原文链接 https://hbr.org/2018/02/can-anyone-stop-amazon-from-winning-the-industrial-internet
译文地址：http://tech.163.com/18/0220/14/DB3JBU3F00097U7R_mobile.html
网易科技讯 2月20日消息，《哈佛商业评论》（HBR）网站近日发布文章称，纯信息商品和数字化的模拟产品均已经被科技巨头们所主宰，但物联网和工业互联网产品领域的赢家尚未诞生。数字公司和老牌工业公司将展开剧烈的竞争，虽然目前结果尚不明朗，但文章称亚马逊最有可能笑到最后。
以下是文章主要内容：
亚马逊创始人杰夫·贝索斯（Jeff Bezos）、“股神”沃伦·巴菲特（Warren Buffett）和摩根大通CEO海梅·戴蒙（Jaime Dimon）将携手进军医疗保健领域的消息，给CVS、Cigna和UnitedHealth等该行业的传统公司带来了冲击。同时也给其他行业的首席执行官们提出了一个重要的问题：正如马克·安德森（Marc Andreessen）所说的，软件将会主宰整个世界吗？这是否意味着福特、迪尔、劳斯莱斯等其他传统工业企业也面临着被颠覆的风险？
在开始回答这个问题之前，我们先为这场竞赛的运动员们“算算分数”。当今世界有如下三种类型的产品，数字原住民（亚马逊，谷歌，脸书，微软，IBM）已经在前两种产品中取得了竞争优势，第三种产品的赢家则还是未知之数：
类型1：“纯粹的”信息商品，数字原住民主宰的领域。比如搜索领域的谷歌，或者社交网络领域的Facebook。它们的商业模式受益于互联网，并享有巨大的网络效应。
类型2：曾经的模拟产品，如今已经被转换成数字产品，例如照片、图书和音乐。这也是数字原住民统治的地盘。这些产品通常通过数字分销平台作为服务出售（Audible.com销售书籍，Spotify销售音乐，Netflix销售电影）。
类型3：在这类产品中，实体组件的输入输出效率和可靠性依然很重要，但数字化正在成为这些产品本身必不可少的一部分（实际上，计算机正在被嵌入产品中）。这是物联网（IOT）和工业互联网的世界。
卡特彼勒、福特和劳斯莱斯等大型制造企业在这场席卷全球的竞赛中角逐。这种产品有三类组件：实体组件，“智能”组件（传感器，控制器，微处理器，软件和增强型用户界面）和连接组件（一台机器连接到另一台机器;一台机器连接到许多机器;许多机器在一个系统中相互连接）。
数字原住民已经先后颠覆了媒体、出版、旅游、音乐和摄影等行业。但是，谁更有可能在第三类产品的创造和经济价值攫取方面取得领先地位：数字原住民还是行业老牌公司？福特还是特斯拉？劳斯莱斯还是IBM？卡特彼勒还是微软？亚马逊、伯克希尔哈撒韦和摩根大通，还是联合健康（UnitedHealth）？
数字公司的挑战
毫无疑问，智能互联机器的时代将会创造价值。我们并不预期亚马逊、微软或IBM会去设计、制造和销售农用拖拉机、飞机引擎或者MR扫描仪。真正的问题在于：数字原住民能否开发出软件支持的解决方案，来从工业硬件中汲取重要的价值？答案是“肯定的”，但这不会是易事。这将需要大量的投资来为各类公司打造新的功能，包括惠普、思科、戴尔、三星和联想等硬件公司，像Facebook、谷歌、亚马逊和微软这样的大型软件公司，以及初创企业。它们尤其要克服三个障碍：
1.硬件科学。像劳斯莱斯这样的公司致力于设计和制造喷气发动机。这些属于非常复杂的机器。这些机器背后有很多的硬科学。它们的运转与像Airbnb这样的数字原住民全然不同，对于后者来说，营销推广比专业技术更重要。
例如，老牌工业公司拥有材料科学方面的专业知识。此外，随着时间的推移，它们的科学知识也在不断提升。为了一直走在硬件物理学的前沿，它们进行了大量的研发投资——不管是在技术基础方面还是在应用方面。这些科学知识很多都受到专利的保护。
