与大多数公司一样，该公司从来不知道个人客户的盈利能力。传统上，现场服务员工是根据整体服务盈利能力来衡量的。然而，随着向新方法的转变，该公司不得不制定一套全新的衡量标准，例如，Medequip 的“逐个客户按产品共享”，公司为服务特定客户而投入的资金数额，以及客户当前和估计的终身盈利能力。团队成员的薪酬是根据这些新措施计算的。
Do not delegate the leadership of the transformation. Becoming a capabilities-based competitor requires an enormous amount of change. For that reason, it is a process extremely difficult to delegate. Because capabilities are cross-functional, the change process can’t be left to middle managers. It requires the hands-on guidance of the CEO and the active involvement of top line managers. At Medequip, the heads of sales, service, and order entry led the sub-teams that made the actual recommendations, but it was the CEO who oversaw the change process, evaluated their proposals, and made the final decision. His leading role ensured senior management’s commitment to the recommended changes.
不要将转型的领导权下放。成为基于能力的竞争对手需要大量的变革。因此，这是一个极难委派的过程。由于能力是跨职能的，因此变革过程不能留给中层管理人员。它需要首席执行官的亲身指导和高层管理人员的积极参与。在 Medequip，销售、服务和订单输入负责人领导提出实际建议的子团队，但 CEO 负责监督变更过程，评估他们的建议并做出最终决定。他的领导作用确保了高级管理层对建议的变革的承诺。
This top-down change process has the paradoxical result of driving business decision making down to those directly participating in key processes—for example, Medequip’s sales and service staff. This leads to a high measure of operational flexibility and an almost reflex-like responsiveness to external change.
这种自上而下的变革过程产生了一个矛盾的结果，即将业务决策下推到直接参与关键流程的人身上，例如Medequip的销售和服务人员。这导致了高度的操作灵活性和对外部变化的近乎反射式的响应。
A New Logic of Growth: The Capabilities Predator
新的增长逻辑：能力捕食者
Once managers reshape the company in terms of its underlying capabilities, they can use these capabilities to define a growth path for the corporation. At the center of capabilities-based competition is a new logic of growth.
一旦管理者根据公司的基本能力重塑公司，他们就可以利用这些能力来定义公司的增长路径。基于能力的竞争的核心是一种新的增长逻辑。
In the 1960s, most managers assumed that when growth in a company’s basic business slowed, the company should turn to diversification. This was the age of the multibusiness conglomerate. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, it became clear that growth through diversification was difficult. And so, the pendulum of management thinking swung once again. Companies were urged to “stick to their knitting”—that is, to focus on their core business, identify where the profit was, and get rid of everything else. The idea of the corporation became increasingly narrow.
在 1960 年代，大多数经理人认为，当公司基本业务增长放缓时，公司应该转向多元化。这是多业务集团的时代。然而，在1970年代和1980年代，通过多样化实现增长显然是困难的。于是，管理思维的钟摆再次摆动。公司被敦促“坚持他们的编织”——也就是说，专注于他们的核心业务，确定利润在哪里，并摆脱其他一切。公司的想法变得越来越狭隘。
Competing on capabilities provides a way for companies to gain the benefits of both focus and diversification. Put another way, a company that focuses on its strategic capabilities can compete in a remarkable diversity of regions, products, and businesses and do it far more coherently than the typical conglomerate can. Such a company is a “capabilities predator”—able to come out of nowhere and move rapidly from nonparticipant to major player and even to industry leader.
能力竞争为公司提供了一种既能获得专注又能多样化的好处的方法。换句话说，一家专注于其战略能力的公司可以在非常多样化的地区、产品和业务中竞争，并且比典型的企业集团更加连贯。这样的公司是“能力掠夺者”——能够凭空出现，迅速从不参与者转变为主要参与者，甚至成为行业领导者。
Portrait of a Capabilities Predator Source: The Boston Consulting Group By applying capabilities developed in its core business, Wal-Mart was able to penetrate the wholesale club market quickly. Its unit, Sam’s Club, overtook industry leader Price Club in a mere four years.
