Samsung: A Strategic Plan for Success
三星：成功的战略计划
You’re probably familiar with Samsung. Maybe you have one of the company’s hot new Galaxy smartphones or tablets that track your eye movements to help you navigate the screen. You might be doing your homework on one of its cutting-edge laptops. Or perhaps you’ve seen one of its dazzling new ultrahigh- definition curved-screen smart TVs with Nano-crystal technology.
您可能熟悉三星。也许您拥有该公司热门的新型 Galaxy 智能手机或平板电脑之一，它们可以跟踪您的眼球运动以帮助您导航屏幕。您可能正在它的一台尖端笔记本电脑上做功课。或者，也许您已经见过其采用纳米晶体技术的新型超高清曲面屏幕智能电视之一。
Chances are good that you or someone you know owns a Samsung product. After all, Samsung is the world’s largest consumer electronics manufacturer, producing “got to have” products in just about every electronics category, including TVs, DVD players, home theaters, digital cameras and camcorders, mobile devices, smartwatches, home appliances, laptops, printers, and LED lighting.
您或您认识的人很有可能拥有三星产品。毕竟，三星是世界上最大的消费电子产品制造商，生产几乎所有电子产品类别的“必备”产品，包括电视、DVD 播放器、家庭影院、数码相机和摄像机、移动设备、智能手表、家用电器、笔记本电脑、打印机和 LED 照明。
But only 20 years ago, Samsung was little known, and it was anything but cutting-edge. Back then, Samsung was a Korean copycat brand that you bought off a shipping pallet at Costco if you couldn’t afford a Sony, then the world’s most coveted consumer electronics brand. However, in 1993 Samsung made an inspired decision. It turned its back on cheap knockoffs and set out to overtake rival Sony. At the time, no one outside of Samsung believed that was possible. But the Korean manufacturer passed Sony in just 10 years, and Samsung has been widening the gap that separates it from the former market leader ever since.
但就在 20 年前，三星还鲜为人知，而且它绝非尖端。那时，三星是一个韩国山寨品牌，如果你买不起索尼，你可以在 Costco 的货运托盘上买下它，当时世界上最令人垂涎的消费电子品牌。然而，在 1993 年，三星做出了一个鼓舞人心的决定。它放弃了廉价的仿冒品，开始超越竞争对手索尼。当时，除了三星之外，没有人相信这是可能的。但这家韩国制造商在短短 10 年内就超过了索尼，从那时起，三星一直在扩大它与前市场领导者的差距。
The New Management Strategy
新的管理战略
How did Samsung move so far so fast? The dramatic shift came about as a result of a top-down mandate to reform Samsung’s business model and culture. In 1993, CEO Lee Kunhee unveiled a new strategy. The goal: Dethrone Sony as the biggest and most desirable consumer electronics brand in the world. Turn Samsung into a premier brand and a trailblazing product leader. To that end, the company hired a crop of fresh, young designers and managers who unleashed a torrent of new products—not humdrum, me-too products, but sleek, bold, and beautiful products targeted to high-end users. Samsung called them “lifestyle works of art.” Every new product had to pass the “Wow!” test: If it did not get a “Wow!” reaction during market testing, it went straight back to the design studio.
三星是如何发展如此之快的？这一戏剧性的转变是由于自上而下的改革三星商业模式和文化的任务。1993 年，首席执行官 Lee Kunhee 公布了一项新战略。目标：取代索尼成为全球最大、最令人向往的消费电子品牌。将 Samsung 转变为首屈一指的品牌和开拓性的产品领导者。为此，该公司聘请了一批新鲜的年轻设计师和经理，他们推出了大量新产品——不是单调乏味的模仿产品，而是针对高端用户的时尚、大胆和美丽的产品。三星称它们为“生活方式的艺术品”。每个新产品都必须通过“Wow！”测试：如果在市场测试期间没有得到“Wow！”的反应，它就会直接退回到设计工作室。
Beyond just seeking cutting-edge technology and stylish designs, Samsung put the customer at the core of this innovation movement. “Put simply, our differentiation is centered on producing innovative technology that brings genuine change to people’s lives,” said Sue Shim, Samsung’s chief marketing officer. “We do this by bringing a relentless focus on consumer experience and product innovation in everything we do.”
