姗姗来迟的苹果中国研发中心

Until recently, Apple research and development centres never fell far from the tree. The group still does no significant research and development outside the US. Its head office in Cupertino keeps a strong hold on the core design of its products.

直到最近，苹果(Apple)的研发中心从未与总部相隔太远。该集团目前依然没有重要的研发工作放在美国之外。苹果在库比蒂诺(Cupertino)的总部依然牢牢掌控着其产品的核心设计。

Last week, though, chief executive Tim Cook said Apple planned to open a research centre in China, where its products are made, rather than researched or developed. He has strong commercial reasons to plant more Apple flags. Apple sales in China have been dented by local rivals such as Huawei. Mr Cook’s announcement came while he met vice premier Zhang Gaoli — a reminder that R&D centres punch above their weight politically.

然而，苹果首席执行官蒂姆•库克(Tim Cook)上周表示，苹果计划在中国设立一个研究中心。苹果的产品在中国制造，但却不是在中国研究或者开发出来的。从商业角度而言，库克有充分理由在更多地方插上苹果的旗帜。苹果在华销售遭到华为(Huawei)等中国本土竞争对手的蚕食。库克是在和中国副总理张高丽会面时宣布此事的——这提醒人们，从政治角度而言，研发中心具有超乎其本身的重要性。

Foreign investors do not have to commit much money or employ many scientists to build an R&D hub, but the suggestion that they detect some magical innovation-fertiliser in the local water is like catnip to politicians. In return for handing over the keys to land, granting planning permission and even ladling on subsidies, the mayor or minister briefly gets to look as clever as the people the new R&D hub will hire.

外国投资者不必投入太多钱或雇佣太多科学家就能建立一个研发中心，但是，外国投资者在当地水土中发现了某种神奇“创新肥料”的迹象，对政治人士而言就像猫薄荷之于猫一样有巨大的吸引力。市长或者部长移交土地使用权、授予规划许可、甚至是大量提供补贴，作为回报，他们在短时间里能够显得像新研发中心将要雇佣的那些人一样聪明。

The question in Apple’s case is what took it so long?

就苹果而言，令人不解的问题是它为何花了这么长时间才做出这一决定呢?

Multinationals’ habit of setting up research centres abroad is more than 50 years old, and international companies’ interest in setting down research roots in developing countries dates at least to the early 2000s.

跨国公司在海外设立研究中心的惯用做法可以追溯到50多年前，而跨国企业在发展中国家设立研究分支的兴趣至少可以追溯到2000年代初。

When IBM wanted to establish a non-US R&D centre in the 1950s, it sent an engineer called Arthur Samuel to scout sites in Europe. Samuel described the London suburbs he visited as “the most dismal places that I have ever seen”. He was drawn instead to Zurich by its “proximity to talent”. This remains among the most popular reasons for companies’ choice of foreign R&D locations, according to fDi Markets, the Financial Times’ cross-border investment research service. IBM’s Swiss facility fostered four Nobel laureates but R&D strategy has since evolved to put fast-growing markets and customers closer to the centre.

上世纪50年代，IBM想要在美国以外建立一个研发中心，于是派出一个名叫阿瑟•塞缪尔(Arthur Samuel)的工程师在欧洲寻觅合适的地点。塞缪尔把他到访的伦敦郊区称为“我见过的最差劲的地方”。相反，“接近人才”的苏黎世吸引了他。英国《金融时报》旗下跨境投资研究服务机构fDi Markets的研究表明，这一点依然是企业将某个地点选为海外研发中心地址的原因中最普遍的一个。IBM的瑞士研发中心培养了4名诺贝尔奖得主，但此后研发中心的选址策略转变为让研发中心更靠近快速发展的市场和客户。

Jaideep Prabhu of Cambridge’s Judge Business School says Apple might have held back from China so far because of worries about intellectual property leaking into a market notorious for knock-offs of its flagship products. But when he studied the research centre phenomenon in the mid-2000s, he found many large companies were already challenging the idea that R&D was “too important to be offshored”. The quality of skilled local researchers was the main attraction of Bangalore or Shanghai. The fact they could be hired for much less than in New York or Silicon Valley added to the allure.

