莫要声张

译文导读

垂

直整合是指整合产业价值链的上下游，使企业同时具备终端产品和零部件的控制力。几年前，所有人还都在外包，但随着苹果凭借垂直整合在移动市场异军突起，这种陈旧的模式却又进入了人人效仿的时期。到底各个产业巨头从外包向垂直整合逆转的原因究竟是什么？这种模式的竞争力到底在哪里？

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7:13 Keeping it under your hat 来自译者说

双语精读

Schumpeter

Keeping it under your hat

莫要声张

An old management idea gets a new lease of life

传统的经营理念重获生机

Apr 16th 2016 | From the print edition

Translated by 姜酱

Proofread by will

Reviewed by Ennis,Nicholas,zoey 

Edited by w

Apple

 and Tesla are two of the world's most talked-about companies. They are also two of the most vertically integrated. Apple not only writes much of its own software, but designs its own chips and runs its own shops. Tesla makes 80% of its electric cars and sells them directly to its customers. It is also constructing a network of service stations and building the world's biggest battery factory, in the Nevada desert. 

现在人们最常提起的公司莫过于苹果与特斯拉。它们是两家最垂直整合的公司。苹果公司不仅自己要写许多软件，也自己设计芯片和经营商店。而特斯拉80%的电动汽车都是自产并直销给客户的，同时，特斯拉也建造了服务网络，在内华达沙漠建立着世界上最大的电池工厂。

A

 century ago this sort of vertical integration was the rule: companies integrated “backwards”, by buying sources for raw materials and suppliers, and “forwards”, by buying distributors. Standard Oil owned delivery wagons and refineries in addition to oil wells. Carnegie owned iron-ore deposits and rail carriages as well as blast furnaces. In his 1926 book “Today and Tomorrow” Henry Ford wrote that vertical integration was the key to his success: “If you want it done right, do it yourself.” He claimed he could extract ore in Minnesota from his own mines, ship it to his River Rouge facility in Detroit and have it sitting as a Model T in a Chicago driveway—in no more than 84 hours.

一个世纪前，这种垂直整合曾是王道。公司从收购原材料和供应商来施行后向整合，而收购分销商来进行“前向整合”。标准石油公司除油井外还拥有送货车和炼油厂。卡内基除了拥有铁矿床外还拥有火车运力和高炉。亨利福特曾在他1926年出版的《今天和明天》中指出垂直整合是他成功的关键：“如果想把事情做好，那就自己来。”他声称福特可以从自己在明尼苏达的矿井中采集出矿石，送到在底特律胭脂河的处理厂，组装成T型车并开上芝加哥的车道——而这一切都可以在84小时内完成。

Today

 this sort of bundling is rare: for the past 30 years firms have been focusing on their core business and contracting out everything else to specialists. Steelmakers sold their mining operations and carmakers spun off their parts suppliers. Controlling it all made sense, the argument went, when markets were rudimentary: when supplies of vital materials were limited or contractors could cheat you. As markets became more sophisticated these justifications fell away. Thanks to globalisation, companies could always find new resources and better suppliers. 

今天这一套做法就很少见了：过去30年间，公司都将精力放在自己的核心业务上，将其他业务外包给不同的专业供应商。钢铁厂商出售他们采矿作业部门，而汽车厂商则剥离他们的的零部件生产部门。按照这种说法，当市场还处于早期时，掌控一切是十分必要的：要么因为关键材料的供给有限，要么因为承包商会骗你。随着市场日渐成熟，也就不再有这样做的道理。托了全球化的福，现在的公司总能找到新的资源或更好的供货商。

Yet

 a growing number of companies are having second thoughts. This is most visible in information technology. The industry's leaders were at the heart of the contracting-out revolution. Vertically integrated companies such as IBM outsourced as much as possible in order to lower costs. Upstarts such as Microsoft prospered by focusing on a narrow—but exceptionally valuable—slice of the pie: the operating system of personal computers. Now many startups in Silicon Valley pride themselves for being “full stack”. But re-bundling can be found everywhere, from fashion to manufacturing. 

然而越来越多的公司开始重新考虑这件事，这在信息产业尤为显著。信息产业的领导者曾是外包革命的中坚力量。例如IBM等一些垂直整合的公司尽可能地外包业务以求降低成本。很多新兴企业是通过专注于某一块相对窄小但价值巨大的蛋糕而发迹，如微软便是通过专注于个人电脑操作系统而发展壮大的。现在很多硅谷创业公司都以自己为“全栈式”（意即打造一套从完整的、端到端的产品或服务体系）而自豪，但从时尚产业到制造业，业务重组的模式比比皆是。

Reasons

 for the reversal abound, but five stand out. The most important is simplicity. Consumers are willing to pay a premium for well-integrated products that do not force them to deal with different suppliers or land them with components that do not talk to each other. They want to be able simply to press a button and let the machine do the rest. This is largely why Apple opted for integration, as did Nest, a maker of wireless thermostats. 

