In early August I participated in a strategic planning meeting in the Boston area. I was there in my role as a board member of the Institute for Data Driven Design (ID3), a research and educational nonprofit established to help define the principles, contracts and rules needed to empower individuals to assert greater control over their personal data and digital identities. I was asked to talk about the organizational challenges that companies generally face when embracing disruptive innovations like those being developed by ID3. This is a topic I am quite familiar with having lived through it at different times in my career as well as being a subject I often discuss in seminars. I distilled my remarks into three key points: the need for a clear, compelling strategy that the whole organization can rally around; the management of disruptive innovation initiatives; and the importance of top-down leadership and support. Let me elaborate on each of these points.
月初，我参加了一个在波士顿地区举办的战略计划会议。我是作为数据驱动设计协会(Institute for Data Driven Design, 简称ID3)的董事会成员与会的，ID3是一家从事研究与教育的非营利性组织，其宗旨是通过对原则、合约以及规定的详细解释，来帮助个人在更大程度上控制自己的个人数据和数字身份。在会议上，我被邀请就公司在采纳破坏式创新(disruptive innovation)时通常会面临的组织性挑战发表看法，因为ID3正在从事这种破坏式创新。我本人对这个话题颇为熟悉，在职业生涯中我曾多次面对这个问题，也经常在座谈会上讨论这个问题。我将我的意见概括为三个要点：明确有力的政策的必要性，以便整个组织能够为之共同努力;对破坏式创新活动的管理;以及由上至下的领导和支持的重要性。接下来，我将分别对这三个要点进行详述。
While we all talk about how exciting it is to embrace disruptive innovations, we often forget that disruptive innovations are indeed disruptive, not only in the marketplace, but also for individuals and groups in your own organization. Much as we often talk about embracing change as a positive experience, change is in fact very difficult, even painful for many people. You are asking them to move into unknown, perhaps even unchartered territory. What will be the impact on their jobs and their families? Do they have the required skills for whatever is ahead? How well will they personally fare in the new environment? The culture of the institution may not be able to stretch enough to implement the needed changes, even when the very survival of the organization is at stake.
当我们在讨论启动破坏式创新是多么令人鼓舞时，我们常常会忘记，破坏式创新的确具有破坏性，不仅对市场而言是这样，对你所在组织的个人和团队也是如此。尽管我们往往将接纳变化视为一种积极的体验，但事实上，变化却是非常困难的，对很多人来讲甚至是痛苦的。你所做的是要求他们进入未知的、甚至可能是不合常理的领域。这将对他们的工作及家庭产生怎样的影响?他们是否具备未来所需的技能?他们每个人能在何种程度上适应新的环境?与此同时，组织文化也许并不具备实施必要改变的包容性，即使当组织危在旦夕之时也是如此。
In my experience, a major way of rallying the organization to embrace the needed transformation is to have a compelling target to shoot for, a kind of promised land everyone can aim for instead of wandering in the desert without a clear path forward. One of the most famous examples of a clear, compelling target is President John F Kennedy's address to a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961, when he said:
我的经验之谈是：鼓舞整个组织、使之接纳必要改革的一个重要方式就是设定一个具有说服力的未来目标，这个目标就相当于《 经》中的“应许之地”(Promised Land)，它使每个人都能参与其中，而并非在沙漠中盲目地游荡。约翰?肯尼迪总统(President John F Kennedy)于1961年5月25日在美国国会发表的演讲就是阐述这种明确有力的目标的一个著名例证。
'I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important in the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.'
“我确信，在这个10年内，我们的国家应该致力于实现人类登月并安全返回地球的目标。在现阶段，没有任何一项太空计划比登月计划更令世人难忘，或者比这项长远的太空探索更加重要;同时，也没有任何一项太空计划比登月计划难度更大、耗资更为巨大。”
By issuing a very difficult but concrete challenge, President Kennedy brought together all the key constituencies in academia, industry and government that needed to work closely together to make his challenge a reality. The goal was achieved by the Apollo 11 mission on July 20, 1969.
