The Biology of Corporate Survival

企业运营环境正变得愈加复杂。商业环境的多样化、变化速度和相互联接程度前所未有，可预测性也大大降低。

Companies operate in an increasingly complex world: Business environments are more diverse, dynamic, and interconnected than ever—and far less predictable.

很多企业早夭的原因也正是它们无法适应周边环境与日俱增的复杂性。不少公司误读了环境，选择了错误的战略制定方式，或者无法用正确的行为方式和能力来支持其战略。

We believe that companies are dying younger because they are failing to adapt to the growing complexity of their environment. Many misread the environment, select the wrong approach to strategy, or fail to support a viable approach with the right behaviors and capabilities.

那么如今企业该如何保证生存，获得发展？我们的研究融合了企业战略、生物系统和复杂系统的知识，聚焦于如何让复杂系统——从热带雨林到股票市场，再到公司本身——更加强健。

How, then, can companies flourish and persist? Our research at the intersection of business strategy, biology, and complex systems focuses on what makes such systems—from tropical forests to stock markets to companies themselves—robust. 

已经有一些商业思想家提出，企业就像一个个生物物种，他们试图从生物学中提炼出商业智慧，并获得了不同程度的成功。我们认为，企业在一个重要的方面与生物物种惊人相似：它们都是复杂自适应系统（complex adaptive systems）。

Some business thinkers have argued that companies are like biological species and have tried to extract business lessons from biology, with uneven success. We stress that companies are identical to biological species in an important respect: Both are what’s known as complex adaptive systems.

复杂自适应系统通常嵌入更广阔的系统内。某种生物的整个种群是一个复杂自适应系统，这个系统也嵌入一个更广阔的生态系统中，而生态系统又嵌入在更广阔的生物环境中。一家公司是一个复杂自适应系统，它又嵌入更广阔的商业生态系统中，该系统又嵌入更广阔的社会环境中。

Complex adaptive systems are often nested in broader systems. A population is a CAS nested in a natural ecosystem, which itself is nested in the broader biological environment. A company is a CAS nested in a business ecosystem, which is nested in the broad societal environment. 

我们提出了6项原则，能帮助企业这样的复杂自适应系统更加强健。需要注意的是，每一个原则的应用都需要把握合理的“度”，也都会产生成本。领导者必须仔细评估应以何种力度推行每个原则。

We have identified six principles that can help make complex adaptive systems in business robust. A few caveats: Each principle confers a cost and has an optimal level of application; leaders must carefully calibrate how aggressively to implement each one.

更重要的是，每个原则之间都存在着张力，加强某个原则的应用，可能会削弱另一原则。领导者必须思考，如何平衡综合应用这些原则，而非将每个原则的应用视为单一的目标。

Furthermore, the principles are in tension with one another; emphasizing one may require deemphasizing another. Leaders must consider how to balance the principles collectively rather than treat the application of each as a unitary goal.

为方便起见，我们将逐一介绍这6大原则，然而强健的系统应同时拥有多个甚至所有原则。

For clarity we will illustrate the principles one at a time, but robust systems typically exhibit many or all of their characteristics simultaneously.

01.保持异质性

Maintain Heterogeneity

复杂自适应系统内部参与者的多样性，可以让系统适应不断变化的环境。从更广泛的角度讲，多样化是适应性进化的前提。

Variety in the units of a CAS allows the system to adapt to a changing environment. Biologically, such heterogeneity explains why many diseases persist despite efforts to eradicate them.

在商业环境中，领导者必须保证公司在3个层面上保持足够的多样性：人才、创新和活动。培植多样性可能会导致短期效率的降低，但它对系统的强健必不可少。要促进多样性，一个比较简便的方法是雇用不同个性、教育水平、背景和工作风格的员工。然而即便企业的员工多样性很高，员工有时也不愿去挑战现有的主流商业逻辑，尤其在那些成功的企业中。明确的文化转型和主动的管理层支持，甚至鼓励他们犯错，可以帮助员工进行创新。      

In a business CAS leaders must ensure that the company is sufficiently diverse along three dimensions: people, ideas, and endeavors. This may come at the cost of short-term efficiency, but it is essential to robustness. One obvious starting point is to hire people with varied personality types, educational backgrounds, and working styles. But even amid such diversity, employees are typically reluctant to challenge the dominant business logic, especially if the firm has been successful. An explicit cultural shift and active managerial support may be needed to encourage people to risk failure and create new ideas.

实际上，没有错误意味着企业失去了很多机遇，最终导致企业的脆弱性提高。很多硅谷的企业都欢迎有意义的、“学习性”的失败，它们认为成功离不开这些失败的贡献。      

Indeed, the absence of mistakes is a clear indication of missed opportunities and ultimately of enterprise fragility. Many Silicon Valley firms celebrate productive, or “learning,” failures (think of the mantras “Fail fast” and “Fail forward”), which contribute to their success.