这一逆转的原因有很多，但有五点最为突出。最重要的就是简便。如果一个良好集成的产品使他们不用跟不同的供应商打交道并且免去面对一堆互相不合适的组件的烦恼，用户是愿意付高价的。他们只想简单按个扭，让机器自己做剩下的。这就是苹果公司选择垂直整合的主要原因，做出类似选择的还有无线恒温器制造商Nest。

A

 second reason is that firms operating on the technological frontier often find it more efficient to do things in-house. Companies that are inventing the future frequently have no choice but to pour money into new ventures rather than buy components off the shelf. This explains Tesla’s “gigafactory” for batteries: their availability is the biggest constraint on the firm’s growth. Boeing tried to cut its production costs by outsourcing 70% of the production of its 787 Dreamliner to hundreds of different suppliers— more than any airliner before. The result was a disaster: parts came in late; bits didn’t fit together; deadlines were missed. The firm reversed course, bringing manufacturing back in house and buying a factory. 

第二个原因是业务处于科技前沿的公司发现事情在内部解决比较高效。这些公司时常要开创未来，没有现成的产品可以买，除了向新创企业注入大量资金外别无选择。这也解释了特斯拉的超大电池厂：电池的可用性是公司发展的最大瓶颈。波音公司为了缩减生产成本将787梦想客机70%的生产外包给了几百家不同的供应商——比任何航空公司外包的都要多。这导致了灾难性的结果：部件延迟交付，零件无法咬合，错过截止日期。波音公司只好逆转方向，又将生产制造撤回内部自己解决，并买下了一家工厂。

A

 third reason is choice: the more the market has to offer, the more important it is to build a relationship with customers. Netflix and Amazon now create their own television shows in order to keep their viewers from buying more generic content elsewhere. Harry’s, an American company that sends its subscribers a regular supply of razors and shaving cream, spent $100m to buy a German razor-blade factory. 

第三个原因是客户选择：市场供给越丰富，营造客户关系的重要性就越突出。Netflix和亚马逊都开始做自制剧，就是为了避免客户付费购买其他地方出品的没有新意的电视剧。而Harry‘s是美国一家定期向用户寄送剃须刀和剃须霜的公司，曾斥资一亿美元收购了一个德国剃须刀厂。

Choice

 is reinforced by speed: fashion brands such as Spain’s Zara have resisted contracting out everything. Instead, they operate their own clothes factories, employ their own designers and run their own shops. This gives them a big advantage: they can turn the latest trend into new product, often in small batches, and have it in stores in a couple of weeks. Less vertically integrated brands such as Gap and American Apparel find they are stuck with yesterday’s creations because they cannot get supply chains to produce new wares quickly. 

公司的响应速度可以巩固用户的选择：例如西班牙时尚品牌ZARA反对将所有业务外包给他人。事实上，他们经营着自己的服装厂，自己雇佣设计师并且自营专卖店。这给了他们很大优势：他们可以将最新的潮流款式小批量迅速投入生产，几周时间就能上架。而Gap或American Apparel这些整合度没有那么高的牌子就经常苦于供应链生产不够及时以至于只能售卖过时的作品。

And

 then there is a combination of old worries about geopolitical uncertainty and new worries about the environment. In 2014 Ferrero, an Italian confectionary-maker, bought OltanGida, which produces one-third of Turkey’s hazelnuts, the vital ingredient in Nutella. In 2015 IKEA, a Swedish furniture company, bought nearly 100,000 acres of forests in Romania and the Baltic region. Earlier this year ChemChina, a state-owned company, purchased Syngenta, a Swiss seeds and pesticides group, for $43 billion, driven by the government’s quest for food security. Cruise companies such as Costa Cruises and Disney have bought islands in the Caribbean and the Bahamas so that they can guarantee that their passengers will have somewhere empty and unspoiled to visit when they sail past.