通过提出一项非常艰巨但很具体的挑战，肯尼迪总统团结了学术界、工业界以及政界所有的重要支持者，将这项挑战变为现实需要这些人的齐心协力。1969年7月20日，“阿波罗11号”(Apollo 11)成功登月，这一目标得以实现。
It might be possible to transform a large complex organization through a series of more operational objectives, - e.g., growing revenue and profit, cutting expenses, improving quality, developing new products and services. But, these feel more like business-as-usual. They are key to any successful company, but they cannot generate the passion of a moon-shot, that is, of a clear, compelling vision that captures everyone's imagination.
通过设定一系列更具可行性的目标是有可能转变一家大型综合企业的。可行性目标包括增长收入和利润、削减开支、提高质量、开发新产品和服务等。但是，上述目标看起来更像是日常业务。它们对任何成功的企业都很关键，但是它们不能催生登月计划带来的那种热情，只有那种能够激发每个人想象力的、明确有力的目标才能做到这一点。
Having a compelling strategy is necessary, but not sufficient. In their 2003 bestseller The Innovator's Solution, Clay Christensen and Michael Raynor observed:
拥有鼓舞人心的策略是必要的，但并不足够。克莱?克里斯坦森(Clay Christensen)和迈克尔?雷纳(Michael Raynor)在他们合着的2003年畅销书《创新者的解答》(Innovator's Solution)中写道：
'A surprising number of innovations fail not because of some fatal technological flaw or because the market isn't ready. They fail because responsibility to build these businesses is given to managers or organizations whose capabilities aren't up to the task. Corporate executives make this mistake because most often the very skills that propel an organization to succeed in sustaining circumstances systematically bungle the best ideas for disruptive growth. An organization's capabilities become its disabilities when disruption is afoot.'
“数量惊人的创新归于失败，并非是失败于某些致命的技术缺陷，或是市场的接纳程度不足。它们失败的原因是：启动创新业务的任务被委派给了不足以当此重任的管理者或机构。企业高管犯下这种错误是由于，推进企业获得持续性成功的特定技能往往会妨害破坏式创新的最优理念。当启动破坏式创新时，企业的优势就变成了它的弱势。”
In many institutions, people who do well in operational jobs are likely to be the ones promoted to higher management positions. But as they rise up in the organization, other skills become increasingly important. In particular, managers have to make the transition from managing the present to managing both the present and the future - that is, they now have to be good at both operations and strategy. Easier said than done.
在很多组织中，那些擅长运营型工作任务的员工很有可能被提升至职位更高的管理岗位。但是，随着他们的升迁，其他工作技能就变得越来越重要了。特别是管理者必须要完成从管理当下到管理当下以及未来的转变――也就是说，他们现在必须既要擅长于运营，又要擅长于战略。这一点说起来容易做起来难。
Operational excellence requires detailed analysis of technologies, quality, processes, competitors, customer satisfaction and the like. It is well suited to a hierarchic, disciplined style of management. But managing a more strategic initiative, especially one based on a disruptive innovation, requires a very different approach. It cannot be based on rigorous information analysis because, in its early stages, there is little data to analyze. There are lots of unknowns because, early on, it's not clear how the market for a new product or service will develop. Disruptive innovation initiatives requires a more entrepreneurial management style based on establishing an early market presence; close collaborations with research communities, business partners and early adopters; and learning in the marketplace through continuous experimentation and refinement until it becomes clear what the company's strategy should be.
卓越的运营能力要求对技术、质量、流程、竞争对手、客户满意度等因素进行细致入微的分析。这种能力非常适用于等级森严、纪律性强的管理方式。但是经营更具战略意义的创新活动，特别是破坏式创新活动，则要求一种截然不同的工作方法。创新是不可能建立在对信息进行缜密分析的基础之上的，因为在创新的早期阶段，可供分析的数据少之又少。同时，未知的内容数不胜数，因为在初期，人们并不清楚市场将对新产品和新服务作何反应。破坏式创新需要的是一种更具创业精神的管理方式，这种管理方式基于对早期市场的塑造;与研究机构、商业伙伴和早期采纳者进行密切的合作;以及通过持续不断的实验与改进在市场中学习，直至建立清晰的公司策略。
A lot of companies and executives have trouble navigating the delicate balance between operations and strategy, that is, between managing for near term results versus managing for continued relevance in the future. The operational demands are so intense, especially in our fast-moving, highly competitive and demanding times, that just about all the efforts and funds of the company are spent managing their core business, and the individuals who are good at it are the ones most appreciated and promoted. Often, the management team does not assign a senior enough executive with the proper skills to nurture an emergent business opportunity with small near-term revenues and a promising but unpredictable future. By the time they notice that some new ideas are catching the attention of their customers, who are being courted by companies no one ever heard of, it's often too late to catch up.
