【独家发布】《从0到1》精彩章节中英文对照读 [推广有奖]

如果把我们之前提出的反主流问题用在商业上，那就是：还有什么有价值的公司没有成立？这个问题同样比看起来要难回答，因为虽然你的公司自身还不是很有价值，但是已经可以创造价值了。创造价值还不够，你还必须抓得住自己创造的部分价值。

这就意味着即使大公司也可能经营不善。比如，美国航空公司每年都要接待几百万乘客，创造数千亿美元的价值。但在2012年，飞机票价平均178美元，每次飞行航空公司只能从每位乘客身上赚到37美分。而谷歌，创造的价值相对少，但是从中赢利却多得多。谷歌2012年只创造了500亿美元的价值（而航空公司创造了1 600亿美元），却从中获利21%——利润率是当年航空业的100多倍。谷歌的巨额利润使它的市值是所有美国航空公司市值之和的3倍多。

多家航空公司之间存在竞争，但是谷歌却只有一家。经济学家用两个简单模型解释了这两种现象：一是完全竞争，二是垄断。

在经济学入门的第一课中，“完全竞争”是一种理想的、默认的状态。所谓的完全竞争市场在供求相当时达到平衡。处于竞争市场中的每个公司之间没有差别，卖的都是同质产品。因为这些公司都没有市场支配力，其产品价格必须由市场定。如果有钱可赚，就会有新公司入市。这样供给量上升，价格下落，起先吸引这些新公司的利润又荡然无存。如果进入市场的公司太多，这些公司就会亏损，一些还会倒闭。最终价格会回升到可维持的水平。在完全竞争下，从长远来看，没有公司会获得经济利益。

与完全竞争相反的是垄断。竞争性公司的产品由市场定价，而垄断公司拥有自己的市场，所以可以自己定价。没有了竞争，垄断公司可以自由决定供给量和价格，以实现利益最大化。

在经济学家眼中，无论垄断企业是靠什么方式成立的，是耍手段消灭了竞争对手，还是从ZF那儿弄到了许可证，抑或是靠创新一步步攀到了顶峰，它们都是一样的，在本书里，我们不讨论非法强霸，也不涉及ZF宠儿。这里的“垄断企业”指的仅仅是一种企业，它供给消费者的产品其他企业无法供给。谷歌就是从0到1的范例：自21世纪初谷歌就已经将微软和雅虎远远抛在身后了，在网络搜索领域无人可敌。

美国人神话了竞争，赞颂竞争使他们免于排队领面包的窘境。事实上，资本主义和竞争的概念恰恰相反。资本主义基于资本的累积，而如果处于完全竞争之下，利润就会消失。企业家们从中获得的教训很清楚：如果你想创造并获得持久的价值，不要只是跟风建立一个没有特色的企业。

THE BUSINESS VERSION of our contrarian  question is: what valuable company is nobody building? This question is harder than it looks,  because your company could create a lot of value without becoming very valuable itself. Creating  value is not enough—you also need to capture some of the value you create.

This means that even very big businesses  can be bad businesses. For example, U.S. airline companies serve millions of passengers  and create hundreds of billions of dollars of value each year. But in 2012, when the average airfare  each way was $178, the airlines made only 37 cents per passenger trip. Compare them to Google,  which creates less value but captures far more. Google brought in $50 billion in 2012 (versus  $160 billion for the airlines), but it kept 21% of those revenues as profits—more than 100 times the  airline industry’s profit margin that year. Google makes so much money that it’s now worth three times  more than every U.S.  airline combined.

The airlines compete with each other, but  Google stands alone. Economists use two simplified models to explain the difference: perfect  competition and monopoly.

“Perfect competition” is considered both the ideal and the default  state in Economics 101. Socalled perfectly competitive markets achieve equilibrium when producer  supply meets consumer demand. Every firm in a competitive market is undifferentiated  and sells the same homogeneous products. Since no firm has any market power, they must all sell  at whatever price the market determines. If there is money to be made, new firms will enter  the market, increase supply, drive prices down, and thereby eliminate the profits that attracted  them in the first place. If too many firms enter the market, they’ll suffer losses,  some will fold, and prices will rise back to sustainable levels. Under perfect competition, in the long  run no company makes an economic profit.

The opposite of perfect competition is  monopoly. Whereas a competitive firm must sell at the market price, a monopoly owns its market,  so it can set its own prices. Since it has no competition, it produces at the quantity and price  combination that maximizes its profits.

To an economist, every monopoly looks the  same, whether it deviously eliminates rivals, secures a license from the state, or innovates its  way to the top. In this book, we’re not interested in illegal bullies or government favorites: by  “monopoly,” we mean the kind of company that’s so good at what it does that no other firm can offer a  close substitute. Google is a good example of a company that went from 0 to 1: it hasn’t competed in  search since the early 2000s, when it definitively distanced itself from Microsoft and Yahoo!

Americans mythologize competition and  credit it with saving us from socialist bread lines. Actually, capitalism and competition are  opposites. Capitalism is premised on the accumulation of capital, but under perfect competition  all profits get competed away. The lesson for entrepreneurs is clear: if you want to create and capture  lasting value, don’t build an undifferentiated commodity business.