除了寻求尖端技术和时尚设计之外，三星还将客户置于这一创新运动的核心。“简而言之，我们的差异化在于生产创新技术，为人们的生活带来真正的改变，”三星首席营销官 Sue Shim 说。“我们通过在所做的每一件事中坚持不懈地关注消费者体验和产品创新来做到这一点。”
With its fresh customer-centered focus, Samsung made quick work of surpassing Sony. Today, Samsung’s annual revenues of $196 billion are more than two and a half times Sony’s $75 billion. And over the past five years, as Samsung’s sales and profits have seen double-digit growth, Sony’s revenues have declined and losses have compounded. According to brand tracker Interbrand, Samsung is now the world’s seventh most valuable brand—ahead of megabrands like Disney, Pepsi, Nike, and Toyota—and one of the fastest-growing brands in the world. And Sony? It has fallen from grace as the value of its brand has declined as dramatically as Samsung’s has risen.
凭借其以客户为中心的新关注点，三星迅速超越了索尼。如今，三星的年收入为 1960 亿美元，是索尼 750 亿美元的两倍半多。在过去五年中，随着三星的销售额和利润出现两位数的增长，索尼的收入下降，亏损加剧。根据品牌追踪器 Interbrand 的数据，三星现在是全球第七大最有价值品牌，领先于迪士尼、百事可乐、耐克和丰田等大品牌，也是世界上增长最快的品牌之一。索尼呢？随着其品牌价值的大幅下降，它与三星的崛起一样急剧，它已经失宠。
But more than growth, Samsung has achieved the new product Wow! factor it sought. As evidence, Samsung is a dominant force at the annual International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) presentations—the Academy Awards of the design world—which judge new products based on appearance, functionality, and inspirational thinking. Year after year, Samsung emerges as the top corporate winner. Last year, Samsung claimed 10 awards, more than three times as many as the runners-up.
但不仅仅是增长，三星还实现了新产品 Wow！因素。作为证据，三星是一年一度的国际设计卓越奖 （IDEA） 颁奖典礼（设计界的奥斯卡奖）的主导力量，该颁奖典礼根据外观、功能和鼓舞人心的思维来评判新产品。年复一年，三星成为最大的企业赢家。去年，三星获得了 10 个奖项，是亚军的三倍多。
When New Becomes Old
当新变成旧
Good companies achieve their strategic goals. Great companies modify their strategic plans as goals are met, always looking to the future and positioning themselves to remain in front. After Lee was named top CEO of the Decade by Fortune Korea, he announced that the “new management” plan was old news. After 17 years of remarkable success, Lee admitted that Samsung’s main products would likely become obsolete within the next 10 years. He then unveiled the underpinnings of a new strategic direction based on the Chinese axiom mabuljungje—meaning “horse that does not stop.” In a memo to Samsung employees, Lee said, “The ‘new management’ doctrine for the past 17 years helped catapult the company into being one of the world’s best electronics makers. Now is not a time to be complacent but a time to run.”
