幫富士膠片“脫胎換骨”的助野健兒
數字技術的崛起讓富士膠片的核心業務面臨落伍危險，助野健兒幫助其開創了一條引人注目的全新發展軌跡。
更新於2019年5月30日02:25 英國《金融時報》莎拉•尼威爾
富士膠片控股株式會社（Fujifilm Holdings，以下簡稱富士）社長助野健兒(Kenji Sukeno)面前擺放著該公司最暢銷的三款相機。
其中一款相機在幾秒鐘內就能把照片打印出來，機身上印有泰勒•斯威夫特(Taylor Swift)的簽名——提醒人們，這家歷史悠久的企業仍然能推出一款明顯吸引“自拍一代”的產品。
但自世紀之交以來，40多年前加入該集團的助野幫助富士開創了一條引人注目的全新發展軌跡。當時，隨著數字技術的普及，該集團的核心業務面臨落伍的危險。
作為全球領先的攝影器材企業之一，富士在數十年時間裡積累了大量專業技術，並利用這些技術在截然不同但又相互關聯的兩個領域——生命科學和化妝品——建立了強大的存在感。
助野及整個領導團隊面臨的挑戰是，說服那些習慣於保護公司專利技術不受競爭對手侵犯的員工採取一種透明得多的方式。它還需要通過一連串有針對性的收購活動來尋找新的市場。
助野表示，早在上世紀80年代中期，該公司就“敏銳地意識到”數字技術的崛起將帶來的顛覆性，並開始“採取措施”。
在有關企業抵禦數字化顛覆的能力的討論中，富士的美國競爭對手伊士曼柯達公司(Eastman Kodak)是一個繞不過去的名字：未能堅守住自己在數碼攝影方面的最初優勢，最終導致其在2012年申請破產保護，使之成了管理教科書上的反面教材。
助野及富士不會犯這樣的錯誤。他表示，千禧年到來的時候，局勢已經清楚了：人們對傳統膠卷的需求將在未來10年內消失。他補充稱:“因此，那時我們就正視了危機。”
助野稱，2004年，富士開始“盤點自己科技成果的庫存……我們開始研究，我們應該利用技術進入哪些領域來求得生存”。
之所以採取這一做法，是因為富士相信，如果它試圖同時改造技術以及開創新市場，它就無法足夠迅速地實現轉型，因此它必須通過併購獲得新的客戶群。
助野概括了富士當時的想法:“我們正試著爬上這座山，但如果你從山底一直爬到山頂，那將需要很長時間。所以我們將租一架直升機，坐著它去某個接近山頂的地方。”他笑著補充道，“用於購買直升機”的併購總資金約為1萬億日元（合90億美元）。
富士在2000年後拓展的所有業務都與其材料科學方面的專長有關，這種專長是該公司在多年的膠片製造中積累的。
如果說這種商業戰略是通過冷靜的收購和合作實現的，那麼讓員工相信戰術轉型是至關重要的，則需要外交手腕和人情味。
助野稱：“過去，我們專注於把產品製造得比其他公司更好。”他表示，由於該領域只有少數幾個參與者，“出現了寡頭壟斷的局面。因此，如果那時我們設計出一款新產品，那麼全世界都不得不購買這種產品”。
隨著數字技術擾亂了該公司的模式，他意識到需要“改變思維方式”：富士必須適應其潛在客戶的需求，積極尋求解決客戶問題的方案。
在富士會長古森重隆(Shigetaka Komori)的指導下，該公司製定了一項說服員工的策略。“我們非常清楚這（對於員工而言）非常困難，但我們說服了大家相信，如果我們不執行這個計劃，那麼我們將無法生存。”
助野的理由很明確。“我的建議是，我們向世界開放富士的技術能力，如此一來世界就能看到，然後告訴我們，'如果我們把富士的技術和我們的技術結合起來，我們就能拿出這個特定的解決方案'。這就是我當時對他們的建議。”
他表示，最難說服的是研發部門的科學家，“因為我認為他們理解，但他們的內心並不完全贊同”——鑑於他們過去一直是在“黑盒子”裡開發產品的。
結果是脫胎換骨的變化。在結束於2001年的那一財年中，富士19%的收入來自膠片。到2018年，這一比例降至僅1%。與此同時，在截至2018年3月的一年裡，包括數碼相機在內的“照片相關”服務佔總收入的16%，而17年前該比例為54%。
在此過程中，丟掉工作的員工——包括在2018年富士施樂（Fuji-Xerox，由富士和施樂(Xerox)組成的合資企業）重組時離開的10000人——承受了痛苦，而那些留下來的員工則承擔了不確定性，他們不得不讓擁有不同技能的新同事融入進來。
助野表示，管理併購後整合問題的關鍵是“帶著尊重與新公司進行交流，並共享（一個）明確的目標和願景”。
他當時面臨的另一個領導上的難題是，2017年，富士在新西蘭和澳大利亞的銷售子公司被發現存在會計違規行為。
他表示，在問題曝光後不久，富士就進行了內部調查和獨立的外部調查。隨後，富士推行了一系列治理改革，包括將富士與富士施樂的會計部門合併。
他表示，在為富士各公司管理層舉行的合規會議上，他親自強調該公司“公開、公平和清晰”的企業文化。然而，這一事件似乎暴露出，需要更直接地闡明這種精神：“從中我們了解到，讓經理與普通員工、部門與組織、以及所有員工之間更積極地溝通，對於富士膠片集團的進一步發展十分重要，”他補充道。
目前正在努力中的一項併購的情況並不順利。一年前，富士將與打印機和復印設備企業施樂合併的消息公佈，但在施樂兩大投資方強烈反對合併後，這筆交易擱置。
助野明確表示，他仍希望該交易能夠進行下去——該公司“通過此筆交易會變得更好”——儘管他堅稱，該交易“對富士的增長並非不可或缺”。他似乎準備好守株待兔，並補充稱：“我們不希望永遠等著，但我們並不著急。”
在整個談話過程中，柯達的幽靈縈繞在我們心頭。當被問及兩家公司的不同之處時，他表示，不同之處不僅限於富士的策略更專注這個簡單事實：有一個因素反映了企業在社會中發揮作用的截然不同的方式。
他認為，在美國，當支撐一家公司核心業務的技術過時時，“人們的普遍想法是，這家公司也應該消失……投資給這家公司的錢應該返還給投資者，然後投資者應該投資其他擁有新技術的新興公司”。
他表示，日本的想法不一樣：“該公司在很大程度上被視為支撐其他人生計的載體。”
譯者/馬柯斯
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https://www.ft.com/content/c3bae264-fbb8-11e8-aebf-99e208d3e521
Fujifilm’s Kenji Sukeno: reinventing a brand
The company president persuaded his workforce to embrace a more transparent approach
© Charlie Bibby/FT
