從1768年到20世紀90年代初，大英百科全書（Encyclopedia Britannica）一直是全球百科全書信息市場的統(tǒng)治者。在200多年的時間里，該公司掌握了專業(yè)的銷售手段，利用獨特的上門推銷和顧客分銷渠道相結(jié)合的方式，賣出了海量的百科信息。

然而，正如菲利普?埃文斯在1997年《哈佛商業(yè)評論》（Harvard Business Review）一篇產(chǎn)生巨大影響的文章中所說的那樣，突然之間，一切都改變了。隨著信息時代的到來，大英百科全書花了近兩個世紀建立起來的偉業(yè)，在幾年之內(nèi)就被互聯(lián)網(wǎng)公司摧垮了。

Blockbuster、柯達（Kodak）和鮑德斯（Borders）有著類似的遭遇。這些公司告訴我們：在數(shù)字時代，競爭來自方方面面，幾乎無所不在。管理者和企業(yè)大量投入并取得成功的業(yè)務(wù)，轉(zhuǎn)而給他們帶來了危機。比如，大英百科全書繼續(xù)出售價格高昂的實體書并附贈光盤，而不是反其道而行之；鮑德斯在向數(shù)字經(jīng)濟轉(zhuǎn)型時做出了一個冒險舉動，把電子商務(wù)的業(yè)務(wù)承包給了亞馬遜（Amazon），最終反被亞馬遜推翻；而淘兒唱片（Tower Records）的反應(yīng)或許足夠及時，但在數(shù)字化的過程中，零售店和實體供應(yīng)鏈成了公司沉重的負擔。許多案例中的公司，面對行業(yè)里不可避免的顛覆浪潮，基本沒有做出抵抗，但企業(yè)應(yīng)對的速度和方式其實至關(guān)重要。

在許多企業(yè)看來，20世紀90年代顛覆性的數(shù)字化浪潮似乎已經(jīng)完全過去了。電子商務(wù)的網(wǎng)站已經(jīng)建立，供應(yīng)鏈得到了優(yōu)化，信息技術(shù)投資蓬勃發(fā)展。然而，20世紀90年代和21世紀頭十年的第一波數(shù)字化浪潮，只是把數(shù)字界面和體驗帶入了現(xiàn)有的世界，實際上它仍然是在模擬現(xiàn)實世界的東西。這就是為何第一家引起巨大反響的科技公司實際上只是做了個網(wǎng)頁版的圖書目錄，以及為何早期的互聯(lián)網(wǎng)充斥著新聞報道，將紙質(zhì)報紙逼到了墻角。

時間快進到2014年，情況已經(jīng)越來越明晰：新聞、媒體和商業(yè)的數(shù)字化轉(zhuǎn)型只是冰山一角。今天，互聯(lián)網(wǎng)變得無處不在，智能手機開始擁有定位功能，潛藏的計算資源開始商品化，直到這時，我們這個世界轉(zhuǎn)型的時機才完全成熟。

下一個十年，將會是在經(jīng)濟社會的剩余領(lǐng)域打造數(shù)字“接口”和數(shù)字體驗的時代。曾經(jīng)受到重大資產(chǎn)投資或遲滯的監(jiān)管環(huán)境保護的企業(yè)，如果不迅速做出反應(yīng)，就有可能重蹈唱片店的覆轍。在這個計算機技術(shù)可以無限擴展的世界中，如雨后春筍般涌現(xiàn)的初創(chuàng)公司開始在生命科學(xué)和眼鏡等形形色色的領(lǐng)域搶占市場；人才可以隨時獲得；委托生產(chǎn)只需要點擊幾下鼠標，而將產(chǎn)品分銷給數(shù)十億人幾乎成了企業(yè)與生俱來的權(quán)利。

每個公司的董事會、信息技術(shù)部門和領(lǐng)導(dǎo)團隊，都應(yīng)該假定現(xiàn)在有——或是將會有——更高效的服務(wù)顧客的方式。2010年，出租車業(yè)沒有捫心自問：“我們被雇來是做什么工作的？”因此也沒有為顧客提供高質(zhì)量、隨叫隨到的服務(wù)。所以，Uber和隨后的Lyft填補了這個空缺。

