Good morning, everyone.In the last few lectures I've been dealing with business finance, but now I'm going to move on to business systems.
在过去的几次演讲中，我提到了企业财务处理的问题，但是现在我将谈谈商业系统。
And in today's lecture I'm going to talk about what can go wrong when businesses try to copy their own best practices.
在今天的演讲中，我将谈一谈当企业试图复制以往的成功案例时会遇到的错误。
Once a business has successfully introduced a new process - managing a branch bank, say, or selling a new product
一旦商业成功地引进一套新的程序，比如说管理银行分行，或销售某新产品，
the parent organisation naturally wants to repeat that success, and capture it if possible on a bigger scale.
母公司自然想复制其成功模式，如果可能的话，在更大范围上将之据为己有。
The goal, then, is to utilise existing knowledge and not to generate new knowledge.
目的是使用已有知识，而不产生新的知识。
It's a less glamorous activity than pure innovation, but it actually happens more often, as a matter of fact.
这比纯粹的发明来说就缺乏魅力了，但是其实这更为普遍。
However, surprisingly, getting things right the second time is not necessarily any simpler than it was the first time.
然而令人惊讶的是，第二次做好一件事不一定比第一次容易。
Now, there's been a lot of research into how companies can repeat their previous successes,
现在有很多研究调查公司是如何复制它们先前的成功案例，
and it certainly hasn't been confined to the United States.
而且这当然不局限于美国。
It seems that most large industries are trying to repeat their own successes,
看起来似乎大多数大型工业试图复制他们自己的成功模式，
and manage the knowledge they've acquired - but even so it has been shown that the overwhelming majorityof attempts fail.
操控他们已有的知识，但是即使如此，大多数的尝试还是归于失败。
A host of studies confirm this, covering a wide range of business settings:
大量的研究证明了这点，其中包括许多商业背景：
branch banks, retail stores, real estate agencies, factories, call centres...to name but a few.
银行分行、零售店、房地产中介、工厂、电话中心...... 这里只列举几例。