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Sarah Neville, Global Pharmaceuticals Editor JANUARY 20, 2019 Print this page8
Kenji Sukeno, president of Fujifilm Holdings, has three of the company’s top selling cameras spread out in front of him.
One, which delivers a print within seconds, bears the signature of Taylor Swift — a reminder that this venerable company can still produce a product with demonstrable appeal to the “selfie generation”.
But since the turn of the century, Mr Sukeno, who joined the group more than 40 years ago, has helped to set a dramatic new trajectory, as the spread of digital technology threatened to render its core business close to obsolete.
Its expertise, acquired through decades as one of the leading global photographic companies, has been harnessed to build a substantial presence in two distinct, but connected, businesses: life sciences and cosmetics.
The challenge he and the leadership team faced was to persuade a workforce accustomed to guarding the company’s proprietary technology from competitors to embrace a far more transparent approach. It also needed to find new markets through a spate of targeted acquisitions.
As early as the mid-1980s the company became “acutely aware” of how disruptive the rise of digital technology would be, says Mr Sukeno, and started “taking measures”.
In any conversation about companies’ ability to ride out digital disruption, the name of Fujifilm’s US rival Eastman Kodak inevitably looms large: its failure to press home an initial advantage on digital photography, eventually leading to a bankruptcy protection filing in 2012, has earned it an unwelcome place in the management textbooks.
It was not a mistake that Mr Sukeno and his company would make. As the millennium dawned, he says, it was clear that demand for conventional film was going to disappear in the next 10 years. “So that’s when we faced the crisis,” he adds.
In 2004 the company began an “inventory check of Fujifilm’s technological expertise . . . We started researching which areas we should go into in order to survive, leveraging technology,” Mr Sukeno says.
Underpinning this approach was a conviction that it could not accomplish its turnround sufficiently rapidly if it sought simultaneously to repurpose its technologies and to create new markets: it must acquire a new customer base through M&A.
Mr Sukeno encapsulates how the company was thinking at the time: “We are trying to climb the mountain, but if you go from the bottom all the way to the peak, it’s going to take a long time. So we will charter a helicopter, which will take us to somewhere close to the peak.” The sum it has invested in M&A “for the helicopter”, he adds with a smile, stands at about ¥1tn ($9bn).