优秀的公司会实现他们的战略目标。伟大的公司会在实现目标时修改他们的战略计划，始终展望未来并保持领先地位。在 Lee 被 Fortune Korea 评为十年最佳 CEO 后，他宣布“新管理”计划已成为旧新闻。在 17 年取得巨大成功后，Lee 承认三星的主要产品可能会在未来 10 年内过时。然后，他根据中国格言 mabuljungje（意为“不停的马”）揭示了新战略方向的基础。在给三星员工的一份备忘录中，Lee 说：“过去 17 年的'新管理层'原则帮助公司一跃成为世界上最好的电子产品制造商之一。现在不是自满的时候，而是逃跑的时候。
Although Samsung doesn’t claim to know what will replace today’s products as they become obsolete, it is investing heavily to ensure that it is the company that develops them. Even with its new product systems in place, CEO Lee stresses the need for Samsung to completely overhaul its business model or risk losing market share. Fortunately for Samsung, profits have been so good that it has the funds to support its quest to remain at the top of the innovation heap. Year after year, Samsung boosts its innovation investment budget to record highs, even as its competition makes cuts. Its most recent research and development expense of $13.4 billion was second only to Volkswagen’s $13.5 billion and more than double that of Amazon, IBM, or Cisco. Sony, Toshiba, Sharp, and Hitachi—Samsung’s more traditional competitors in the past—did not even come close.
尽管三星并不声称知道当今产品过时后会用什么来取代它们，但它正在大力投资以确保开发这些产品的公司是公司。即使已经有了新的产品系统，首席执行官 Lee 也强调三星需要彻底改革其商业模式，否则就有可能失去市场份额。对三星来说幸运的是，利润如此之好，以至于它有足够的资金来支持其保持创新领先地位的追求。年复一年，三星将其创新投资预算提高到创纪录的高位，即使其竞争对手正在削减开支。其最近的研发费用为 134 亿美元，仅次于大众汽车的 135 亿美元，是亚马逊、IBM 或思科的两倍多。索尼、东芝、夏普和日立——三星过去更传统的竞争对手——甚至没有接近。
The folks at Samsung know that future success will require much more than flashy hardware gadgets. For that reason, Samsung isn’t really paying attention to Sony anymore. Samsung knows that it cannot thrive in the long term by merely offering sharper colors, better sound quality, or even “Wow!” designs. Over the past half-decade, Samsung has focused on competing with the likes of Apple for dominance of the mobile device market and for the content and advertising that go along with such devices.
三星的人知道，未来的成功需要的不仅仅是华丽的硬件小工具。出于这个原因，三星不再真正关注索尼。三星知道，仅靠提供更鲜艳的色彩、更好的音质，甚至是 “哇！”的设计，是无法长期繁荣的。在过去的五年里，三星一直专注于与苹果等公司争夺移动设备市场的主导地位以及与此类设备相关的内容和广告。
That focus has paid off, and Samsung has surged to the top of the smartphone market. Just a few years ago, Samsung’s goal was to double its share of the smartphone market from 5 percent to 10 percent. But the success of the Galaxy line catapulted Samsung into the position of market leader, besting Apple with a global market share of more than 30 percent. And although Apple has the jump on controlling content with more than 100 billion downloads through its App Store, Samsung’s Galaxy App Store is holding its own.
这种关注得到了回报，三星已经飙升至智能手机市场的顶端。就在几年前，三星的目标是将其智能手机市场的份额从 5% 翻倍到 10%。但 Galaxy 系列的成功使三星一跃成为市场领导者，以超过 30% 的全球市场份额击败了苹果。尽管 Apple 通过其 App Store 的下载量超过 1000 亿次，在控制内容方面取得了飞跃，但三星的 Galaxy App Store 却保持着自己的地位。
The Internet of Things
物联网
Despite its indisputable success in smartphones, Samsung knows that that success can be short-lived. Although it still maintains the lead in the market, Samsung’s fortunes have waned in the past year as the latest rendition of the iPhone cut its market share in China in half, reducing its global market share to 25 percent. In a saturated and cut-throat market, Samsung knows that future growth will not come from a bigger, better smartphone.