最后，还有地缘政治的不确定性以及环境变化这些新愁旧患。2014年,意大利糖果厂商费列罗收购了土耳其榛子供应商OltanGida,后者贡献了土耳其三分之一的榛子产量，而榛子正是Nutella巧克力酱的主要原料。2015年，瑞典家具公司宜家，在罗马尼亚与波罗的海地区买了将近10万英亩森林。而2015年的早些时候，中国央企中国化工，则以430亿美金的价格买了瑞士种子与农药公司先正达，其驱动力是政府对食品安全的考虑。邮轮公司歌诗达和迪斯尼都在加勒比与巴拿马区域买了岛屿，以确保他们的邮轮旅客在邮轮航线上有空闲与天然之地可以游览。

Core complexities

最复杂的地方

The 

renewed fashion for vertical integration will not sweep all before it. For the most mundane products the logic of contracting out still reigns supreme. And today’s bundling is less ambitious than Henry Ford’s: Apple, for instance, contracts out a lot of production to contract manufacturers such as Foxconn (though it keeps them on a tight leash). Integration is also hard to pull off: Tesla lost some of its shine on April 11th when it recalled 2,700 of its sport-utility vehicles because of a glitch. That said, striking the right balance between doing things in-house and contracting things out is clearly much more complicated than it was in the days when Tom Peters and his fellow gurus told companies to focus on what they do best and outsource the rest. 

然而逐渐复苏的垂直整合大潮并不能解决一切问题。对大多数平常产品而言，外包的逻辑依然成立且占绝对优势。而且，今天的捆绑不如亨利·福利时期的有那么大的企图心。例如苹果公司，也会跟富士康等很多外包制造商进行合作（尽管对外包商的管控十分严格）。况且，整合也困难重重：特期拉就曾在4月11号因为一些小故障召回2700辆SUV导致其品牌形象受损。也就是说，现在想要在自制与外包之间实现恰当的平衡要比以往复杂得多。汤姆皮特和他那些同僚大师们告诫人们“专注于最擅长的事，其余的全部外包”的时代已经过去了。

词汇列表

Keeping it under your hat：na.〈谚语〉保密；不要声张

e.g.You must promise to keep it under your hat.你必须保证要保守秘密。

a new lease of life：na.重生；新生；重获新生

e.g.Meanwhile, language of art receives a new lease of life in the release and expression of creative force in nature of materials.艺术语言也在材料自身的自然力和创造力的释放和表现中得到新生。

spun off：na.母公司收回子公司全部股本使之脱离的做法；有用的副产品

e.g.Only a year has passed since AMD officially spun off its manufacturing division with the help of ATIC.只有一年过去了AMD公司正式剥离与阿蒂奇帮助其制造部门。

at the heart of：关键；位于…的中心；核心

e.g.This needs to be big enough to make a real difference and get at the heart of the problem.这笔金额必须足够多，以便真正解决问题的核心。

generic content：adj.一般的；普通的；通用的；无厂家商标的

英文释义：Here is an example of the use of “generic content”: generic content is content that can be found on any blog out there. There’s no little oomph (the quality of being exciting, energetic, or sexually attractive.) to connect it to you as a blogger and the information is nothing new. Essentially, it just looks like you rewrote a post from another blog and plopped it on your own site. It brings you down as a blogger and it certainly brings me down as a reader.

e.g.69% want to receive personalised content based on their website activity and past purchases, rather than generic content;69%的人愿意根据自己的网络行为及过往购买的产品，接收个性化内容，而不是一般性内容。

land with：为……所累，接受不愿意做的工作

e.g.But did you realise that you could be landed with a huge bill afterwards?但你是否意识到随之而来的是一笔巨额债务 呢 ?

keeps them on a tight leash：严格管控

e.g.China, which keeps its own markets on a tight leash, will presumably support any drive to keep a better check on new-fangled financial instruments and cross-border money flows.对国内市场严加控制的中国,或将支持任何对新兴金融工具和跨境资本流动有更好监管的举措.

译者“说”

为什么加入译者说呢？

因为梦想中的一大部分，都是和读书和文字相关的啦。有时会想，这世界上实在是有太多了不起的人写了太多了不起的文章。可是人真的太渺小了，穷此一生，也不能读尽。那就读得细一点，精一点。无论哪种语言，体会每个词，每个句微妙又精确的触感，做那些优雅又精美的文字一辈子的脑残粉。看懂经济学人的确对英语水平有要求，但翻译更考验的却是中文功底。由于天资平平，在试图翻译一些地道的英文表达时常常捶胸顿足以头抢地依然不得其所，好在这个团体是对文字的嗅觉比我更敏锐细腻的一群人，让我每每收到翻译校对，即使挤在地铁上也马上掏出手机盯着屏幕上小小的字阅读修改建议，迫不及待地体会看到更流畅，工整，更加信达雅的翻译时那种豁然开朗的感觉。所以，如果你懂我说的这种感受，请将我们的文章多多转发给身边的朋友，也欢迎更多志趣相投的小伙伴加入我们。最后，魏老板也单身，各位懂得么么哒~

感谢老板让我登上团队公众号平台。

坐标魔都，性别女（照片P过！）。音乐爱好者，一天不听古典会死星人；明明是一个悲观主义者，却最爱和朋友手舞足蹈聊梦想。