很多公司和高管都在寻求运营和策略的微妙平衡上遇到了困难，这种困难换句话说就是管理近期结果与管理未来的持续相关性之间的平衡。运营方面的要求是如此之高，特别是在我们这个变化迅速、竞争激烈、要求严苛的时代，以至于公司几乎把全部的精力和资金都用在了管理核心业务上，最精于此道的员工往往最容易得到赏识和提升。通常，管理层不会指派那些有能力发展新兴业务机会的高层管理人士来掌舵短期内效益不高的部门，这些部门潜力巨大，但其未来很难预测。等管理层意识到某些新鲜的理念已经引起了顾客的注意，而此前名不见经传的公司已经抓住了这个机会时，往往已经为时太晚了。
Top management support is absolutely essential for initiatives based on disruptive innovations to have any serious chance of success. One of the major reasons why breakthrough innovations are difficult for large, established companies is that they treat such efforts as they do any other projects. The venture might be buried within a much larger operational unit, which will manage it based on typical business metrics. It will get little visibility to top management because of its small contributions to revenue and profit. It's then only a matter of time before the effort is forgotten and eventually terminated.
破坏式创新要获得实现成功的重要机会，管理高层的支持无疑至关重要。地位稳固的大型企业很难激发突破性创新的一个主要原因就是，他们对待创新项目的方式就像他们对待其他项目一样。在一个规模更大的运营实体中，冒险项目可能会被淹没，因为这样的企业将使用一贯的商业指标管理这个项目。项目将难以获得管理高层的注意，因为其对公司收入及利润的贡献很低。所以，这个项目被人遗忘并最终流产只是一个时间问题。
It's important to assign experienced senior executives to lead the new ventures during their fragile, startup phase. The new initiative must be carefully nurtured and protected until it has enough concrete results and marketplace successes to stand on its own. In these early stages, other parts of the company can make your life difficult or worse if they view you as an internal threat that is competing with them for resources, senior management attention or marketplace visibility. Leaders of the new initiative should reach out to and include key colleagues across the company as part of their virtual team. But, visible top management support is very helpful in tempering sibling rivalries and getting everyone to work together as part of one company-wide team.
在创新项目艰难的起步阶段，指派经验丰富的资深管理人士来领导项目非常重要。在新项目获得能够在市场上立足的充分优势和商业成功之前，这个项目必须得到谨慎的经营与保护。在起步阶段，如果公司的其他部门将你视作一种与他们竞争资源、高管重视或市场认知度的内部威胁，那么他们可能会令你迈入艰难甚至 惨的日子。创新项目的领导者应该寻求全公司的关键员工的支持，让他们实际上成为自己的团队的一份子。而来自管理高层的人所共见的支持也是非常有帮助的：可以帮助化解内部竞争，团结全体员工为这个与公司上下休戚相关的团队效力。
There are many reasons why disruptive innovations fail in large companies. But often, despite having come up with a good strategy, they fail because proper attention was not paid to the organizational and cultural changes required so that the institution and its people will embrace the innovation and work hard to make it succeed. In the end, these human elements of innovation are likely to make the most important difference between success and failure.
有很多原因都解释了为什么破坏式创新会在大公司屡遭失败。但是经常性地，尽管采纳了合适的策略，破坏式创新仍然失败在未对组织及文化变化倾注必要的关注上，而这种关注是组织和员工接纳创新并为之奋斗的必要条件。最终，这些与创新有关的人为因素可能就是成功与失败之间最重大的区别。
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