掌握硬科学是在硬件上开发基于软件的解决方案的先决条件。这些公司的卓越产品/领域知识为它们带来了比较优势，来模拟硬件资产的效能，编写高端/高附加值的软件应用程序。 “纯粹的”数字公司能够编写商用软件应用程序。但是它必须要足够掌握硬科学，才能编写能够提高资产性能的复杂应用程序。
2.客户亲密度。工业巨头们拥有完善的品牌，已经建立起了牢固的客户关系，并签订了长期的服务合同。它们已经赢得了客户的信任，因此客户愿意共享数据。数字原住民可以去和工业客户合作，但是它们必须要先赢得他们的信任；它们必须积累能力来了解客户的运作;它们必须要通过与客户的互动匹配上工业界所积累学习的经验；它们必须学会要求获得合适的数据;它们必须聘请几个垂直领域的专家，来将数据转化为有用的见解。
3.难以让客户分担风险。老牌工业公司拥有产品知识，与客户关系良好，同时还让工程师进驻客户站点。因此，像劳斯莱斯这样的公司能够提供成果交易，即向客户保证成果（例如：零停机时间，速度更快，燃油效率更高，操作员零失误，可靠性可高），以及与客户分享风险和回报。亚马逊或谷歌很难向客户保证成果，并与它们不了解的企业分担风险。
工业巨头的挑战
工业巨头能够在工业互联网取得领先吗？答案是肯定的，但对他们来说也不容易。他们也有三个重大的障碍需要克服：
1.软件人才：工业企业的IT人才能够执行以过程效率和成本削减为导向的项目。这种人才不适合开发可提供卓越客户成果的、突破性的、新软件产品。为此，它们必须能够吸引世界级的创新者和软件工程师。对于年轻的软件人才来说，劳斯莱斯是否有跟Facebook和Google一样的吸引力呢？显然没有。如果是这样，那么工业巨头们要拿什么去吸引最优秀的人才呢？
2.数字文化：工业企业和数字化企业的运作原理可谓大相径庭。硬件公司的特点包括产品开发周期长、六西格玛效率管理和销售周期长。软件公司则具有不同的特点：产品开发周期短、灵活性强和销售周期短。工业界必须要建立基于精益、灵活、简约、快速响应等理念的数字文化。对于传统工业公司来说，这是一个很高的要求。
3.转型困局：数字化有可能会颠覆工业企业。数字化战略有三种方式可以蚕食“核心的”工业业务。首先，数据和洞见可以帮助提高机器的生产力；因此，数字化有可能蚕食未来的硬件销售。其次，数据和洞见提升了机器的可靠性;数字化因此有可能蚕食未来的服务收入。第三，软件订购和许可可能会使得客户选择自助式服务。目前的客户可能会终止或者重新谈判服务合同，潜在客户可能根本不会签订服务合同。总之，工业公司很难进行自我颠覆。
工业互联网的未来，将涉及包括科技公司和工业公司在内的各种参与者之间的通力合作。关键的问题在于：谁将占据领导地位，在这样的一个生态系统中提取最大的经济价值？工业公司会取得领先吗？还是数字原住民会取得领先？现在看来两者都有机会。
如果打赌的话，我会把赌注押在科技巨头而非老牌工业巨头身上。在工业互联网时代，将有利于数字公司的一个因素是，技术或者科学上的突破，大大降低了新晋者的进入门槛。例如，电池技术的突破使电动汽车成为可能。电动汽车的设计比内燃机汽车要简单得多，这使得特斯拉和比亚迪能够进入市场，尽管福特已经有数十年的专业造车经验。随着电动化和自动化驾驶的一同出现，谷歌、百度、苹果和Lyft等其他的科技公司也将能够进入汽车市场。喷气发动机和农用拖拉机的类似技术变化，也能够让科技巨头在这些行业占据一席之地。
更重要的是，亚马逊或谷歌有资源去掌握硬科学和获取客户关系，在工业互联网时代与工业巨头展开竞争。如果需要的话，它们也有足够的资源去进行相关的并购交易。
在这些科技巨头中，亚马逊在工业互联网时代最有可能成为赢家。它已经有过融合实体世界和数字世界的成功经验。亚马逊十分了解模拟产品的经济规律，且不会畏惧进行大规模的前期投资，不会担心增长放缓。它对全食超市（Whole Foods）的巨额收购和Amazon Go无人杂货店的实验就是很好的例子。亚马逊是每个人都害怕的公司，工业巨头也不例外。
以下是原文：
Can Anyone Stop Amazon from Winning the Industrial Internet?