英国剑桥大学(Cambridge)嘉治商学院(Judge Business School)的贾伊迪普•普拉布(Jaideep Prabhu)表示，苹果一直到现在才决定在中国设立研发中心的原因，可能是苹果担忧其知识产权会泄露——中国是一个因为“山寨”苹果旗舰产品而声名狼藉的市场。但当他研究了2000年代中期的研发中心现象后，他发现很多大公司已经在挑战这一观念，即研发“太重要，以至于不能设在海外”。当地高水平的熟练研究人员是班加罗尔或者上海的主要吸引力。再者，企业能够以比在纽约或者硅谷低得多的成本雇佣这些人员也增强了这些地方的吸引力。

The added expense of co-ordinating research with headquarters and the feverish market for the talented staff quickly soaked up that cost advantage. What continued to make India and China attractive as bases for research, however, was their growing domestic markets, and the opportunity to study customers’ desire for subtly (and sometimes radically) different products. The realisation that some of the simpler designs developed there could be exported back to established markets underpinned the trend.

与总部之间协调研究带来的成本增加，以及优秀员工面对的活跃人才市场很快消耗掉上述成本优势。然而，让印度和中国作为研究基地持续具有吸引力的是这两个国家不断扩大的国内市场，以及有机会研究消费者对略微(或非常)不同的产品的意愿。企业认识到在那些地方研发出来的一些更简单的设计可以输回到成熟市场，这一认识也支撑了这种趋势。

Since 2003, China and India have topped the table for inbound investment in R&D projects, fDi says. This year alone, General Electric has flagged investment in an industrial internet “centre of excellence” for Chennai, and Volkswagen has plans for an innovation centre for Beijing, focused on digitisation and self-driving technology. Inward investors have spent twice as much in China and created twice as many jobs over the past 13 years than in the third-placed US. Chinese and Indian multinationals have also borrowed western rivals’ original logic by themselves investing in R&D centres abroad. Huawei, for instance, has bet on Canada and Scandinavia, where the skills legacy of Nortel, Nokia and Ericsson persists.

fDi表示，在2003年以后，中国和印度占据了研发项目外来投资排行榜的顶端。仅今年，通用电气(GE)就已经预定在印度金奈(Chennai)投资建立一个工业互联网“卓越中心”(centre of excellence)，大众汽车(Volkswagen)计划在北京建立一个着重数字化和自动驾驶技术的创新中心。在过去13年中，外来投资者对中国的投资是对排在第三位的美国的两倍，在中国创造的工作机会也是在美国的两倍。中国和印度的跨国公司也借鉴了西方竞争对手的原始思路，在海外投资建立研发中心。比如，华为押注了加拿大和斯堪的纳维亚，这些地方还有着北电网络(Nortel)、诺基亚(Nokia)和爱立信(Ericsson)遗留下来的技术传统。

Agility and customer engagement now complement the rigid approach that relied on white-coated boffins in sterile laboratories. In Frugal Innovation, Prof Prabhu and Navi Radjou criticise the old industrial R&D model that “values perfect solutions over general usefulness”. They recount, for instance, how two Fujitsu engineers had to join Japanese mandarin farmers in the fields to identify flaws in HQ’s assumptions about which technology was worth developing.

过去的企业研发依赖无菌实验室里穿着白大褂的研究人员，现在，灵活性和“接触客户”已经成为这种僵硬模式的补充。在《节约式创新》(Frugal Innovation)中，普拉布教授和纳维•拉德友(Navi Radjou)批评旧的工业研发模式“比起普遍实用性更看重完美的解决方案”。比如，他们讲述了两名富士通(Fujitsu)工程师的故事：为了找出总部关于哪种技术值得开发的假设中存在的缺陷，他们得跟种植柑橘的日本农民一起下到田间地头。

Here, then, is a chance for Apple, the Chinese R&D late-comer. Its overall “designed in California, assembled in China” philosophy is unlikely to change. But Apple already has 9,000 staff in China. Half work in its stores, gaining insights into how local customers use their devices that could be applied more widely. Mr Cook says the new centre will unite Apple’s Chinese engineering and operating teams. To stay ahead of rivals, he should tell his researchers there to leave their labs and embed themselves in the shops.

因此，这就是较晚在中国建立研发中心的苹果的一个机会。苹果的总体理念“加州设计，中国组装”不太可能改变。但苹果已经在中国雇佣了9000名员工。其中一半的人在苹果门店中工作，了解到当地消费者的种种值得推广的使用习惯。库克表示，新研发中心将整合苹果在中国的工程师团队和运营团队。如果苹果想要继续领先于竞争对手，库克就应该告诉苹果的研究人员：走出实验室，深入苹果门店。