富士胶片展示了如何通过战略性地保持异质性让公司变得更强健。20世纪90年代末，数字成像技术进入消费市场，并迅速吞噬成像胶片的市场需求，整个胶片行业也随之陷入危机。与胶片业另一位巨人柯达的做法不同，富士不仅探索了密切相关行业的新业务，也进入了全新的业务领域，例如制药和化妆品。

Fujifilm exemplifies robustness through strategic heterogeneity. Its industry faced a crisis in the late 1990s, when digital photography reached the consumer market and quickly eroded demand for photography film. Fujifilm responded with a series of radical reforms to diversify its business—partnering with new companies, investing heavily in R&D, and acquiring 40 firms. What distinguished Fujifilm’s approach from that of the other industry giant, Kodak, was that the firm explored not only obvious adjacencies but also entirely new business areas, such as pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, where it could exploit its existing capabilities in chemistry and materials.

这些探索并非浅尝辄止，而是达到了足够深度。公司的多样化探索收到了回报：2000年胶片市场达到顶峰，在之后的10年，其规模缩水了90%。然而在此期间，富士的业绩不降反升。反观老对手柯达则在2012年宣布破产。      

It also did so to a sufficient degree. The exploratory efforts and resulting diverse offerings paid off. While the camera film market peaked in 2000 and shrank by 90% over the following 10 years, Fujifilm grew; in contrast, Kodak declared bankruptcy in 2012.

02.保持模块化

Sustain Modularity

模块化复杂的自适应系统的各组成部分是松散连接的。高模块化的系统可以防止风险在各个组成部分间传播，使整个系统更加强健。

A modular CAS consists of loosely connected components. Highly modular systems impede the spread of shocks from one component to the next, making the overall system more robust.

在商业环境中，模块化也需要取舍。完全隔绝外界风险，意味着放弃高度联通带来的益处。在一家公司中，不同业务或区域之间的紧密联接可促进信息流动、创新和企业灵活性；但它也会让公司在面对严重风险时更脆弱。在更广阔的生态系统中，与其他利益相关方紧密联接也会带来类似的效率提升，当然相互依存也会产生风险。由于风险的降低微妙且不易见，而效率的提升则立竿见影，因此管理者常常过于强调后者的益处。

In a business context modularity always brings trade-offs: Insulating against shocks means forgoing some benefits of greater connectivity. Within a company, tight connections across regions or businesses can enhance information flows, innovation, and agility, but they tend to make the company vulnerable to severe adverse events. In the broader ecosystem, integration with other business stakeholders can bolster effectiveness in similar ways, but interdependence also amplifies risk. Because the benefits of risk mitigation are subtle and latent, whereas efficiency gains are immediate, managers often overemphasize the latter.

抛开这些取舍，模块化仍对系统的鲁棒性（Robustness，是指控制系统在一定的参数摄动下，维持其它某些性能的特性）非常重要。如果公司为了短期利益而对其忽视，那么长期风险可能随之而来。      

Despite the trade-offs, modularity is a defining feature of robust systems. A bias against it for the sake of short-term gains carries long-term risks.

03.保留冗余 

Preserve Redundancy

在冗余的系统中，多个部分扮演同样的角色。当其中一个失效时，其他部分可以完成同样的功能。在快速变化的环境中，风险事件发生的频率更高，冗余就变得尤为重要。

In systems with redundancy, multiple components play overlapping roles. When one fails, another can fulfill the same function. Redundancy is particularly important in highly dynamic environments, in which adverse shocks are frequent.​

想象一下人类的免疫系统如何利用冗余来对抗疾病。人体有多条防线来阻挡病原体，其中包括物理屏障（皮肤和粘膜）、内部免疫系统（白血球）以及适应性免疫系统（抗体）。每一条防线又具有多个细胞和分子防御机制。在健康的人体中，这些冗余机制相互配合，当其中一条防线失效时，其他机制会阻挡病原体的感染。      

Consider how the human immune system leverages redundancy to create robustness against disease. We have multiple lines of defense against pathogens, including physical barriers (the skin and mucous membranes), the innate immune system (white blood cells), and the adaptive immune system (antibodies), each of which consists of multiple cellular and molecular defense mechanisms. In healthy people these redundant mechanisms act in concert, so when one fails, others prevent infection.