Just the announcement that Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and Jaime Dimon will be entering the health care space has sent shock waves for industry incumbents such as CVS, Cigna, and UnitedHealth. It also puts a fundamental question back on the agendas of CEOs in other industries: Will software eat the world, as Marc Andreessen famously quipped? Is this a warning shot that signals that other legacy industrial companies, such as Ford, Deere, and Rolls Royce are also at increased risk of being disrupted?
To start to answer that question, let’s tally up the score. There are three types of products today. Digital natives (Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, IBM) have gained competitive advantage in the first two, and the jury is still out on the third:
- Type 1: These are “pure” information goods, where digital natives rule. An example would be Google in search, or Facebook in social networking. Their business models benefit from internet connectivity and they enjoy tremendous network effects.
- Type 2: These are once-analog products that have now been converted into digital products, such as photography, books, and music. Here too, digital natives dominate. These products are typically sold as a service via digital distribution platforms (Audible.com for books, Spotify for music, Netflix for movies).
- Type 3: Then there are products where input-output efficiency and reliability of the physical components are still critical but digital is becoming an integral part of the product itself (in effect, computers are being put inside products). This is the world of the Internet of Things (IOT) and the Industrial Internet.
Manufacturing-heavy companies such as Caterpillar, Ford, and Rolls Royce compete in this world. An aircraft engine is unlikely to become a purely digital product any time soon! Such products have three components: physical components, “smart” components (sensors, controls, microprocessors, software, and enhanced user interface), and connectivity (one machine connected to another machine; one machine connected to many machines; and many machines connected to each other in a system).
Digital natives have already disrupted industries such as media, publishing, travel, music, and photography. But who is likely to assume leadership in creating and capturing economic value in Type 3 products: Digital natives or industry incumbents? Ford or Tesla? Rolls Royce or IBM? Caterpillar or Microsoft? Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase combine or UnitedHealth?
The Challenges for Digital Natives
Value will no doubt be created in the era of smart, connected machines. We don’t expect Amazon or Microsoft or IBM to design, make, and market agricultural tractors, aircraft engines, or MR scanners. The question really is: Can digital natives develop software-enabled solutions that siphon off significant value from industrial hardware? The answer is “yes.” But it won’t be easy. It will require tremendous amounts of investments in building new capabilities for hardware companies like HP, Cisco, Dell, Samsung, and Lenovo; established software companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft; and start-ups. In particular, there are three barriers they must overcome:
1. The physics of the hardware. Companies like Rolls Royce design and manufacture jet engines. These are very complicated machines. There is hard science behind these machines. That’s much different than digital natives like Airbnb where marketing is more important than technical expertise.
Industry incumbents have expertise in the material sciences, for instance. Further, scientific knowledge keeps improving over time. They have made heavy R&D investments—both basic and applied—to remain at the cutting-edge of the physics of the hardware. Much of this scientific knowledge is protected by patents.