能力掠夺者的肖像 来源：波士顿咨询集团 通过应用其核心业务中开发的能力，沃尔玛能够迅速渗透到俱乐部批发市场。其子公司山姆会员店（Sam's Club）在短短四年内就超越了行业领导者Price Club。
Capabilities-based companies grow by transferring their essential business processes—first to new geographic areas and then to new businesses. Wal-Mart CEO David Glass alludes to this method of growth when he characterizes Wal-Mart as “always pushing from the inside out; we never jump and backfill.”
基于能力的公司通过将其基本业务流程转移来发展 - 首先转移到新的地理区域，然后转移到新的业务。沃尔玛首席执行官大卫·格拉斯（David Glass）在将沃尔玛描述为“总是从内到外推动;我们从不跳跃和回填。
Strategic advantages built on capabilities are easier to transfer geographically than more traditional competitive advantages. Honda, for example, has become a manufacturer in Europe and the United States with relatively few problems. The quality of its cars made in the United States is so good that the company is exporting some of them back to Japan.
建立在能力基础上的战略优势比传统的竞争优势更容易在地理上转移。例如，本田已成为欧美的制造商，问题相对较少。其美国制造的汽车质量非常好，以至于该公司正在将其中一些出口回日本。
In many respects, Wal-Mart’s move from small towns in the South to large, urban, northern cities spans as great a cultural gap as Honda’s move beyond Japan. And yet, Wal-Mart has done it with barely a hiccup. While the stores are much bigger and the product lines different, the capabilities are exactly the same. Wal-Mart simply replicates its system as soon as the required people are trained. The company estimates that it can train enough new employees to grow about 25% a year.
在许多方面，沃尔玛从南方的小城镇向北方的大城市迈进，与本田走出日本一样，跨越了巨大的文化鸿沟。然而，沃尔玛几乎没有打嗝就做到了这一点。虽然商店要大得多，产品线也不同，但功能完全相同。沃尔玛只是在培训了所需的人员后立即复制其系统。该公司估计，它可以培训足够的新员工，每年增长约25%。
But the big payoff for capabilities-led growth comes not through geographical expansion but through rapid entry into whole new businesses. Capabilities-based companies do this in at least two ways. The first is by “cloning” their key business processes. Again, Honda is a typical example.
但是，以能力为导向的增长的巨大回报不是来自地域扩张，而是通过快速进入全新的业务。基于能力的公司至少以两种方式做到这一点。第一种是“克隆”他们的关键业务流程。同样，本田就是一个典型的例子。
Most people attribute Honda’s success to the innovative design of its products or the way the company manufactures them. These factors are certainly important. But the company’s growth has been spearheaded by less visible capabilities.
大多数人将本田的成功归因于其产品的创新设计或公司制造产品的方式。这些因素当然很重要。但该公司的增长是由不太显眼的能力带动的。
For example, a big part of Honda’s original success in motorcycles was due to the company’s distinctive capability in “dealer management,” which departed from the traditional relationship between motorcycle manufacturers and dealers. Typically, local dealers were motorcycle enthusiasts who were more concerned with finding a way to support their hobby than with building a strong business. They were not particularly interested in marketing, parts-inventory management, or other business systems.
例如，本田最初在摩托车领域的成功很大程度上归功于该公司在“经销商管理”方面的独特能力，这背离了摩托车制造商和经销商之间的传统关系。通常，当地经销商是摩托车爱好者，他们更关心的是找到一种方法来支持他们的爱好，而不是建立强大的业务。他们对营销、零件库存管理或其他业务系统并不特别感兴趣。
Honda, by contrast, managed its dealers to ensure that they would become successful businesspeople. The company provided operating procedures and policies for merchandising, selling, floor planning, and service management. It trained all its dealers and their entire staffs in these new management systems and supported them with a computerized dealer-management information system. The part-time dealers of competitors were no match for the better prepared and better financed Honda dealers.