然而企业往往对冗余避之不及，它们将其视为精益和效率的大敌。这导致了一些灾难性的后果。20世纪90年代，爱立信是全球领先的手机制造商之一。它采用单一货源的策略采购手机的关键部件。2000年，一场大火让飞利浦的微型芯片制造厂陷入瘫痪。爱立信无法短时间内找到可以替代的供应商，不得不停产长达数月，当年手机部门就宣告亏损高达17亿美元，最终导致该部门被索尼收购。      

Businesses often impugn redundancy, treating it as the antithesis of leanness and efficiency. This has led to some disastrous outcomes. In the 1990s, when Ericsson was one of the world’s leading mobile-phone manufacturers, it adopted a single-source procurement strategy for key components. In 2000 a fire incapacitated a Philips microchip plant, and Ericsson was unable to switch rapidly to another supplier. It lost months of production and recorded a $1.7 billion loss in its mobile-phone division that year, which resulted in the division’s merger with Sony.

企业如何兼得低成本高效率与冗余呢？首先，管理者要辨认企业最依赖的利益相关方，它们有可能是供应商，也有可能是新的创新合作伙伴。对于爱立信，这个利益相关方就是飞利浦。管理者要计算建立冗余，减少风险的可行性。通常企业需要开发新的合作伙伴，并仔细权衡其中的利弊。

How can businesses implement redundancy while avoiding prohibitive expense or inefficiency? First, managers should identify the stakeholders—they might be suppliers or innovation partners—on which the business is most dependent. For Ericsson, that set would have included Philips. Next, they should determine the feasibility of creating redundancy to reduce risk. Often this will involve developing new partners, which necessitates careful consideration of the trade-offs involved.

04.降低不确定性

Expect Surprise, but Reduce Uncertainty

复杂自适应系统的一个关键特征是我们无法准确预测其未来状态。但是，我们能收集信号，判断变化的模式并设想出合理的结果。这样我们就能根据预测采取行动，将负面结果的可能性降到最低。

A key feature of complex adaptive systems is that we cannot precisely predict their future states. However, we can collect signals, detect patterns of change, and imagine plausible outcomes—and take action to minimize undesirable ones.

在商业环境中，没有什么能比新技术的发展和影响更难预测。但企业可以对竞争对手进行监测，并随之采取行动，避免被不起眼的竞争对手打个措手不及。我们提供几个最佳实践可供借鉴。      

In business systems few things are harder to predict than the progress and impact of new technologies. But it can be worthwhile to actively monitor and react to the activities of maverick competitors in an effort to avoid being blindsided. Companies that do this follow a few best practices.

第一，如果公司是在位企业，首先要承认现实：它们的商业模式总有一天会被取代。因此它们需要思考，商业模式如何被取代以及应对措施。      

First, if they are incumbents, they accept that their business models will be superseded at some point, and they consider how that may happen and what to do about it.

其次，它们明白，变革往往来自行业的边缘，来自那些别无选择，必须颠覆在位企业商业模式的初创企业和挑战者。      

Second, they understand that change often comes from an industry’s periphery—from start-ups or challengers who have no choice but to bet against incumbents’ models.

第三，它们会收集一些微弱的信号，例如投资的流向以及针对目前商业模式的初期创业活动。      

Third, they collect weak signals from the smart money flows and early-stage entrepreneurial activity that constitute those bets against their models.

第四，它们会采取应急思维。与其费尽心思预测新技术和公司能否成功，它们需要思考：如果创新技术获得成功，它会对我们带来什么样的影响。      

Fourth, they practice contingent thinking: Rather than posing the unanswerable question of whether this or that company or technology will succeed, they ask, If the maverick’s idea worked, what would be the consequences for us?

最后，它们会先下手为强，复制创新、收购初创企业或建立防御体制。      

Finally, they take preemptive action against such threats by replicating the idea, acquiring it, or building defenses against it.

05.建立反馈机制

Create Feedback Loops and Adaptive Mechanisms

系统的异质性提供了多样化选择，而反馈循环则保证这些选择能改善系统的健康程度。反馈，是指系统察觉环境变化，并通过这些变化获得理想特性的机制（或通过创新提升企业的鲁棒性）。系统必须破坏低级别参与者之间的平衡，才能保证整个系统的健康。

While heterogeneity provides the variety on which selection operates, feedback loops ensure that selection takes place and improves the fitness of the system. Feedback is the mechanism through which systems detect changes in the environment and use them to amplify desirable traits. The fact that selection occurs at the local level implies, paradoxically, that some lack of robustness at lower levels may be necessary for robustness in the larger system. That is, the system must destroy order locally to maintain its fitness at higher levels.

在自然界中，突变和自然选择——多样化、选择和基因传承这一过程导致的生殖成功——是一个自发的迭代过程。      

In nature, mutation and natural selection—the variation, selection, and propagation of genes that contribute to reproductive success—is an autonomous process.

然而在商业环境中，这一过程往往是人为管理的。多样化、选择和创新的传承只有在有利的环境下才能发生。换言之，企业的领导者必须建立起能鼓励这一创新迭代过程的机制和环境。      

In business the analog is a predominantly “managed” activity. The variation, selection, and propagation of innovations happen only when leaders explicitly create and encourage mechanisms that promote those things. In fact, mainstream management thinking, as taught in many business schools, may actively suppress the intrinsic “variance” and “inefficiency” associated with iterative experimentation.