盡管幾乎沒哪個行業(yè)像出租車業(yè)那樣分散化，但這些改變了城市交通運輸?shù)囊蛩貛缀蹩梢杂绊懙狡渌惺袌觥Ｈ狈π碌母偁幷呤沟媒┗摹肮杨^”產(chǎn)生了高枕無憂的錯覺（傳統(tǒng)醫(yī)療體系）；法律法規(guī)導(dǎo)致準入門檻過高（傳統(tǒng)出租車公司）；或是由于人們難以找到替代者而穩(wěn)操勝券（大型零售商）——這些曾經(jīng)支撐市場壟斷的結(jié)構(gòu)正在瓦解。面對擁有全新價值特性，專注于提供個性化、隨叫隨到的體驗，沒有傳統(tǒng)基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施和垂直整合的拖累，不用分期償還大量貸款的公司，這些曾經(jīng)頗具競爭力的優(yōu)勢如今已蕩然無存。

在《哈佛商業(yè)評論》不久前刊登的一篇文章中，哈佛商學(xué)院（Harvard Business School）教授邁克爾?波特寫道：“這些新型產(chǎn)品改變了行業(yè)的結(jié)構(gòu)和競爭的本質(zhì)，讓公司暴露在新的競爭機遇和威脅下……在許多公司中，智能聯(lián)網(wǎng)的產(chǎn)品會迫使他們問出最基本的問題：‘我到底從事的是什么買賣？’”

無論在哪個行業(yè)，都有辦法將工業(yè)時代的經(jīng)濟轉(zhuǎn)型成信息經(jīng)濟。首先，你得搞清在這個全新的數(shù)字世界中，公司專有特色的自然延伸或獨特價值。如果你的公司擁有大量基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施，那就考慮創(chuàng)造一個應(yīng)用程序接口（API），讓你的龐大規(guī)模能夠為其他人所用。而對產(chǎn)品公司而言，需要考慮如何利用數(shù)字化的反饋回路與顧客建立更加動態(tài)化的關(guān)系。如果你是一個高端產(chǎn)品供應(yīng)商，就要設(shè)法通過新技術(shù)來降低成本并擴大用戶群體。數(shù)字化轉(zhuǎn)型并不意味著拋棄你的核心競爭力，而是意味著利用新的體驗和技術(shù)來大幅提高你的競爭力。

而在開發(fā)新產(chǎn)品、新技術(shù)之外，另一種可能的解決方案是與硅谷等地的初創(chuàng)公司合作。比如全食超市（Whole Foods）最近就與雜貨電商Instacart聯(lián)手，使得公司的交易規(guī)模提升了150%。通用電氣（GE）最近也投資了行業(yè)領(lǐng)先的無人機公司Airware。在另一些情況下，收購可能會是合適的選擇。比如諾德斯特龍（Nordstrom）收購Trunk Club，或是孟山都（Monsanto）去年收購Climate Corp。數(shù)字化轉(zhuǎn)型浪潮甚至改變了公司領(lǐng)導(dǎo)層的DNA。比如服裝公司蓋普（Gap）最近就任命了數(shù)字和創(chuàng)新部門主任阿特?佩克為下一任首席執(zhí)行官。

正如網(wǎng)景公司（Netscape）和風(fēng)投公司安德森?霍洛維茨（Andreessen Horowitz）的創(chuàng)始人馬克?安德森所言，軟件正在吞食這個世界。但科技驅(qū)動的創(chuàng)新不僅來自科技業(yè)。所有行業(yè)的公司都有機會從第一波數(shù)字化浪潮中隕落的公司那里吸取教訓(xùn)，順應(yīng)這一變化，在數(shù)字世界重塑自身品牌。?

阿隆?列維是Box公司的首席執(zhí)行官，也是Airware公司投資人。Box的客戶包括通用電氣、Gap和孟山都等知名公司。（財富中文網(wǎng)）

譯者：嚴匡正

From 1768 to the early 1990s, one company dominated the world’s market for encyclopedic information. For over 200 years, it had mastered the esoteric practice of selling libraries of information through a unique blend of traveling sales people and consumer distribution channels.

Suddenly, everything changed for Encyclopedia Britannica, asPhilip Evans diagrammed in a seminal Harvard Business Review article in 1997. With the advent of the information age, what took Encyclopedia Britannica nearly two centuries to build up was undone by computer-oriented businesses in just a few years.