Honda’s move into new businesses, including lawn mowers, outboard motors, and automobiles, has depended on re-creating this same dealer-management capability in each new sector. Even in segments like luxury cars, where local dealers are generally more service-oriented than those in the motorcycle business, Honda’s skill at managing its dealers is transforming service standards. Honda dealers consistently receive the highest ratings for customer satisfaction among auto companies selling in the United States. One reason is that Honda gives its dealers far more autonomy to decide on the spot whether a needed repair is covered by warranty. (See the sidebar, “How Capabilities Differ from Core Competencies: The Case of Honda.”)
How Capabilities Differ from Core Competencies: The Case of Honda
But the ultimate form of growth in the capabilities-based company may not be cloning business processes so much as creating processes so flexible and robust that the same set can serve many different businesses. This is the case with Wal-Mart. The company uses the same inventory-replenishment system that makes its discount stores so successful to propel itself into new and traditionally distinct retail sectors.
Take the example of warehouse clubs, no-frills stores that sell products in bulk at a deep discount. In 1983, Wal-Mart created Sam’s Club to compete with industry founder Price Club and Kmart’s own PACE Membership Warehouse. Within four years, Sam’s Club sales had passed those of both Price and PACE, making it the largest wholesale club in the country. Sam’s 1990 sales were $5.3 billion, compared with $4.9 billion for Price and $1.6 billion for PACE. What’s more, Wal-Mart has repeated this rapid penetration strategy in other retail sectors, including pharmacies, European-style hypermarkets, and large, no-frills grocery stores known as superstores.
While Wal-Mart has been growing by quickly entering these new businesses, Kmart has tried to grow by acquisition, with mixed success. In the past decade, Kmart has bought and sold a number of companies in unrelated businesses such as restaurants and insurance—an indication the company has had difficulty adding value.
虽然沃尔玛通过快速进入这些新业务而增长，但凯马特试图通过收购来实现增长，但成功与否参差不齐。在过去十年中，凯马特收购和出售了许多不相关业务的公司，如餐馆和保险，这表明该公司在增加价值方面遇到了困难。
This is not to suggest that growth by acquisition is necessarily doomed to failure. Indeed, the company that is focused on its capabilities is often better able to target sensible acquisitions and then integrate them successfully. For example, Wal-Mart has recently begun to supplement its growth “from the inside out” by acquiring companies—for example, other small warehouse clubs and a retail and grocery distributor—whose operations can be folded into the Wal-Mart system.
这并不是说通过收购实现增长就注定要失败。事实上，专注于其能力的公司通常能够更好地瞄准明智的收购，然后成功整合它们。例如，沃尔玛最近开始通过收购其他小型仓库俱乐部以及零售和杂货分销商等公司来“从内到外”补充其增长，这些公司的业务可以并入沃尔玛系统。
It is interesting to speculate where Wal-Mart will strike next. The company’s inventory-replenishment capability could prove to be a strong competitive advantage in a wide variety of retail businesses. In the past decade, Wal-Mart came out of nowhere to challenge Kmart. In the next decade, companies such as Toys “R” Us (Wal-Mart already controls as much as 10% of the $13 billion toy market) and Circuit City (consumer electronics) may find themselves in the sights of this capabilities predator.
有趣的是，推测沃尔玛接下来将在哪里罢工。该公司的库存补货能力可能被证明是各种零售业务的强大竞争优势。在过去的十年里，沃尔玛横空出世，挑战凯马特。在未来十年中，玩具反斗城（沃尔玛已经控制了130亿美元玩具市场的10%）和Circuit City（消费电子产品）等公司可能会发现自己处于这种能力掠夺者的视线中。
The Future of Capabilities-Based Competition
基于能力的竞争的未来
For the moment, capabilities-based companies have the advantage of competing against rivals still locked into the old way of seeing the competitive environment. But such a situation won’t last forever. As more and more companies make the transition to capabilities-based competition, the simple fact of competing on capabilities will become less important than the specific capabilities a company has chosen to build. Given the necessary long-term investments, the strategic choices managers make will end up determining a company’s fate.