那么公司应如何实施创新迭代的流程？         

How can a company implement the process of iterative innovation? 

首先，公司必须在组织上下找到正确的信号，这点举足轻重。一线员工往往拥有非常有价值的信息，它们往往得不到传播和重视。企业领导者需要接触这些员工，才能发现那些提升企业鲁棒性的创新举措。

First, it must detect the right signals from across the organization. This is not trivial. Frontline employees have valuable information that typically isn’t transmitted and amplified. Leaders need to engage with those employees to discover innovations that could improve robustness. 

其次，组织必须将这些信号转化为行动。尽管这一步看上去不言自明，但很多企业无法将知识转化为行动，因为这需要企业从王牌产品或商业模式中抽出资源，或者让本就表现不佳的产品、业务和员工更快出局。

Second, the organization must translate those signals into action. This may seem self-evident, but large companies often find themselves unable to implement this crucial second step because it may require diverting resources from the dominant product or business model and perhaps allowing underperforming products, businesses, and employees to fail more quickly.

值得注意的是，反馈越强并不意味着结果越好。如果反馈循环过短，或对变化的反应过激，系统可能会用力过猛，反而削弱其稳定性。   

This is not to say that the tighter the feedback, the better. If the feedback cycle becomes too short or the response to change is too strong, the system may overshoot its targets and become unstable. 

06.建立互惠信任

Foster Trust and Reciprocity

所谓的集体行为悖论，是个体缺乏动力做出有利于整体的行为，除非这些行为能立即为个体带来益处。因此，组织只有建立起信任和互惠的机制才能克服这种悖论。   

This is the quandary of so-called collective action problems: Individuals lack incentives to act in ways that benefit the overall system unless they benefit in immediate ways themselves. Trust and the enforcement of reciprocity combine to provide a mechanism for organizations to overcome this quandary. 

诺贝尔经济学奖得主埃莉诺·奥斯特罗姆(Elinor Ostrom)曾对公共资源的使用进行研究。她观察到，渔业生态系统可以避免“公地悲剧”现象——公共资源被过度利用，导致所有个体最终受到损失。她发现，个体可以形成自组织来提升公地的可持续性。自组织允许参与者建立互惠的规则和协议。

The Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom studied situations in which users of a common-pool resource, such as a fishery ecosystem, are able to avoid the “tragedy of the commons,” whereby public resources are overexploited to the eventual detriment of everyone involved. Her insight was that trust, along with variables such as the number of users, the presence of leadership, and the level of knowledge, promotes self-organization for sustainability. It allows users to create norms of reciprocity and keep agreements.

要发挥信任的力量，企业领导者应思考，他们的企业如何为生态系统中的其他利益相关方做出贡献。即便在追求自身利益最大化时，他们也必须保证为整个系统提供价值。

To leverage the power of trust, leaders should consider how their firms contribute to other stakeholders in their ecosystem. They must ensure that they are adding value to the system even as they seek to maximize profits.     

诺和诺德进入中国市场的策略，提供了一个绝佳的案例。诺和诺德通过在中国建立生产基地和研发中心，来表明对当地医疗事业的支持。这些举动不仅帮助公司打开了市场，更建立了与其他利益相关方之间的信任。公司的努力获得了回报，目前诺和诺德占据了中国庞大胰岛素市场的60%左右。对其他利益相关方和社会福祉做出清晰的承诺让公司提升了自身的鲁棒性，并让其所在的整个社会变得更加强健。

Novo Nordisk’s approach to new markets illustrates how this can work. It demonstrated its local commitment by building production sites and an R&D center in China. These efforts not only developed the market—they built trust between the company and other stakeholders. And they paid off. Novo Nordisk now controls about 60% of China’s enormous insulin market. Making a clear commitment to other stakeholders and the social good enhanced the robustness of the firm and strengthened the broader CAS in which it is nested.

企业死亡率不断上升为所有公司带来威胁，其背后的主因是商业环境变得越来越复杂，这一状况在可预见的未来不会发生变化。

Rising corporate mortality is an increasing threat, and the forces driving it—the dynamism and complexity of the business environment—are likely to remain strong for the foreseeable future.

因此，我们需要彻底转变管理思维。过去，企业领导者会问：“我们如何在竞争中胜出？”如今他们必须回答的问题是：“我们如何活得更久？”

A paradigm shift in managerial thinking is needed. Leaders are used to asking, “How can we win this game?” Today they must also ask, “How can we extend this game?”    

马丁·里维斯是波士顿咨询公司高级合伙人；

西蒙·莱文是普林斯顿大学生物学George M. Moffett教席教授；

上田大地是波士顿咨询公司助理咨询顾问。