尽管它在智能手机方面取得了无可争议的成功，但三星知道这种成功可能是短暂的。尽管三星仍然保持市场领先地位，但随着最新款 iPhone 的推出将其在中国的市场份额削减了一半，其全球市场份额降至 25%，三星的命运在过去一年中有所下降。在一个饱和和残酷的市场中，三星知道未来的增长不会来自更大、更好的智能手机。
Rather, Samsung is again shifting its strategic direction. Samsung wants to take the lead in “the Internet of Things”— a global environment where all electronic devices, appliances, vehicles, and even static items such as clothing will be digitally connected with each other, with the people who use them, and with the companies that make them.
相反，三星再次改变了其战略方向。三星希望在“物联网”方面处于领先地位，在这个全球环境中，所有电子设备、电器、车辆，甚至服装等静态物品都将以数字方式相互连接，并与使用它们的人以及制造它们的公司连接。
In recent years, Samsung has quietly gone about creating a foundation for establishing an interconnective web between all of its products and linking them with the rest of the world. It already makes products in just about every imaginable category of home device. Not many years ago, it dove into semiconductors, a business that has been growing rapidly for the company in terms of size, innovation, and profitability. And last year, it purchased SmartThings, a smart-home start-up company.
近年来，三星已经悄悄地为其所有产品之间建立互连网络并将其与世界其他地区联系起来奠定了基础。它已经生产了几乎所有可以想象的家用设备类别的产品。几年前，它涉足半导体领域，这项业务在规模、创新和盈利能力方面对公司来说一直在迅速增长。去年，它收购了智能家居初创公司 SmartThings。
But at the recent Internet of Things World event in San Francisco, Young Sohn, Samsung’s chief strategy officer, blew things wide open. He unveiled a plan that makes Samsung’s intentions clear. The company is committing a funding pool of $100 million to start-ups that want to help build the ecosystem. Committing to a policy of openness and collaboration, Sohn unveiled a new line of semiconductor chips—state-of-the-art processors that combine hardware and software—that are now available for sale, helping companies large and small quickly and easily build Internet connected devices. And to meet what it expects will be enormous demand for these and future chips, Samsung is investing $14 billion in a massive semiconductor manufacturing complex.
但最近在旧金山举行的 Internet of Things World 活动上，三星首席战略官 Young Sohn 大放异彩。他公布了一项计划，明确了三星的意图。该公司承诺向希望帮助构建生态系统的初创公司提供 1 亿美元的资金池。Sohn 致力于开放和协作的政策，推出了一系列新的半导体芯片（结合了硬件和软件的最先进的处理器），现已上市销售，帮助大大小小的公司快速轻松地构建互联网连接设备。为了满足对这些芯片和未来芯片的巨大需求，三星正在投资 140 亿美元建设一个大型半导体制造综合体。
To accomplish its goal of becoming a leader in the Internet of Things market, Samsung is taking on its biggest challenge yet. For starters, this shift in strategy broadens Samsung’s list of competitors from an already daunting set to one that includes just about every company in every field of high technology and even some beyond that. Adding to that challenge, there are no common standards for technologies required to connect the many devices of the world—technologies that involve networking, software, and hardware. As a result, there are thousands of companies—from Google and Apple to myriad start-ups— trying to move their products toward interconnectivity but not getting much closer to a state of universal compatibility.
为了实现成为物联网市场领导者的目标，三星正在接受迄今为止最大的挑战。首先，这种战略转变将三星的竞争对手名单从本已令人生畏的名单扩大到几乎包括每个高科技领域的每家公司，甚至包括其他一些公司。除了这一挑战之外，连接世界上许多设备所需的技术（涉及网络、软件和硬件的技术）没有通用标准。因此，有成千上万的公司（从 Google 和 Apple 到无数的初创公司）试图将他们的产品推向互连性，但并没有更接近普遍兼容的状态。
To add to this challenge, the many participants in the Internet of Things game don’t see eye to eye, a competitive dynamic that makes the process much more difficult. As the many players work toward compatibility, they employ numerous and often incompatible approaches. And whereas Samsung and many others have committed to collaboration and an open ecosystem, others intend to go it alone and develop their own systems. For example, Apple is developing its HomeKit platform—a proprietary
雪上加霜的是，物联网游戏的许多参与者意见不一致，这种竞争动态使这个过程变得更加困难。随着许多参与者努力实现兼容性，他们采用了许多通常不兼容的方法。虽然三星和许多其他公司都致力于合作和开放生态系统，但其他公司打算单独行动并开发自己的系统。例如，Apple 正在开发其 HomeKit 平台，该平台是专有的
system that allows users to command the devices in their homes through Apple TV using Siri. Remember “Intel Inside”? Picture a “Made for iPhone” logo on devices that would ensure shoppers of interoperability under the Apple system.