目前，以能力为基础的公司具有与竞争对手竞争的优势，这些竞争对手仍然被锁定在看待竞争环境的旧方式中。但这种情况不会永远持续下去。随着越来越多的公司向基于能力的竞争过渡，在能力上竞争的简单事实将变得不如公司选择建立的具体能力重要。考虑到必要的长期投资，管理者做出的战略选择最终将决定公司的命运。
If Wal-Mart and Kmart are a good example of the present state of capabilities-based competition, the story of two fast-growing regional banks suggests its future. Wachovia Corporation, with dual headquarters in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and Atlanta, Georgia, has superior returns and growing market share throughout its core markets in both states. Banc One, based in Columbus, Ohio, has consistently enjoyed the highest return on assets in the U.S. banking industry. Both banks compete on capabilities, but they do it in very different ways.
如果说沃尔玛和凯马特是目前基于能力的竞争状况的一个很好的例子，那么两家快速增长的地区性银行的故事则表明了它的未来。Wachovia Corporation 在北卡罗来纳州温斯顿-塞勒姆和佐治亚州亚特兰大设有双总部，在这两个州的核心市场都拥有卓越的回报和不断增长的市场份额。总部位于俄亥俄州哥伦布市的Banc One一直享有美国银行业的最高资产回报率。两家银行在能力上展开竞争，但它们的方式却截然不同。
Wachovia competes on its ability to understand and serve the needs of individual customers, a skill that manifests itself in probably the highest “cross-sell ratio”—the average number of products per customer—of any bank in the country. The linchpin of this capability is the company’s roughly 600 “personal bankers,” frontline employees who provide Wachovia’s mass-market customers with a degree of personalized service approaching what has traditionally been available only to private banking clients. The company’s specialized support systems allow each personal banker to serve about 1,200 customers. Among those systems: an integrated customer-information file, simplified work processes that allow the bank to respond to almost all customer requests by the end of business that day, and a five-year personal banker training program.
Wachovia在了解和服务个人客户需求的能力上竞争，这种技能可能体现在该国所有银行中最高的“交叉销售比率”（每个客户的平均产品数量）。这种能力的关键是该公司大约600名“个人银行家”，这些一线员工为Wachovia的大众市场客户提供一定程度的个性化服务，接近传统上只有私人银行客户才能获得的服务。该公司的专业支持系统使每位个人银行家能够为大约 1,200 名客户提供服务。这些系统包括：一个集成的客户信息文件，简化的工作流程，使银行能够在当天营业结束前响应几乎所有客户的请求，以及一个为期五年的个人银行家培训计划。
Where Wachovia focuses on meeting the needs of individual customers, Banc One’s distinctive ability is to understand and respond to the needs of entire communities. To do community banking effectively, a bank has to have deep roots in the local community. But traditionally, local banks have not been able to muster the professional expertise, state-of-the-art products, and highly competitive cost structure of large national banks like Citicorp. Banc One competes by offering its customers the best of both these worlds. Or in the words of one company slogan, Banc One “out-locals the national banks and out-nationals the local banks.”
Wachovia 专注于满足个人客户的需求，而 Banc One 的独特能力是了解和响应整个社区的需求。为了有效地开展社区银行业务，银行必须在当地社区扎根。但传统上，地方银行无法像花旗集团这样的大型国有银行那样拥有专业知识、最先进的产品和极具竞争力的成本结构。Banc One 通过为客户提供这两个世界中最好的来竞争。或者用一家公司的口号来说，Banc One是“超越国家银行，超越国家银行，超越国家银行”。
Striking this balance depends on two factors. One is local autonomy. The central organizational role in the Banc One business system is played not by frontline employees but by the presidents of the 51 affiliate banks in the Banc One network. Affiliate presidents have exceptional power within their own region. They select products, establish prices and marketing strategy, make credit decisions, and set internal management policies. They can even overrule the activities of Banc One’s centralized direct-marketing businesses. But while Banc One’s affiliate system is highly decentralized, its success also depends on an elaborate, and highly centralized, process of continuous organizational learning. Affiliate presidents have the authority to mold bank products and services to local conditions, but they are also expected to learn from best practice throughout the Banc One system and to adapt it to their own operations.
