Asia’s new model company

Samsung’s recent success has been extraordinary. But its strategy will be hard to copy

THE founders of South Korea’s chaebol (conglomerates) were an ambitious bunch. Look at the names they picked for their enterprises: Daewoo (“Great Universe”), Hyundai (“The Modern Era”) and Samsung (“Three Stars”, implying a business that would be huge and eternal). Samsung began as a small noodle business in 1938. Since then it has swelled into a network of 83 companies that account for a staggering 13% of South Korea’s exports. The hottest chilli in the Samsung kimchi bowl is Samsung Electronics, which started out making clunky transistor radios but is now the world’s biggest technology firm, measured by sales. It makes more televisions than any other company, and may soon displace Nokia as the biggest maker of mobile-telephone handsets.

Small wonder others are keen to know the secret of Samsung’s success. China sends emissaries to study what makes the firm tick in the same way that it sends its bureaucrats to learn efficient government from Singapore. To some, Samsung is the harbinger of a new Asian model of capitalism. It ignores the Western conventional wisdom. It sprawls into dozens of unrelated industries, from microchips to insurance. It is family-controlled and hierarchical, prizes market share over profits and has an opaque and confusing ownership structure. Yet it is still prodigiously creative, at least in terms of making incremental improvements to other people’s ideas: only IBM earns more patents in America. Having outstripped the Japanese firms it once mimicked, such as Sony, it is rapidly becoming emerging Asia’s version of General Electric, the American conglomerate so beloved of management gurus.

Tomorrow’s GE or tomorrow’s Daewoo?

There is much to admire about Samsung (see article). It is patient: its managers care more about long-term growth than short-term profits. It is good at motivating its employees. The group thinks strategically: it spots markets that are about to take off and places huge bets on them.

The bets that Samsung Electronics placed on DRAM chips, liquid-crystal display screens and mobile telephones paid off handsomely. In the next decade the group plans to gamble again, investing a whopping $20 billion in five fields in which it is a relative newcomer: solar panels, energy-saving LED lighting, medical devices, biotech drugs and batteries for electric cars. Although these industries seem quite different from each other, Samsung is betting that they have two crucial things in common. They are about to grow rapidly, thanks to new environmental rules (solar power, LED lights and electric cars) or exploding demand in emerging markets (medical devices and drugs). And they would benefit from a splurge of capital that would allow large-scale manufacturing and thus lower costs. By 2020 the Samsung group boldly predicts that it will have sales of $50 billion in these hot new areas, and that Samsung Electronics will have total global sales of $400 billion.

It is easy to see why China might like the chaebol model. South Korea’s industrial titans first prospered in part thanks to their close ties with an authoritarian government (though Samsung was not loved by all the generals). Banks were pressured to pump cheap credit into the chaebol, which were encouraged to enter dozens of new businesses—typically macho ones such as shipbuilding and heavy industry. Ordinary Koreans were chivvied to save, not consume. South Korea grew into an exporting powerhouse. Does this sound familiar?

In China, too, the state draws up long-term plans, funnels cash to industries it deems strategic and works hand-in-glove with national champions, like Huawei and Haier (see article). Some of Beijing’s planners would love to think that state intervention is the route to world-beating innovation. No doubt inadvertently, Samsung feeds this delusion.

Of hindsight and survivor bias

For delusion it is, on three levels. Most broadly, South Korea’s prosperity owes less to dirigisme than China’s dirigistes believe, and nothing to dictatorship—South Korea is now a democracy, and much happier for it. Second, the chaebol system has been less beneficial for South Korea than Samsung’s success might imply. Some of the state-directed cheap credit that powered the chaebol produced superb companies, such as Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motors. But it yielded some costly failures, too. During the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98, half of the top 30 chaebol went bust because they had expanded recklessly. Daewoo, the Great Universe, is no more.

Defenders of the chaebol say that the crisis spurred reforms, curbing the tendency of the chaebol to overborrow and overexpand. They don’t hog credit as much as before—Samsung Electronics now generates oceans of cash to finance its expansion plans. But in general the giants still crowd out small entrepreneurial firms: a former boss of Samsung Electronics has warned that South Korea has too many eggs in too few baskets. And despite a decade of political reform, the ties between the chaebol and the state are still too cosy. President Lee Myung-bak (the ex-boss of a Hyundai firm) has pardoned dozens of chaebol bosses convicted of corporate crimes.

As for Samsung, it is an admirable company, packed full of individual successes that managers (and not just ones in Asia) should study. But inevitably it has not always got everything right—who now drives a Samsung car? And its overall success is not easily replicable. Samsung is patient and bold because the family of its late founder, Lee Byung-chull, wants it to be. Family control is guaranteed by a complex web of cross-shareholdings. This is fine so long as the boss is as brilliant as the late Lee or his son, Lee Kun-hee, the current chairman. But if the founder’s grandson, who is being groomed for the top job, fails to measure up, he will be harder for the company’s shareholders to oust than his peers at GE, Sony and Nokia.

To that extent, for all its modern technology, Samsung’s story is an old one writ new—the well-run family firm, with a strong culture and a focus on the long term, which has made good use of an indulgent state. Celebrate it on those grounds and Asia’s new model has something going for it. Just don’t expect it to keep going at its current rate for ever.