系统允许用户使用 Siri 通过 Apple TV 命令家中的设备。还记得“Intel Inside”吗？在设备上想象一个“Made for iPhone”标志，这将确保购物者在 Apple 系统下的互操作性。
But these challenges are not dousing Samsung’s fire. The company’s motivations go beyond greater financial performance. According to Alex Hawkinson, CEO for SmartThings, Samsung is trying to lead by example and trying to “do what is right by the customers” by giving them more choice and flexibility. “We will focus on creating amazing experiences in both software and hardware, and win through the power of our innovation rather than trying to win by locking others out or limiting choice,” Hawkinson says.
但这些挑战并没有浇灭三星的火。该公司的动机不仅仅是提高财务业绩。SmartThings 首席执行官 Alex Hawkinson 表示，三星正试图以身作则，并试图通过为客户提供更多选择和灵活性来“做客户正确的事情”。Hawkinson 说：“我们将专注于在软件和硬件方面创造令人惊叹的体验，并通过我们的创新力量取胜，而不是试图通过将他人拒之门外或限制选择来取胜。
So far as the Internet of Things goes, the ultimate goal is to build artificial intelligence technology that can gather data from smart homes, cars, and wearable devices and turn them into useful insights. That might sound just a little too Big Brother-ish, but the wheels are already in motion. According to one conservative estimate, the number of networked devices will surge from about a billion today to 26 billion by 2020, representing a $3 trillion market. By that time, Samsung claims that 100 percent of the products it makes will be Internet-connected.
就物联网而言，最终目标是构建人工智能技术，该技术可以从智能家居、汽车和可穿戴设备收集数据并将其转化为有用的见解。这听起来可能有点太像老大哥了，但车轮已经开始转动了。根据一项保守估计，到 2020 年，联网设备的数量将从目前的约 10 亿台激增到 260 亿台，相当于 3 万亿美元的市场。到那时，三星声称其生产的产品将 100% 连接到互联网。
Twenty years ago, few people would have predicted that Samsung could have transformed itself so quickly and completely from a low-cost copycat manufacturer into a world- leading innovator of stylish, high-performing, premium products. But through savvy strategic planning, that’s exactly what Samsung has done. And not so long ago, few if any would have predicted that Samsung would be one of the driving forces behind creating a world that is entirely interconnected. Yet, while that much remains to be seen, Samsung certainly seems to have all the right ingredients. And, based on it record of success, Yoon may have waxed prophetic as he unveiled Samsung’s new strategic direction: “We have to show consumers what’s in it for them and what the Internet of Things can achieve—to transform our economy, society, and how we live our lives.”
20 年前，很少有人会预料到三星会如此迅速、彻底地从一家低成本的山寨制造商转变为世界领先的时尚、高性能、高端产品的创新者。但通过精明的战略规划，这正是三星所做的。就在不久前，很少有人会预测到三星会成为创造一个完全互联世界的驱动力之一。然而，虽然还有很多还有待观察，但三星似乎肯定拥有所有正确的成分。而且，根据它的成功记录，Yoon 在公布三星的新战略方向时可能已经预言了：“我们必须向消费者展示它对他们有什么好处，以及物联网可以实现什么——改变我们的经济、社会和我们的生活方式。