亚马逊的推论

I learned from corollaries in 2006. At the time, I was charged with building Amazon’s early digital video product. Amazon lacked the technology to ingest, transform, and transmit digital video files. Digital files were a new but critical concept and the only place on earth that routinely worked with digital video files were post-production facilities in Los Angeles. I knew that I had to tap the knowledge and capabilities of GDMX, Technicolor, Deluxe, and Ascent—all the big players in town. These were to be my corollaries.

I met with every single company and had them walk me through how they worked  with digital files and solved problems. I brought all of my findings back to Amazon in Seattle, and I built what Amazon needed based upon what I learned from these experts.  

This knowledge transfer was possible because of Amazon’s incredible influence on the studios and the studios’ influence on the post-production facilities in Los Angeles. As Amazon was a key distributor of studio content back in the days of DVDs, GDMX, Technicolor, Deluxe, and Ascent were more than willing to grant me access to their facilities. I had the opportunity to learn from the best in the business. 

What I’d like to emphasize here is that I didn’t solve the problem, I discovered the solution. I had no idea what I was looking for when I went to Los Angeles, but I knew that the companies I was visiting had surmounted the challenges that Amazon faced. As I toured the facilities and met with the staff, I learned how the companies moved these big files. The staff were the 10X experts, and they made it sound easy. For them, digital files had been foundational for years. For me, I found solutions that would have taken me months to discover otherwise.

People are often excited to share their expertise. I’ve found that if you show interest in what people do, they’re more than happy to answer your questions. Not only does this help you to solve your own problems, it builds invaluable relationships and even partnerships.

一家公司要发展并达到一个新的水平，就必须克服障碍，公司应该以最有效的方式做到这一点。那么，从最实际的意义上讲，进化意味着要么向专家学习，要么聘请能够找到解决方案的专家；许可或租用解决方案；或获得作为解决方案的技术。 

先行者VS。快速追随者

成为快速追随者而不是先行者可以让公司获得事后的好处。 FastPath Marketing and More Customers Academy 的创始人 Ron Stein 告诫那些寻求 先发优势.根据 Stein 的说法，如果你有一个潜在的颠覆性概念，这个策略可能会奏效，但这种情况很少见。相反，等待、观察先行者并填补其产品中明显的漏洞的风险较小。 

Sony’s video cassette playback device, Betamax, launched in 1974, is an example of a first-mover product that worked. However, it worked because no one could match the technology for a long time, says Stein. 

Video Home System (VHS) 见证了 Betamax 的成功，同时也从消费者对家庭娱乐的反应中学习。 VHS 发现了两个重要的事实，即消费者想要家庭娱乐和好莱坞电影长片，这是索尼无法通过 Betamax 提供的。到 1980 年，VHS 占据了北美市场 60% 的份额，而 Betamax 则是举步维艰。

先行者经常发现自己陷入流沙，无法对市场需求做出快速反应，这让竞争对手能够赶上他们。今天，虽然技术在进步，但很少有一家公司在先发优势足以超过风险的领域遥遥领先。 

先行者必须教育市场。当没有市场验证时，风险就更大。先行者通常具有高昂的资本支出，因为他们正在开辟道路。敏捷流程、开发最小可行产品和试错学习可能代价高昂。 

For a company that enters the market later, there is less groundwork to cover, and there is an opportunity to improve on the first-mover’s product. What does the product lack? How was it received by the consumer? Can the product be improved? How quickly can a better version be brought to market?

Google was a fast follower of Yahoo, which was the main player in the search engine domain when Google launched. Facebook was a follower in the wake of Myspace, Hi5, and Orkut. McDonalds was a follower after White Castle, which was founded in 1921. McDonalds learned from White Castle and was the first restaurant to introduce the assembly-line system when they opened a redesigned restaurant in 1948, Burger King, Taco Bell, Wendy’s, Carl’s Jr., KFC, and Jack in the Box were all fast-food fast followers after McDonalds, although none have managed to topple McDonalds from the top spot.