译文

三星——亚洲新型公司典范

三星当下的成功是令人瞩目的，但其策略却是难以复制的

韩国大公司的创始人都是有野心的家伙。看看这些大公司的名字就知道了：大宇（伟大的宇宙）、现代（现在的时代）、三星（三颗星，寓意着公司的生意巨大而永恒）。早在1938年，三星干面粉行业起家。并迅速发展为拥有83家子公司的庞大商业集团，它的产品出口额占到整个韩国的13%。“韩国泡菜碗里这个最辣的辣椒”就是三星电子，三星电子第一个电子产品是笨重的晶体管收音机，而发展到现在，从销量的角度去评估，它已经是世界上最大的科技公司。三星制造的电视机比其他任何公司都多，而且将很快取代诺基亚成为全球最大的移动电话生产商。

那么，其他人急切想了解三星的成功之道也就不足为奇了。中国政府派专员到三星去学习它的运作模式，正如派专人到新加坡去学习如何高效地管理政府一样。从某种意义上说，三星的确是亚洲资本市场新模式的先驱。它无视西方认为的传统模式，把商业触角伸向很多不相关的行业，从电脑微芯片到保险业，都有三星的足迹。三星公司是家族企业，有严格的等级制度，盈利决定股份分红，而且拥有不透明的令人费解的公司所有制结构。然后，通过这种结构表现出来的却是巨大的创造能力，至少在改进别人的点子上是这样的，它可以把别人的想法变成很好的产品，而在这方面，只有美国的IBM公司拥有比起更多的专利权。三星曾经模仿学习的日本公司，比如索尼，也被它完美超越。它很快就会变成“亚洲的通用公司”，而后者被视为美国公司管理界的神。

三星的未来是通用还是大宇

三星有太多的地方值得我们学习。耐心：三星的决策者们更关心长远的发展；擅长激励员工；战略性思维：当它注意到某些新领域，它就会大胆地赌一把。

三星电子在移动存储、液晶电视、移动电话上的投资都得到了很好的回报。在未来十年里，三星集团又要准备赌一把大的，大手笔投资200亿美元在以下五个领域：太阳能电池板、LED节能灯、医疗器材、生物医药和电动汽车的电池。尽管这些领域之间都是八竿子打不着的关系。但三星认为至少有两件事是相同的。由于新的环保条例的出台（如太阳能电池板和电动汽车），和受到新兴市场的快速膨胀（如医疗器械和生物医药）的影响，前面提到的领域都会得到飞速发展。三星也会很好的利用手中的资本通过提高产量和降低成本来获得巨大的利润。三星集团自己大胆预测，等到了2020，这五个新领域带来的销售额将达到500亿美元，与此同时，三星电子的全球总销售额将达到4000亿美元之巨。

由此看来，要想理解为什么中国对韩国大企业模式情有独钟就不难了。韩国的产业巨头们一开始的成功在某种程度上归因于其与政府间保持密切的关系（虽然三星公司一直不被政客们看好）。银行受到来自政府的压力，以极低的利息放贷给这些大企业，这些钱都被鼓励投资到新的生意中去——比如传统的造船业和重工业。一般的韩国人都会想尽办法把钱存起来，而不去消费。韩国逐渐成长为出口大国，难道这只是个巧合吗？

在中国情况也差不多。政府也制定长远的计划，把大量现金投资到它认为有战略前景的行业中去，并且和这些民族企业的代表（比如华为和海尔）保持密切的联系。一些身在北京的决策者们自认为国家干预才是产生独一无二创新的正道。但是毫无疑问，三星公司却让这种想法变得有点让人费解了。

是前车之鉴还是幸存者的偏执

为什么费解呢?从三个层面上讲：最主要的是，韩国企业的繁荣出于受政府干预的影响远没有中国官僚们想的那么大，而且韩国现在是民主国家——一点专制也谈不上，而且也乐于这种体制。其次，韩国政府从三星的潜在价值所能带来的利益远比从大企业体制带来的多得多。第三，至于政府干预的低息贷款却是造就了一些超级企业，比如三星电子和现代汽车。但同时也有惨痛的教训。在1997-98的亚洲金融危机期间，由于盲目扩张，前三十强的韩国公司有一半都破产了。大宇集团，就是一个鲜活的例子。

保守派则认为是危机催生了改革，极好地限制了大企业盲目借债和过度扩张。他们不再像以前那样盲目找银行放贷——比如三星电子有大量的现金可用于业务的扩张。但是现在普遍现象是，大企业排挤小企业的成长。一名三星电子的前老板警告说：韩国政府“有很多鸡蛋，却装在屈指可数的几个篮子里”。而且尽管经过十年的政治改革，大企业和政府之间的关系还是很暧昧的。韩国总统李明博（现代公司的前任老板）曾经赦免了很多大公司的老板，他们都因为职务犯罪被定罪。

而就三星而言，它确实是一个了不起的公司，他的每一个成功都值得职业经理人们（不仅仅限于亚洲）好好学习。但是不得不说的是，三星并不完美——比如还没有人做过三星牌的汽车吧？而且它整体的成功是无法复制的。三星的战略是耐心的同时不失大胆。这主要是因为它的创始人李秉喆在建立公司之初就定好了发展基调。复杂的股权分配网络是实现家族控股的保障。只要已故的三星老板和他的儿子李健熙——现任董事局主席，同创始人李秉喆一样有才，一切都会平安无事。但是如果家族下一代没有资格坐董事局主席的位置去管理公司，那么对这些公司股东而言，要想超越竞争对手通用电气、索尼和诺基亚就比较困难了。

对所有的现代科技公司而言，从某种意义上讲，三星的故事不过是旧瓶装新酒——一个经营良好的家族企业，有很深的企业文化，专注于长期发展以及能很好的利用政府的宽松政策。在这些层面上，庆贺一下也是可以的，新型的亚洲模式还是有可取之处的。但是你千万别指望它会永远保持这个势头发展下去。