Mastery of hard science is a pre-requisite to develop software-based solutions on the hardware. These companies’ superior product/domain knowledge provides them the comparative advantage to model the asset’s performance and write high-end/high value-added software applications. A “pure” digital company can write commodity software applications. But it must acquire enough capabilities on the physics to write sophisticated apps that improve assets’ performance.
2. Customer intimacy. Industrial giants have well-established brands, built strong customer relationships, and signed long-term service contracts. They’ve won the customer’s trust, which is why customers are willing to share data. Digital natives can work with industrial customers, but they have to first earn their trust; they must build capabilities to understand customer operations; they must match the industrials’ cumulative learning from customer interactions; they must learn to ask for the right data; and they have to hire experts in several verticals that can turn data into insights.
3. Difficulty in sharing risks. Industrial incumbents have product knowledge, customer relationships, and field engineers on customer sites. Companies like Rolls Royce can, therefore, offer outcome deals where they guarantee customer outcomes (examples: zero downtime, higher speed, more fuel efficiency, zero operator error, greater reliability) and share risks and rewards with customers. It would be very hard for Amazon or Google to guarantee customer outcomes and take risks with businesses whose operations they know little about.
The Challenges for Industrial Giants
Can the industrial giants lead in the Industrial Internet? The answer is “yes.” But it won’t be easy for them, either. They too have three significant barriers to overcome:
1. Software talent: The IT talent in industrial companies can execute projects oriented towards process efficiency and cost reduction. That talent is ill-suited to develop new, breakthrough software products that offer superior customer outcomes. For that end, they must be able to attract world-class innovators and software engineers. Is, say, Rolls Royce, in the same consideration set as Facebook and Google for young tech employees? Not, really. If so, how can the industrial giants compete to attract the best talent?
2. Digital culture: Industrial businesses and digital businesses operate with completely different principles. The characteristics of hardware businesses include long product development cycle, Six Sigma efficiency, and long sales cycle. Software businesses have different characteristics: short product development cycle, flexibility, and short sales cycle. The industrials must build a digital culture based on concepts like lean, agile, simplicity, responsiveness, and speed. That’s a tall order for an established enterprise.
3. The Incumbent’s Dilemma: Digital has the potential to disrupt industrial businesses. There are three ways digital strategy can cannibalize “core” industrial business. First, data and insights can help improve the productivity of machines; digital, therefore, has the potential to cannibalize future hardware sales. Second, data and insights increase the reliability of machines; digital therefore has the potential to cannibalize future service revenues. Third, software subscription and license might enable customers to do self-service. Current customers could terminate/renegotiate service contracts, and potential customers may not enter into service contracts at all. In short, it is very difficult for a company to disrupt itself.
The future of the Industrial Internet will involve partnerships across a variety of players including tech companies and industrial companies. The key issue: Who will assume the leadership position to extract maximum economic value in such an ecosystem? Will industrial companies take the lead? Or will the digital natives take the lead? Both have a chance.
If I were a betting man, I would place my bets on tech giants over industry incumbents. One factor that will favor digital companies in the industrial internet is technological/scientific breakthroughs that level the playing field for newcomers. For example, breakthroughs in battery technology made the electric cars possible. Electric cars are much simpler to design than cars with internal combustion engines, allowing Tesla and BYD to enter the market despite Ford’s decades of expertise. Since electrification and driverless cars go together, other tech companies such as Google, Baidu, Apple, and Lyft will also be able to enter the automotive market. Similar technological changes in jet engines and agricultural tractors can allow tech giants to gain foothold in these industries as well.
More importantly, Amazon or Google have the resources to acquire the capabilities to master the physics and acquire customer relationships and compete with the industrial giants in the Industrial Internet. They have enough resources and some to buy them, if needed.
Among the tech giants, Amazon is a likely winner in the Industrial Internet. It has successfully fused physical with digital. Amazon understands the economic laws of analog products and is not afraid of massive up-front investments and slower growth. Its acquisition of Whole Foods and experiments with Amazon Go grocery stores are an example. Amazon is the one company everyone’s scared of, even industrial giants.