错误的偏见

有一个众所周知的问题叫做 不是在这里发明综合症 (NIHS)，一种代价高昂的创新势利形式。对于 NIHS，公司可能会拒绝完全可接受的现有解决方案，因为它不是他们自己的。这里的问题是，没有理由相信内部开发的解决方案会比市场上现有的解决方案更好。

The mindset of NIHS reminds me of a “fixie” bike, a single-speed bicycle with no brakes favored by the hipster. Where is the logic? Bikes have brakes and clutches for a reason, for safety and as aids when going up and down hill. Gears and brakes are valuable engineering concepts. In the case of a bike, they allow the rider to gracefully stop at the bottom of a hill without the pedals flinging their legs around a million miles per hour crescendoed by a launch over the handlebars.

Please, embrace existing solutions. You can and should peer up and over your own box, whatever your innovation prowess. It’s not normal or advisable to dismiss brakes that keep you from flipping over a bike or sliding out of control. It’s not necessary to huff and puff as you go up a hill or hold on for dear life as you go down. 

Part of the problem with NIHS is observation bias. We think and act in certain ways, some of which are terribly unproductive. We look for familiar patterns and keep to things we know because it’s simpler. But the future of work, the future of strategy, the future of being a manager, and the future of creating a product is the opposite of that. The future requires seeking the best solution no matter where it originates or how paradoxical it may seem.

寻找推论

你如何找到一个推论？首先，您需要定义您的问题。一旦你定义了你的问题，正确的推论就会变得清晰。您是否需要吸引不同的人群？然后，找到该人口统计方面的专家并将他们纳入其中。您是否需要向下移动市场并降低销售成本？然后，找一个在市场上工作并了解供应链和产品参数的人，或者与已经在下游建立的制造商合作。

此外，在定义问题时，选择最具影响力的那个，意思是找到问题的根源。 

For example, consider the Gillette razor. Let’s assume that consumers are choosing a competitor razor causing Gillette to lose market share. The competitor product is slightly more expensive, and the competitor is spending more on branding to educate the consumer on its product. Could the Gillette razor’s price point be lowered to undercut competitors? Maybe. So let’s look at the cost of goods sold (COGS) for the Gillette razor. 

这些零件包括电池、五个刀片、一个平滑条、一个润湿条，以及你能想象到的所有挂在剃刀上的铃铛和哨子。如果吉列简化剃须刀，供应链将发生变化，因为更新的更简单的模型不再需要更复杂模型的先进技术。因此，也许可以通过不同的制造商以更低的价格找到更简单的产品，但这是真正的问题吗？

您还需要考虑间接和无形因素，例如当前供应链、分销、存储、运输和营销的可靠性。从广义上讲，COGS 本身就是一种分析，它是不精确的。除了 COGS，分析是否真正深入到了问题的根源。在这种情况下，价格点是真正的问题吗？可能是竞争对手正在与客户建立更好的关系，他们的教育品牌正在取得成效。该问题可能与价格和 COGS 完全无关。

如果没有定义核心问题，吉列就有掉入兔子洞的风险。吉列可能会不必要地开发一种更简单的产品，这对他们的销售没有帮助，并且可能会破坏原本正常运作的供应链。但是从竞争对手的角度来看推论可能会发现品牌重塑将是一个更好的策略。 

五个为什么

The Lean/Six Sigma space uses a process called “The Five Whys” to whittle a problem down to its root cause. The process is simple: start with a problem statement and continue to ask “Why?” until you get to the root of the problem. Taiichi Ohno, 丰田生产方式之父，解释说：

“The basis of Toyota’s scientific approach is to ask why five times whenever we find a problem … By repeating why five times, the nature of the problem as well as its solution becomes clear.“ 

Problem Statement: Customers are unhappy because they are being shipped products that don’t meet their specifications.

1. 为什么客户会收到不良产品？

– Because manufacturing built the products to a specification that is different from what the customer and the sales person agreed to.

2. 为什么制造业生产的产品规格与销售规格不同？

– Because the sales person expedites work on the shop floor by calling the head of manufacturing directly to begin work. An error happened when the specifications were being communicated or written down.

3. 为什么销售人员不按照公司规定的程序直接打电话给制造负责人开始工作？

– Because the “start work” form requires the sales director’s approval before work can begin and slows the manufacturing process (or stops it when the director is out of the office).

4. 为什么表格包含对销售总监的批准？

– Because the sales director needs to be continually updated on sales for discussions with the CEO.”