Blockbuster, Kodak and Borders have similar stories; these companies have taught us that in the digital era, with competition democratized across a widening landscape, managers and businesses are threatened by the very activities they’re most invested to accomplish. In Britannica’s case, this meant continuing to sell high-priced physical books with CD-ROMs as an add-on, rather than the other way around. For Borders, one of its perilous moves in entering the digital economy was contracting digital commerce to its eventual disruptor, Amazon AMZN -1.92% . And as responsive as Tower Records may have been to change, retail stores and physical supply chains became a burden when its core product turns into bits. In many cases, there’s simply no fighting the inevitable disruption at play in one’s industry, but how quickly you respond and the characteristics of that response are critical.

For many enterprises, it felt like the digital disruption of the 1990s had fully played out. Ecommerce sites were launched, supply chains were optimized, and information technology investments experienced a boom. But the first digital wave of the 1990s and 2000s merely brought digital interfaces and experiences to universes where similar, albeit analog, metaphors already existed. This is why the first technology company to explode was a web-version of a book catalog, and why news surged onto the Internet, scattering newspapers in its wake.

Fast-forward to 2014, and it’s becoming clearer that the transition to digital in news, media, and commerce was just the tip of the iceberg. It wasn’t until Internet ubiquity, location-aware smartphones, and a commoditization of underlying computing resources came together that our world was fully ripe for transformation.

This next decade will be about building digital “interfaces” and experiences in the rest of the economy. Enterprises once protected by significant investment in assets or slow-moving regulatory environments now run the risk of going the way of the record store if they don’t respond. Startups tackling markets as diverse as life sciences and eyewear are cropping up in a world where computing is infinitely scalable; talent can be acquired on-demand; contract manufacturing is just a few clicks away, and distribution to billions is nearly an entrepreneurial birthright.

Every company board, IT organization, and leadership team should assume that there are – or will be – new ways to more efficiently serve customers. In 2010, the Taxi industry neglected to ask, ‘what is the job we’ve been hired to do?’ and deliver a high-quality, on-demand experience for the consumer as a result. So Uber and later Lyft did it for them.

While few industries are as broken as the taxi industry, the same factors that have changed fortunes in urban transportation are at play in nearly every other market. The structures that once supported market dominance are becoming unsound: rigid “monopolies” that led to a false sense of competitive security due to a lack of new entrants (traditional healthcare systems); regulations that ensured high barriers to entry (traditional taxi companies); or businesses that won via constrained access to alternatives (big box retailers). These once-competitive advantages become inert in the face of newly valued characteristics, delivered by companies that focus on personalization, on-demand experiences, and don’t have the baggage of traditional infrastructure, vertical integration, or huge assets to amortize.

In a recent piece for Harvard Business Review, Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter wrote that “These new types of products alter industry structure and the nature of competition, exposing companies to new competitive opportunities and threats. … In many companies, smart, connected products will force the fundamental question, “What business am I in?”

No matter what the business, there’s a path to move from the industrial age to the information economy. The first step is to recognize the natural extensions of proprietary or unique value in this new digital world. If you’ve amassed massive infrastructure, consider creating application program interfaces (APIs) to let any outsider take advantage of your scale. For product companies, consider how a digital feedback loop can create a more dynamic relationship with your customer. If you’re a high-end provider, figure out how new technology lets you lower your costs and bring your solution to a wider set of customers. Digital transformation doesn’t mean throwing out your core competency, but it does mean heavily augmenting it with new experiences and technologies.

And beyond developing new products and technologies, part of the solution may be to partner with startups in Silicon Valley and beyond, as Whole Foods recently did by linking up with Instacart, where they’re already seeing transaction sizes increase by 150%, or as GE just did by investing in Airware, a leading drone startup. In other cases, the right answer might be through acquisition, as Nordstrom demonstrated by acquiring Trunk Club, or Monsanto did by scooping up the Climate Corp last year. This shift is even leading to a change in the DNA across the leadership team, as seen by the recent move of Gap naming Art Peck, its head of digital and innovation, as its next CEO.

As Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape and VC firm Andreessen Horowitz said, software is eating the world. But technology-driven innovation won’t just come from the technology sector. Businesses across all industries have the opportunity to learn from companies who failed to catch the first wave of digital disruption and get ahead of this change, remaking themselves for the digital world.

Aaron Levie is CEO of Box. Levie is an investor of Airware. GE, Gap and Monsanto are customers of Box.