All of the businesses into which it has expanded post-2000 are linked to its materials science capabilities, acquired from years of making photo film.
If the business strategy was achieved through hard-headed acquisition and partnership, convincing the staff that a change of tack was vital demanded diplomacy and a human touch.
“In the old days we were concentrating on making something better than other companies,” he says. With only a few players in the field “there was an oligopoly. So if we came up with a new product then, the world had to buy that product,” he says.
As digital technology disrupted the company’s model, he realised that “a mindset change” was required: the company must become attuned to the needs of its potential customers and actively seek to come up with solutions to their problems.
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Under the guidance of Shigetaka Komori, Fujifilm’s chairman, a strategy to win over employees was devised. “We were acutely aware that this was very difficult [for staff], but we persuaded people that if we didn’t do what we were planning to do, then we would not be able to survive.”
Mr Sukeno’s pitch was clear. “What I suggested was that we open Fujifilm’s technical capability to the world, so that the world can look at it and then come to us saying, ‘If we combine Fujifilm’s technology and our technology, we can come up with this particular solution’. This is what I suggested to them.”
Scientists in the R&D division were the toughest to persuade “because I think they understood, but their heart wasn’t quite with it”, given their history of “black box” development of products, he says.
The result is a company reborn. In the financial year that ended in 2001, 19 per cent of revenue came from photographic film. By 2018 that had dwindled to just 1 per cent. Meanwhile, “photo-related” services, including digital cameras, made up 16 per cent of revenue in the year to March 2018 — compared with 54 per cent 17 years earlier.
Along the way there has been pain for employees who have lost their jobs — including 10,000 who went in the restructuring of Fuji Xerox, a joint venture between Fujifilm and Xerox, in 2018 — and uncertainty for remaining staff who have had to integrate new colleagues with different skills into the workforce.
Mr Sukeno says that the key to managing the post-merger integration was “to communicate with the new companies with respect and share [a] clear goal and vision”.
Another leadership challenge he faced was the discovery in 2017 of accounting irregularities at its sales subsidiaries in New Zealand and Australia.
Soon after the problem was revealed, he says, Fujifilm set up both internal and independent external investigations. A series of governance changes followed, including integration of the accounting divisions of Fujifilm and Fuji Xerox into Fujifilm Holdings.
He says he sought personally to reinforce the company’s “open, fair and clear” corporate culture at compliance sessions held for the management of each Fujifilm Group company. However, the episode seems to have exposed a need to spell out the ethos more directly: “Out of this, we learnt that making communication more active among managers and non-managers, departments and organisations, and all employees, would be important for the further growth of the Fujifilm Group,” he adds.
One current piece of attempted M&A is proving less than plain sailing. A year ago a deal which would have seen Fujifilm merge with Xerox, the printer and photocopying company, was announced, only to hit the rocks after two of its biggest investors fiercely opposed the tie-up.
Mr Sukeno makes clear that he is still hoping the deal will proceed — the company would be “be better off with this transaction” — even as he insists that it is “not something absolutely necessary for Fujifilm’s growth”. He seems prepared to play a waiting game, adding: “We don’t expect to spend time on this forever, but we are in no rush.”
Hovering over the conversation is the ghost of Kodak. Asked about the differences between the companies, he suggests they go beyond the simple fact of Fujifilm’s more focused strategy: there is an element that reflects the very different approaches to the role of business in society.
In the US, he suggests, when technologies that support a company’s core business become obsolete “the general thinking goes [that] this company should also disappear . . . The investment made into this company should be repatriated to the investors, and then the investors should invest in other emerging companies with the new technology.”
The thinking in Japan is different, he says: “The company’s very much seen as the vehicle which supports other people’s lives.”
Three questions for Kenji Sukeno
Who is your leadership hero?
Nobunaga Oda [a feudal lord, 1534-1582]. He denied traditional authority in the Middle Ages of Japan and, through his innovative policies, made the foundation of Japan’s modernisation. He is a medieval innovator.
What would you be doing if you were not president of Fujifilm?
When I was young, I wanted to be an orchestra conductor. I bought and collected full scores of symphonies and concertos, listened to music on vinyl records while reading the score, and imitated prominent conductors.
What was the first leadership lesson you learnt?
My first leadership lesson has shaped my business motto: “be bold on the big decisions, and meticulous on the small decisions” from a Japanese proverb. When working on a big job, I always try to be bold because I learnt that we may sometimes miss the very best timing for making a drastic decision if we give too much attention to detail. On the other hand, when it comes to daily business, you need to specifically allocate your mind to the details, otherwise you will end up walking into pitfalls.