找到根本原因后，您可以确定要探索的选项。根据问题和情况，可能是软件解决方案、流程解决方案，或者需要引入外部专家的解决方案，过去曾面临类似问题。

推论遇到对抗的地方

Even if you find a corollary, it’s still an uphill battle to implement the solution. In my career, a common problem is what I describe as “the body rejecting the organ.” You bring in a new truth to an organization and there’s so much orthodoxy, so much rigidity around the current truth, that the new truth is disruptive. The new truth challenges people so much that it starts to detract value in the near term because people feel threatened by the disruption and the new perspective. Instead of trying to understand or learn the truth, they try to rid the company of the idea.  

那么，为什么人们会因为变化而感到威胁呢？因为人们害怕失败。当面对问题的解决方案时，有些人会觉得这是他们无法充分理解以证明熟练程度的东西。这种动态与个人价值直接相关。缺乏理解与过时有关，或者他们可能被认为太老而无法理解新想法，或者他们的技能已经过时。如果你愿意，可以称之为不安全感。 

It’s okay to not understand everything in business—anyone who acts like they do is pretending. What is important is that leaders constantly try to learn rather than remain in the small corner of the world where they built their career. 

应用推论的步骤

在 HowDo 推论指南中，我列出了一种逐步确定问题的方法，并以最快、最无风险的解决方案来推论。大致来说，步骤如下：

寻找 10 倍员工

If you want to solve a problem quickly, you’re going to have to find and acquire those who have solved it before. Sometimes it will be an expert, sometimes it will be an entire team, or even an entire company. It might be a hard pill to swallow given internal bias, but the future will be filled with more of these conversations, so proudly accept corollaries as an addition to your toolbox. 

In my career, the correct expert has an outsized ROI. What I mean by that is that they increase the probability of success, decrease the amount of time required for success, and increase your confidence that you will achieve success. The correct expert comes with all of the learning amassed from the mistakes they’ve made solving the same problem in the past. This is a shortcut around all of the blunders that a less experienced person might encounter, and it is why the right expert does not come cheap.

In Silicon Valley, you have “10X engineer,” so-called because this is a person who is 10 times more productive than everyone else, super human in fact. Some of them are actual geniuses in their field and probably started building neural networks when they were five. But the majority of them are simply just deeply familiar with the problem and have the battle scars to prove it. 

Familiarity is accumulated by being thrown head first into a problem. How do you build a tracking algorithm at Facebook? No clue—let’s find out! Facebook has made a ton of mistakes learning how to target people with algorithms. Thus, hire someone who has worked at Facebook and your consumer algorithms will knock it out of the park.

Finding these experts can be tricky but, for most sectors, LinkedIn provides some transparency to who is doing what. Many people advertise exactly what they want to do and what exactly they are doing. Start with your competitors, and call the people who have solved the problem. If you cannot afford them, look down or across from that competitor. If you can’t afford the person from Facebook, look to Pinterest, Tinder, or any of the other private networks. Look to employees who used to work for Facebook or Instagram and went to startups, failed, or otherwise.

传统公司低估了他们对许多潜在员工的吸引力。许多高层人士认为，他们想在无限量蓝瓶咖啡的开放式布局中建立未来，但初创公司的吸引力很快就会减弱。许多人决定他们想要健康保险，而不是每两个小时喝一杯浓缩咖啡。稳定的收入、股票期权、周末和晚上有利于保持清醒，而每周工作 80 小时则不然。找到这些人，并进行宣传。你可能会感到惊喜。

在 Rosetta Stone，我的团队正在构建更好的语言学习产品。在这种情况下，我的推论是教授语言学习的学者。我研究了被引用次数最多、获奖最多和最受认可的学者，并聘请了他们。我还找到了谁生产的产品最好、增长最快、客户满意度最高的产品并雇用了他们。我为我们的目的确定了最好的技术平台并购买了它。我发现谁是儿童应用程序开发和市场渗透的领导者，并雇用了他们。我剖析了我们需要解决的问题，公司在损益表中留出了空间来招到合适的人。 

结果？ Rosetta Stone 凭借我们的儿童应用程序赢得了 iKids 奖。我们构建的 B2B 平台现在是公司的主要损益。我们从一家 B2C 公司转变为一家 B2B 公司，拥有一两次收购和一些新团队。我们彻底改变了公司，为我们可以看到正在赚钱的问题提供精确的解决方案。我们合并了资产，使我们能够挤出效率。

我自己没有解决任何问题，我找到了可以解决的人。我使用推论来推动增长。