实现这种平衡取决于两个因素。一是地方自治。Banc One 业务系统中的核心组织角色不是由一线员工扮演的，而是由 Banc One 网络中 51 家附属银行的行长扮演的。附属总裁在他们自己的地区拥有非凡的权力。他们选择产品，制定价格和营销策略，做出信贷决策，并制定内部管理政策。他们甚至可以否决Banc One集中式直销业务的活动。但是，尽管Banc One的联盟系统是高度分散的，但它的成功也取决于一个精心设计的、高度集中的持续组织学习过程。附属行长有权根据当地情况调整银行产品和服务，但他们也应该从整个Banc One系统的最佳实践中学习，并使其适应自己的运营。
Banc One collects an extraordinary amount of detailed and current information on each affiliate bank’s internal and external performance. For example, the bank regularly publishes “league tables” on numerous measures of operating performance, with the worst performers listed first. This encourages collaboration to improve the weakest affiliates rather than competition to be the best. The bank also continously engages in workflow re-engineering and process simplification. The 100 most successful projects, known as the “Best of the Best,” are documented and circulated among affiliates.
Banc One 收集了大量有关每家附属银行内部和外部绩效的详细信息和最新信息。例如，该银行定期发布关于众多经营业绩指标的“排行榜”，最差的公司将排在首位。这鼓励合作以改善最弱的附属公司，而不是竞争成为最好的附属公司。该银行还不断进行工作流程重新设计和流程简化。100 个最成功的项目，被称为“最佳中的佼佼者”，被记录在案并在附属公司之间传播。
Wachovia and Banc One both compete on capabilities. Both banks focus on key business processes and place critical decision-making authority with the people directly responsible for them. Both manage these processes through a support system that spans the traditional functional structure, and senior managers concentrate on managing this system rather than controlling decisions. Both are decentralized but focused, single-minded but flexible.
Wachovia 和 Banc One 都在能力上展开竞争。两家银行都专注于关键业务流程，并将关键决策权交给直接负责这些流程的人员。两者都通过跨越传统职能结构的支持系统来管理这些流程，高级管理人员专注于管理该系统而不是控制决策。两者都是分散的，但专注，一心一意但灵活。
But there the similarities end. Wachovia responds to individual customers en masse with personalization akin to that of a private banker. Banc One responds to local markets en masse with the flexibility and canniness of the traditional community bank. As a result, they focus on different business processes: Wachovia on the transfer of customer-specific information across numerous points of customer contact; Banc One on the transfer of best practices across affiliate banks. They also empower different levels in the organization: the personal banker at Wachovia, the affiliate president at Banc One.
但相似之处到此为止。Wachovia 以类似于私人银行家的个性化方式对个人客户做出集体响应。Banc One 以传统社区银行的灵活性和精明性对当地市场做出全面响应。因此，他们专注于不同的业务流程：Wachovia 负责在众多客户接触点之间传输客户特定信息;Banc One 在附属银行之间转移最佳实践。他们还赋予组织中不同级别的权力：Wachovia 的个人银行家、Banc One 的附属总裁。
Most important, they grow differently. Because so much of Wachovia’s capability is embedded in the training of the personal bankers, the bank has made few acquisitions and can integrate them only very slowly. Banc One’s capabilities, by contrast, are especially easy to transfer to new acquisitions. All the company needs to do is install its corporate MIS and intensively train the acquired bank’s senior officers, a process that can be done in a few months, as opposed to the much longer period it takes Wachovia to train a new cadre of frontline bankers. Banc One has therefore made acquisitions almost a separate line of business.
If Banc One and Wachovia were to compete against each other, it is not clear who would win. Each would have strengths that the other could not match. Wachovia’s capability to serve individual customers by cross-selling a wide range of banking products will in the long term probably allow the company to extract more profit per customer than Banc One. On the other hand, Wachovia cannot adapt its products, pricing, and promotion to local market conditions the way Banc One can. And Wachovia’s growth rate is limited by the amount of time it takes to train new personal bankers.
Moreover, these differences are deep-seated. They define each of the two companies in ways that are not easy to change. Capabilities are often mutually exclusive. Choosing the right ones is the essence of strategy.
1 See T. Michael Nevens, Gregory L. Summe, and Bro Uttal, “Commercializing Technology: What the Best Companies Do,” HBR May–June 1990, p. 154.
